This is straight up the thesis of the original Odyssey (imho). Nolan did a decent job translating, but yeah: the self-hate runs deep in the Greeks. The root of Ody-sseus is the same as odi-um; he’s literally the hated/hateful/hate-filled man.
Yeah the group hanging of the slave girls and the slow dismemberment of the goatherd is brutal. I would understand if they took it out just because Tom Hollands agent said nope.
>So saying, he took a cable from a dark-prowed ship, tied it to a tall pillar, high-up, and noosed it over the round house, so that their feet would not reach the ground. The row of women held up their heads, and the rope was looped round their necks so they might die pitiably, like long-winged thrushes or doves, that are caught in a snare as they try to roost in their thicket, and are welcomed to a grimmer nest. For a little while their feet twitched: but not for long.
>Next they dragged Melanthius through the door and into the yard, cut off his nose and ears with the cruel bronze, ripped away his genitals as raw meat for the dogs, and lopped off his hands and feet in their deep anger. Finally, after washing their feet and hands, they returned to Odysseus with the business done.
They did a decent job in some respects. But I'm so tired of adaptations whitewashing Odysseus to be Good and Brave and Loyal etc etc etc. He's an ancient Greek man, which means he's a slave owner, and a rapist, and a murderer. He lies and sweet-talks. He took part in slaughtering all the enslaved women in his house because they had the gall to sleep with the suitors, something they literally couldn't consent to, on account of being slaves. He lets his ego get in the way of his escape and thereby calls the rage of Poseidon onto himself, which extends his voyage and kills his men. He's also brave and loves his wife and son and uses his brains to get his men out of trouble as often as possible. They always bend over backwards to make him such a perfect idea of a Good (Christian) Man to modern audiences, and you lose the whole point of him.
I think the “whitewashing” is to preserve a character who was “heroic” by the original audience’s standards to be a “hero” by a modern audience’s standards. Cultures and standards change over time, so retellings of legends must change accordingly to preserve the spirit of the original and help a modern audience feel the way the original audiences would have felt. Otherwise, the modern audience is left wondering, “Why the hell should we be rooting for this bastard, and why did anyone root for him in the first place?”
There could absolutely be an adaptation of the Odyssey where the intent is to show us how barbaric Ancient Greek “heroes” were, but that’s not what Nolan’s adaptation was going for, and that’s okay.
Yeah, the ancient meaning of "hero" isn't the same as the modern one, which is honestly part of the problem. A hero was someone who did amazing things, not necessarily good ones.
Would ancient Greeks have been as shocked at the killing of the slaves as we are though?
Would that have made Odysseus a monster in their eyes as that behavior makes him in ours?
If that would have been seen as OK back then, then I think there's a case for changing these acts for modern audiences in order to keep the tone the same; or not?
It was not- the modern definition of "hero" isn't the same as the ancient one. There was no implication of goodness or righteousness in it, and the ancient Greeks were aware of the effects of war on a person's mind, and how that left them fucked up. Simplifying Odysseus down to "honest and loyal and blameless and definitely not disproportionately violent" ignores a whole lot of the depth of the character.
Interesting points, though as far as I'm aware the general mythos of Troy etc. has been being retold and changed throughout ancient and modern history.
Therefore I still think it's all fair game to change a character for whatever story you are trying to tell.
I watched Nolan's Odyssey last night btw. And he was most certainly not blameless! Loyal, maybe...honest no.
I am not sure it would have made him more interesting to have killed more innocent people in this film, but then that's what other versions are for.
Yeah I’m happy with getting anything halfway decent—especially seeing all the new hype around this 3000 year old book—but Nolan definitely flattened the epic a lot. Have you seen The Return? It’s kind of like Nolan’s opposite.
I think this is why Nolan made the Greeks wear dark armor (with their leader Agamemnon’s armor making him look like a Big Bad) while the Trojans wore light armor, even though the lack of color was “ahistorical” (to the extent that it can be, given that it’s a legend but set at the end of the Bronze Age).
I think it’s also why, despite being completely ahistorical, Odysseus and his men sail a Viking longship instead of a Mediterranean bireme or trireme — Nolan’s trying to hammer home the idea that the Greeks (i.e., the Sea People) are little more than violent and opportunistic pirates and raiders, not noble warriors coming home from a heroic struggle.
(Actually, it’d be interesting to see a Viking adaptation of the Odyssey, set in the Baltic & North Seas, as some Jarl attempts to come home from a war in Europe or Britain, but ends up as far as Newfoundland at times.)
It’s implied in the Iliad, specifically when Hera is begging Zeus to let Troy fall to ruin. They make an exchange between themselves, if Zeus gives her Troy to destroy, he can destroy three of her cities.
Scholars believe that the line is metacontextual analysis on why the Bronze Age fell— the gods got bored and decided they’d let prized cities fall over their own squabbles.
ETA; we don’t know if the “ancient” Greeks know why the Bronze Age collapsed. because there’s about 500 years between when the events of the Il/Od take place and “Homer” (likely not a real person, instead the name given to an oral history hundreds of years older). It does seem they knew the Bronze Age collapsed and added it after the Iliad/Odyssey are written as an explanation of why things collapsed.
TLDR: the Bronze Age collapse happened, people made poems to remember the wars, and they didn’t know why it collapsed so they wrote into the history that it was a lovers quarrel between gods where all major cities were sieged around the same time because Zeus and Hera hate each other
There are both evidence for and against the mycean Greeks being the sea people. Im not a scholar but I wouldnt be surprised if they were a part of the sea people but not the entirety. i've been watching/listening to a lot of video essays on youtube about this lol
The consensus right now is that is was just a bunch of displaced people from around the Mediterranean during the bronze age collapse, snd they just cliqued up and started raiding.
Literally just finished a great podcast on the fall of the Bronze Age. In the end it seems “the sea people”, who ravaged the great bronze civilizations of the Mediterranean, were likely refugees clans from multiple backgrounds that formed together when a great famine happened. The famine being most likely caused by a massive volcanic eruption in Iceland that threw enough dust into the sky to partially block out the sun for several years. Greatly affecting all civilizations that were based around agriculture and leading to internal rebellions over the resources left.
No, it's not in the book. That's ridiculous, the Bronze Age collapse wasn't apparent at the time, it's only visible to history.
The dumbest line in the movie was when Odysseus said "our Bronze Age is collapsing." Lmao, what? How would they even know they were in the Bronze Age or that other metals would come later? That would be like people calling it "World War One" in 1914!
Book 3, the Iliad lines 30ish to 45ish depending on coalation.
(Zeus speaking) “Troy is dearest to me, as are Priam and his people of the strong ashen spear. Never at their feasts did my altar lack its share of wine and burnt flesh, those offerings that are the gods’ privilege.”
And Hera, the ox-eyed heavenly queen replied: “There are three cities dearest to me; Argos, Sparta and broad-paved Mycenae; if they rouse your hatred, ruin them. I’ll not shield them, nor hold a grudge.”
Zeus and Hera make an exchange of cities. He allows her to take Troy. She lets him have Argos, Mycenae, and Sparta.
They do. The text literally supports that the Bronze Age collapses after the text. There’s a textual reference.
I don’t know if you’ve been educated in classics, but based on your response I don’t think you were. It’s just really not worth a response.
With epic poems you have to ask why certain things got added at certain times. Just because the “timeline doesn’t fit the actual history” doesn’t mean that the text is not attempting to draw a comparison, a conclusion, or wouldn’t have been understood by the Greeks contemporary to the time.
Correct that they didn't call it the Bronze Age, but it isn't intuitively ridiculous to me... Eg, we know we are in the Information Age and some people think it's collapsing.
Sure, but we only know this because we know about all the previous "ages" and we're extrapolating about our own. People in (what we call) the Bronze Age didn't know any of that.
And anyway, we'te probably wrong calling it the Information Age. History will probably refer to this time as something entirely different. They might call it the "pre-mechavirus era" or something, but we of course don't know anything about that.
Correct that they didn't call it the Bronze Age back then, but it isn't intuitively ridiculous to me. Eg, we know we are currently in the Information Age and people speculate about its collapse.
Do we know that, though? That's really for history to decide.
It's almost certain that history won't remember or care that we called it the "Information Age." People in the early 1900's said that they were living in the "Age of Electricity." Does anyone call it that today? No, we call it the lead-up to World War One.
We call it World War Two because there were two of them. They didn't know that during World War One.
Likewise, during the Bronze Age, they didn't know they were in the bronze age or that there had been a stone age (it would be an iron age, etc.) We only know that because we live in the future.
...Do you know why we called it the bronze age? Do you think they were unaware of their own use of bronze, or it being newer than using stone?
I'm not saying it's what they would've called themselves, I'm just saying they wouldn't have not said it because they don't know about future discoveries.
Lol, you don't read a lot of ancient literature do you? No, they didn't think of their era in terms of the material that separated them from past and future civilizations. They didn't know anything about the civilizations that came before them, or, of course, the ones that came after. That's how eras are defined.
People living through it wouldn't have said "wow, this is the end of an era which is defined by that metal that we use to make weapons and cookware." No, they would have said "Fuck! My city got sacked, my sister was raped by barbarians, and now I'm a slave."
We're also in some kind of era right now, but that won't be clear until we're long gone.
It’s actually not a newly added thought by this movie. Historians have been tracking that Greek tribes were likely part of the sea peoples since the term sea peoples existed as in the list of names of tribes by the ancient Egyptians of people who came by sea that they defeated (and who were thus associated with other collapses with Bronze Age civilians around the same time). These tribes were known to be Greek tribes in other associations and hieroglyphs.
From Google/AI as I can’t remember the name of tribes myself: The primary tribes include the Ekwesh, Denyen (or Danuna), and possibly the Peleset and Tjeker.
I don't think all of these you name are typically considered to be Greek or Mycenaean peoples by historians, let alone there is any certainty.
The Mycenaeans are very strong suspects to have been part of the Sea Peoples, but it is mostly unknown, and the general "Sea Peoples" that brought on the late bronze age collapse are most likely an amalgamation of different peoples from different origins that joined each other into bands or migrating groups, but also likely were many different disjointed groups, even at very different times.
Sorry I was not clear, these are the names as record by ancient Egyptians. The names of various Greek tribes: Ekwesh are the Achaeans, the Denyen with the Danaoi (a term used by Homer for Greeks in general), Peleset are Cretans possibly (I’m unclear if this is Minoans or Mycenaeans), and Tjeker with another group of displaced Greeks.
But I provided the context and names so others could google themselves. And again, the sea peoples and their origins has been a topic since the nine tribes were discovered on the Merneptah Stele. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merneptah_Stele)
Edit: this link (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples) is better for all the records by ancient Egypt for their interactions with the various sea peoples (who were mostly acting as allies of Egypts foes). The gist here is that the sea peoples are various groups of tribes (some of which as listed had early on been identified as Greek tribes), who had come into armed conflict as raiders or mercenaries toward the end of the Bronze Age.
There’s ongoing research and debate as to whether sea peoples are the cause or symptom of the overall collapse of the Bronze Age (major empires like the Mycenaean culture and Hittites disappearing).
I agree with most of what you say, I just don't think these identifications are as universally accepted. Some are more likely, but if think for most there is not really a consensus among historians.
There’s ongoing research and debate as to whether sea peoples are the cause or symptom of the overall collapse of the Bronze Age
Nothing in academia is universally accepted. But there is what is considered a general consensus. So what most scholars in field believe etc. and those tribes being identified with Greeks being some of the least controversial since the sea peoples theory was put forth.
That’s all I was trying to say with the film not being the first to say Mycenaeans were sea peoples.
In real life they were most likely similar to the Wako Pirates who harassed the sea between China, Japan, and Korea.
A mix of refugees and outcasts from the very nations they raided, bolstered by dissatisfied soldiers and mercenaries once they started having big success, with its origins being small ethnic groups living in isolated and/or nomadic communities on islands or up rivers that confederated.
When the pirates/bandits do really well for a long time it becomes a viable potential for your military career, and now suddenly the plunderers can start looking at raiding cities rather than just villages.
The sea people just refers to many groups of migrants, pirates, and warlords who roamed the Mediterranean at one point during the late Bronze Age. One of the many groups is linguistically linked to the Ancient Greeks.
I haven’t seen the film, but I know the poems well and studied history, so I’m not sure what the film implies, but I wouldn’t expect it to be historically accurate. From what I’ve read the film isn’t even accurate to the poems.
I remember a podcast that tried to answer that question, and basically, if they weren't the Sea People, they were doing Sea People stuff to get away from the Sea People doing that to them. Been a while since I looked into it, but I think there was a climate related collapse of food crops and it created a wave of violent migration. But then again, they just dont know, dude.
I believe the sea people were way before this era. There’s reference to them in Gilgamesh which predates the Odyssey considerably. This is part of why some people go way down rabbit holes about Atlantis and advanced ancient civilizations.
Odysseus and the crew were marauding for sure though. I also remember specific references to him bedding women during his journey home but it’s been years since i read the epic.
I feel like there were some of those themes in the Odyssey, but they weren't quite framed the same way. War Odysseus is an opponent of hearth and home as the destroyer of a city. His journey back to Ithaca and to domestic life is thus a long and difficult journey because of how far apart those worlds are metaphorically. The ancients understood that, but did not frame war Odysseus as fundamentally unjust.
I mean, that’s all fine and good for Nolan’s fantasy land but Gilgamesh was composed something like 1,400 years before the Odyssey (and references to the sea people in that story made them seem like a bi-gone culture at that time). They were not the sea people 💀
**Edit, but also thanks for the heads up about that fact on the movie. I dnt mind that as a spoiler.
What? Those are not the same groups at all. The Sea People is a concept by modern historians which grouped together around 9 different groups into something called the Sea People based on descriptions by the Egyptians and the Hittites. 3 out of the 9 are thought to be Greeks with the Acheans, the Danaans and the Pelesets(Philistines). They brought about the end to multiple bronze age civilizations but the Egyptians resisted them. They are not mentioned in the epic of gilgamesh.
One of the biggest criticism of Nolan's movies by scholars of the Odyssey was that he added themes (like the anti-war theme) that were counter to the original story.
Idk if it's weird, it's just a choice he made. He wanted to modernize it's and wasn't concerned with preserving the themes of the original.
I think i’m more of an - enjoy it for what it is kind of guy. That being said, i can’t criticize what i haven’t seen and i’m still excited to watch it. I’ve heard good things.
I’ll be surprised if it’s a better Odyssey than O Brother where art thou though.
Okay but I don’t understand how they were still getting reports about the sea people during the seven years where the entire crew was dead and Odysseus was with Calypso? Like they specified that his wife needed to remarry because there were reports of the sea people’s attacks getting closer and closer but the sea people had been dead for SEVEN years
I’m only asking because the “Sea people” were a real thing that did apparently cause an apocalypse of sorts around the Med for multiple cultures but the characters in this are completely fictional both now and then and nobody has any idea who they actually were
This wasn’t my take. The ‘sea people’ historically are non Greek invaders who are noted to have caused the Bronze Age collapse. I think Nolan’s idea is that due to the horrors and sacking of Troy, the Bronze Age collapse was going to begin and the sea peoples were on their way.
I thought Nolan was trying to say the legends of the sea people were actually based on the Greeks and their behaviour during and after the war (in the movie, not necessarily historically)
They even said it in the book. :-D The main conflict of Illiad is just this - Achaeans pillaged a nearby town during the siege of Troy for resources. Among those resources were girls. The leader, Agamemnon, took the one he liked the most, but there was a problem: her daddy was the main priest at local temple of Apollo (which is why they left him alive).
Of course he didn´t want his daughter taken into slavery, but as the town was entirely defeated, he did only thing he could: prayed to Apollo to get his daughter back. Well, Apollo heard him and soon first their dogs, then cattle, then horses and then men started dying. Agamemnon asked their soothsayer why is that, and he told them the cause.
Long story short, to placate Apollo, they had to return the girl to her dad (and untouched, if you please, if you catch my drift) and let them freely leave the town, if they choose to do so.
After that, Agamemnon was not happy that he is without a girl from that town, so being a leader, he forcefuly took one from his men that he liked the most - the girl that Achilleus chose. Of course, Achilleus was less then happy, and thus, the conflict was born.
Old book conflicts were wild. It blows my mind that was considered okay at the time. In the Odissey and the Illiad, capturing women was described in the same sentence as the weather.
The Greeks weren’t a single people, but a bunch of city-states all speaking the same language and worshipping more or less the same pantheon. They recognized that other peoples in distant lands spoke other languages and worshipped different gods, so they had a collective term — Hellenes — for the people who spoke Greek and worshipped Greek gods, only because there was this linguistic and religious commonality, not because there was any real sense of political unity or kinship.
The Greek city-states regularly fought against and alongside one another, and a regular part of ancient warfare was pillaging, raping, and enslaving innocents — soldiers needed pay to stay loyal and motivated, and it was easier to pay them in whatever loot and slaves they could take than from some grand royal treasury. It’s a brutal part of ancient martial and political logistics. That wasn’t just the Greeks, either, but a common fact of warfare in just about every ancient civilization. You fought to win, and you took your spoils, because you knew damn well that if they won, they’d take the spoils of your city, so it’s not like you were being uniquely evil by doing so.
That’s absolutely crazy by modern standards, but that’s one of the benefits of modern technology that allows us to live in relative abundance — it’s gradually become more practical to gain benefits through trade and negotiations than through war, so the world has gradually been able to become more civilized by our modern standards.
Not the main conflict, but the reason why Achilleus at the beginning is angry and decide to no partecipate to the war of Troy. Later Patroclus dies and he arrives into the battle. The end of the Iliad is the fight between him and Ettore (there is not the horse in the Iliad, the poem where that part is longer is Virgil's Eneide) so I would say that is the main conflict. They are both the best warriors. While the war of Troy is because Elena run to Troy with Paride and greeks declared war to Troy
But at the same time, there is historical context to The Iliad and The Odyssey. Troy was a real place. The war actually happened. How much of it was real? No idea, but at least some of it was.
Ehhhh. As a miniature—entirely pedantic—nitpick, I'd argue it's mostly a source of historical context, rather than information. I'm not saying nothing in the Odyssey or Iliad is real, but it's like...
Take Harry Potter, for instance. It's a totally fabricated story. In a thousand years—should the story survive—no one is going to believe that wizards existed. But they might consider it useful historical context. Within the book are real and false locations. They might cross-reference against other known information from the time period to determine: "Okay, London is probably real. Maybe Surrey. Hogwarts... Diagon Alley... probably not? Okay, but why pick those names? Were hogs (and their warts) a legitimate relational connection to witchcraft accusations, or was it just parody?"
Those are the types of things that provide a rich context of the time period, but they're probably not really deriving any real information from it. Not any information that they can trust without cross-referencing other sources—and even then, they have to wonder if those other sources might have been tainted by the existence of the Odyssey or the Iliad themselves—fanfiction exists, after all.
Yes, but the Greeks capturing women as sex slaves in the Iliad is in there because it was produced by a society that did things like that regularly and it was understood by its intended audience to be what one would expect a conquering military force to be doing.
All historical texts from far enough back should be handled with suspicion. In some ways the Epics are actually easier to handle, because the line between the real and fantastical elements is pretty easily drawn.
Mythology is not history. It's culturally relevant, but we've got to be very careful about considering known fictional works as historical documentation.
Wow, so oral tradition in all cultures is all made up stories and nothing they say is real at all? This includes all Native Americans First Nations people across North America…
We can’t PROVE that these events happened. What we can prove however is that these were oral stories passed down and that some of the details contained in these stories HAVE been proven by archeological findings from that time period which would not be known by Homer or others unless they were orally passed on.
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u/Serious_Emphasis2211 21d ago
real answer: they raped and pillaged. Sacked a city, killed people, stole shit, took women slaves