The Odyssey
by Homer
Note: The Odyssey was meant to be a follow-up to the Iliad video that never came to be. I never wrote a script for it, and I wasn't summarizing the book as I read it (prior to Three Kingdoms, all I was doing was making jokes about these books in a Discord chat).
People tend to be familiar with the major plot beats of the Odyssey, so I'll leave a brief summary here, and below it will be all the sarcastic remarks I made along the way.
The Odyssey takes place a decade after the fall of Troy. The Greek hero Odysseus has not yet returned to his home in Ithaca, where a great number of suitors have moved in, eating through all of Odysseus's wealth. Each suitor has his sights set on wedding Odysseus's wife Penelope, who is running short of stalling tactics. Their son Telemachus, now an adult (though only a baby when Odysseus left for Troy), doesn't have the power to throw out the suitors himself, so he goes off on an adventure to find his father, meeting up with some of the other Greek heroes (such as Nestor and Menelaus) along the way.
Odysseus, meanwhile, has been stranded for many years on an island belonging to the nymph Calypso, who is infatuated with Odysseus and refuses to let him leave. The gods finally see fit to interject, convincing Calypso to release Odysseus, who sets out to sea. Odysseus's big problem is that he pissed off Poseidon, so his makeshift raft gets torn apart, and Odysseus washes up on the island of the Phaeacians. They welcome him, and this is where he tells the story of his travels prior to Calypso, featuring most of the parts people actually remember the Odyssey for, such as the cyclops, the sirens, and Circe.
The Phaeacians give Odysseus a lift back to Ithaca, while Telemachus heads back home after accomplishing nothing. They reunite with each other, and also meet up with a servant who is sympathetic to Odysseus. Then Odysseus goes incognito, crashes the party at his own house, and surprise attacks the suitors, slaying the lot and claiming his estate once again.
With that taken care of, enjoy some random commentary.
Zeus: "These dumbass humans. They never listen to us! Don't they know that we're totally qualified to give them advice because we're watching them all the time?"
Athena: "Well you don't seem to be watching Odysseus too hard. Bastard's been stuck on that island for years, and you haven't done anything about it."
Zeus: "Who? Oh, Odysseus! Of course Odysseus! Well yes, but you see, I, the most powerful god, can't do anything, not even with the support of the 99% of gods who want to help Odysseus get home, because Poseidon will probably raise a stink, and how will we overpower him?"
Telemachus: "Man, I'm sick of all these suitors having the run of the place, trying to marry my mom and taking the land that should be mine. Hey, you know what would finally get these people to respect me? If my dad came home and murdered them all."
So Telemachus figures, you know what'll work, I'll call an assembly and call out all these assholes in public. Which he does, and he very vocally wishes death upon the suitors; and at that moment Zeus sends an omen where a couple eagles glare death stares down at them; and the old war hero who knows his omens is like "oh yeah, Odysseus is going to come back and you're all totally hosed."
And one of the suitors is like "look, I know omens, and that wasn't an omen. Anyway, yes, what we're doing is bad, but actually it's our right to do it and we've been waiting a very long time for Penelope to choose somebody to marry and we'll keep eating all your food if we have to, neener neener."
And the guy in charge of the household totally pulls a Skep and is like "hey look, the suitors are actually doing a brave thing if you think about it, eating all the food of a guy who could in theory return home and destroy them all, even though he's probably actually dead."
And another suitor boldly claims "Even if he did come back, he would need help to kill us all, and he doesn't have it. Even his wife wouldn't be happy to see him, a fact for which I am going to provide no evidence despite this being the same woman who has been actively deceiving us for years just so she doesn't have to marry another man. Anyway let's go eat more of Odysseus's food."
"Hey everybody! Telemachus is planning to murder us!
He'll bring reinforcements from sandy Pylos,
Or even from Sparta. He's really serious.
Or he'll go to Ephyre and get deadly poisons
To put in our wine-bowl and kill us all."
Hell, now the suitors are just doing the sarcasm for me.
Man, I didn't realize that Athena lies her ass off.
She takes the form of some random traveler to meet Telemachus, and he's like, "okay, but who are you, and you have to answer me honestly" And she says she absolutely will. Then she says she's the guy she's pretending to be.
Then their conversation comes around to Odysseus, and Telemachus thinks he's probably dead, and Athena's like, oh, I wouldn't think so. He's got a lot of tricks up his sleeve, there's no situation he couldn't get out of.
...Except he's being held captive by Calypso right now, and has been for years, and Athena very well knows it. And the only reason he WILL get away later on is because Hermes has to go tell Calypso that Zeus wants him let go.
Unless one of Odysseus' tricks is having all the gods fight on your behalf. That's a pretty good trick.
Nestor: "Man, Athena loved your father. She was always by his side. Surely he has the support he needs to get home."
Telemachus: "Oh no, that's too much for me to hope. I'm sure he'll never make it home."
Athena, who is traveling in disguise with Telemachus: "Don't say that! A god could easily bring a man home, no problem." She does not do this.
Helen: "Yes, let's tell stories about Odysseus. You remember the time he gave himself bruises to sneak into Troy? Pretended to be a beggar and they just opened the doors during the middle of a siege to let him in? I'm sure the readers will gloss over that detail."
"Anyway, I didn't buy it, and I got the truth out of him while I bathed him with oil, although why I was doing that when he was presumably a beggar and I was wed to a prince is again a discrepancy the reader won't notice. Point is, he killed a lot of Trojans, the end."
Menelaus: "I have a story about the wisdom of Odysseus too. When we were sitting in the hollow horse waiting for nightfall, you, Helen, came to see it and named each of us inside and impersonated our wives to try and make us cry out and be discovered. Again, the reader will agree this is a realistic motivation for your character. Anyway, Odysseus told us to shut the hell up. The end."
Hermes: "Listen Calypso, the big guy sent me down to this shithole of an island to tell you you need to let Odysseus go, so uh, you should do that."
Calypso: "Oh. Well if Zeus demands it, then I must. But my island has no boats or anything. How should I let him go?"
Hermes: "Hey I'm just a messenger okay byyyee"
Also if I were Odysseus I'd seriously be questioning what the gods can and cannot do. Like, you have the power to hold me captive or set me free. You can't give me a boat. You can't give me wood to make a boat. You CAN give me an axe to cut wood to make a boat. You can give me food to nourish me, but you cannot help me cut wood for the boat, and the servants delivering the food cannot help me cut wood for the boat. Why any of this.
Odysseus, telling his version of the events of his homecoming so far to the Phaeacians: "Well, after we got drunk and got attacked by the allies of this town we raided, we sailed off and came up to the island of the Cyclopes, who I'd heard were really nasty folks. Actually, we landed on an island across from theirs, which was full of sheep to eat and zero danger to us because the Cyclopes didn't build boats, so they couldn't get us there."
"But anyway, although I'd already been away from home for a decade and there was nothing I needed from them, I decided to take some men and go visit the Cyclopes anyway because I wanted to see if they were actually dicks. The answer was yes, and that's how I started a chain of events that culminated in a bunch of my men being eaten and me pissing off Poseidon, literally the worst god who could possibly be mad at me as I try to sail home."
He's supposed to be the strategist!
And he could have had that adventure and still gotten away without pissing off Poseidon! Because he gets stuck in a cave with a Cyclops, who HAPPENS to be a son of Poseidon, and to get out Odysseus has to poke him in the eye with a pointed stick. And before that, the Cyclops had asked him his name, and Odysseus says "oh, you know, my name's Noman" as though he read ahead in the script or something.
So the Cyclops gets poked and is hollering real loud and waking up the neighbors, who are like, what's happening? And this cyclops is like "Noman is killing me!" I'm pretty sure one of them yells back "oh yeah, well nobody is killing me either, but you don't hear me yelling about it!"
So Odysseus escapes with his men, and as he's sailing away he just has to yell back "By the way, you just got punk'd by Odysseus, son!" Which means Poseidon knows exactly who to target for blinding his son.
Anyway eight years later and Odysseus still isn't home.
Odysseus ends up on a small side quest into Hades to find a seer who can tell him how to get home.
Seer: "Okay, so what's gonna happen is, you're going to sail out of here and find an island. Just as long as you and your men do the one simple thing of not harming the livestock on that island, you'll make it home just fine, although for some reason I can't see anything beyond that."
"But, if you somehow mess up this one easy thing and hurt the livestock, here's a detailed listing of all the bad stuff that's going to happen to you on your way home. You know, as a just-in-case."
Odysseus: "Yeah, so I went to Hades and talked to one of my boatmen who just died, and then the seer I was sent to find, and then my mother, and then a bunch of wives and mothers of various heroes, and that is the end of my story."
Alcinous: "Wow. Hey, what about the champions who you fought with in Troy? Did you talk to them?"
Odyssues: "Yeah, actually, I did, let me tell you about that:"
Odysseus: "Hey Achilles! Guess what, you won that glory you wanted! Truly, you have become great in death."
Achilles: "Yeah, death sucks. I'd rather be alive."
Skep: HUGE EYE ROLL
He chose this! He could have left the war, he knew he wasn't going to survive it! And then he says he'd rather be alive as a farmhand. ACHILLES YOU COULD HAVE BEEN ALIVE AS A NOBLEMAN seriously y'all need to start listening to Skep more often.
He's still probably better off though. He would have died eventually, but this way he's surely in the Elysian Fields, which is kind of the best deal you could get in Hades. Man, you remember when you could get people to fight for you by indoctrinating them to believe that warriors got the best afterlife?
Odysseus: "Hi Circe, we're back from Hades, here's where the seer told us to go."
Circe: "Oh, I know that place. Yeah, go past the Sirens and the cliff-monster and the raging whirlpool. And when you get past those, there's an island, but don't kill any of the livestock on the island, or you won't get home anytime soon and all your companions will be dead and it won't be a pleasant homecoming, either."
Odysseus: "Wow, that's exactly what the seer said would happen if the livestock were harmed! Pretty weird, huh? Anyway bye."
On one hand, you can make the case that Odysseus got kind of a bum deal. He wanted to sail past the island, but by the time they got there every one of his men wanted a night's rest. And that night the wind kicked up and made sailing impossible anyway. Then they were stuck on the island for a while and they ran out of food. Of course, he left his men to try to appeal to the gods for more favorable weather, which is when they all decided risking death on the sea sounded better than starving.
On the other hand, his men did act against his wishes twice, so maybe Odysseus is just a really bad leader.
Anyway the livestock belonged to the god Helios, so when they're able to get back asea again, Zeus sinks their ship and kills all of Odysseus's men. Which brings me to a fun game I like to call "Who Forgot That The Ships Were Also Carrying All The Women And Slaves That They Captured While Raiding"
Because Skep did not. But Homer very certainly did.
Greek Societal Norms: "If a guest shows up at your house, you should honor them, aid them, and gift them gifts. This pleases the gods."
Poseidon: "How dare the Phaeacians give Odysseus safe passage home!" turns their ship to stone as it returns to their harbor
Reader: "...So really life's just a crapshoot."
Homer: "Pretty much, yeah."
This is what I'm beginning to realize. The Greek pantheon is just the way they rationalized how stupid life is. I think the Greeks were Absurdists. They must have been. This is how you wind up with gods who wield tremendous power but display human levels of incompetence.
Eumaeus: "Yeah, I was raised in nobility, you know, but some greedy merchants stole me and sold me into slavery. That's how I wound up tending Odysseus's pigs."
Odysseus in disguise: "But hey, on the bright side, at least Odysseus takes decent care of you, you know, he gives you food and drink. Yeah, your life is actually pretty good if you think about it."
THE WEALTHY ELITE NEVER CHANGE, PEOPLE
Also, when we left Telemachus, like, half the book ago, one of the suitors made a big deal about taking a ship out and ambushing Telemachus on his way home. It was set up as a cliffhanger.
...But then when we come back to Telemachus, Athena's like "oh, by the way, there's an ambush, just steer your ship around." So the supposed ambush doesn't happen and has zero impact on the plot.
This is clearly poor writing.
Now that I think about it, just about everything that Odysseus and Telemachus do in this book are things Athena tells them to do. Or she orchestrates their movements in other unseen ways. She basically drives the entire plot.
Odysseus at least has the ability to sweet talk or deceive people. I don't think Telemachus has actually done anything significant on his own yet. His entire arc so far has gone something like this:
Telemachus: "Man, these suitors suck."
Athena: "You should call a meeting to tell they suck."
Telemachus: "I should. Hey suitors, you suck."
Suitors: "...'kay."
Athena: "Great. Now you should go make a name for yourself. Go see Nestor and Menelaus and see if they have news of Odysseus."
Telemachus: "Okay."
Suitor: "I think I'll ambush him when he comes back."
Nestor: "Nope, I ain't seen him."
Menelaus: "I ain't seen him either. I was told he might still be alive though."
Athena: "Great. Time to go home now. Oh, you should steer around that ambush."
Telemachus: "Okay."
Murderer on the run: "Hey, can I hitch a ride with you?"
Telemachus: "Okay."
Then they return to Ithaca.
Also, I glossed right over that murderer Telemachus picks up. Guy's like "hey, here's a page of text telling you the deeds of my grandfather and father. Anyway I killed some dude and I need a lift."
We don't know anything about him! Telemachus doesn't even ask, he's just like "well hey, I guess if you need a lift..." And the book treats him like any other normal dude. He doesn't even try to make his case, be like, yeah, I killed someone but here's my explanation. Nope! Just "Hey, I'm a murderer, let's go to where you live."
Penelope: "Oh stranger who knows of Odysseus and remembers to the detail the brooch he was wearing when you saw him once twenty years ago and has oddly similar feet to him, could you tell me the meaning of this dream I had?"
"In it, I was feeding twenty swans, and then an eagle flew down and snapped their necks, and then it perched and told me 'HEY DID YOU NOTICE THIS CLEVER METAPHOR, I REPRESENT ODYSSEUS AND THE SWANS ARE THE SUITORS, HE'S GOING TO RETURN AND KILL THEM ALL, I AM LITERALLY TELLING YOU THIS OUT LOUD, THIS ISN'T SKEP BEING SARCASTIC'"
"I have some suspicion what it means, but I really can't be very sure."