STORY 0:00 – 53:00
Odysseus visits the underworld and has some interesting conversations with the dead. His mom warns him about the deteriorating situation in Ithaka; Agamemnon warns him about the fidelity of wives (an Odyssey “recurring theme); and Achilles shares his post-life existential crisis: “was all of my earthly kleos really worth anything?”.
POST-STORY COMMENTARY: THE ODYSSEY: SEQUEL or FREE-STANDING LITERARY WORK? 53:00 – 1:12:37
I raise a recurring challenge I face in Odyssey: The Podcast: should I tell Homer’s Odyssey as a free-standing work of literature, or should I tell Odyssey on the assumption that my listeners have previously listened to all 23 hours of Trojan War: The Podcast? This specifically leads to my observation that the Agamemnon of Iliad, is a profoundly different character than the Agamemnon of Odyssey. And the further problem that “Agamemnon and Iphigenia” stories penned years after Homer’s Odyssey (by Aeschylus and Euripides), cannot help but color any contemporary reading of Homer’s story.
RELATED IMAGES
I struggle to find details – title of work, name of artist, date – for some images. If you can help, please forward information to me. Thanks. Jeff
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- Hades with his wife Persephone
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- Tiresias, by Johann Heinrich Füssli, c. 1780
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- Odysseus with Tiresias, 5th c. B.C.E.
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- Elpenor tells Odysseus his story
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- The likely reason why Elpenor fell off of Circe’s roof
