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T.V. Mini-Series "Odyssey" queued at the link-click to 1 minute 41 seconds. The climactic Throne Room scene of Odysseus stringing the bow which only he could, shooting an arrow through numerous axe-rings, and slaughtering Penelope's unwanted suitors, is the central dramatic motif of all of Western Civilization. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0_A9XWxV0Q&t=101sStudents of ancient Greek culture, not necessarily at English universities, but more commonly centered on Greek Orthodox Church parishes, study the Homeric epic poems as the foundation of Western Civilization. It was set up in the 8th century before Christ.

Christopher Nolan made his way to Las Vegas to talk up “The Odyssey,” his historical drama based on Homer’s Greek epic... “Why ‘The Odyssey?’ ‘The Odyssey’ is a story that has fascinated generation after generation for 3,000 years,” Nolan mused. “It’s not a story. It’s the story.” Nolan treated exhibitors to an extended look at “The Odyssey,” which opened with Damon’s Odysseus, shirtless on the beach with a burly beard. He’s been gone a long time and admits to Calypso (Charlize Theron) that he “can’t remember anything before Troy.” Most of the footage revolved around “the story of the horse”...

If Helen of Troy were meant to be an African woman, Homer might have told his readers that fact in his telling of the greatest and most timeless epic poems in Western history – The Iliad and The Odyssey. Her appearance being so contrary to everyone else in the Greek world certainly would have warranted a mention. This much, at least, should be obvious to everyone. Imagining Helen’s appearance to be that of an African woman is just farcical, if one has any respect for the source material at all. It would make no sense for a high-budget production to...

AbstractThe Homeric epics are among the greatest masterpieces of literature, but when they were produced is not known with certainty. Here we apply evolutionary-linguistic phylogenetic statistical methods to differences in Homeric, Modern Greek and ancient Hittite vocabulary items to estimate a date of approximately 710-760 BCE for these great works. Our analysis compared a common set of vocabulary items among the three pairs of languages, recording for each item whether the words in the two languages were cognate - derived from a shared ancestral word - or not. We then used a likelihood-based Markov chain Monte Carlo procedure to estimate...

Elon Musk took to X on Sunday to claim two-time Oscar-winning director Christopher Nolan “has lost his integrity” while debating Lupita Nyong’o’s speculated role in “The Odyssey,” Helen of Troy. On Sunday morning, one X user claimed that if Nyong’o plays Helen of Troy, it is “an insult” to the Greek poet Homer, who wrote “The Odyssey” around 700 BCE, because he originally described the fictonal character as “fair skinned, blonde, and ‘the face that launched a thousand ships’ because she was so beautiful that men started a war over her.” Musk later commented on the post, “Chris Nolan has...

To the Greeks, the Trojan War is one of the most famous events in their history, and it is also one of the most well-known stories in Greek mythology. However, the question about whether or not the Trojan War truly happened remains. The discovery of Troy in the eighteenth century seemed to vindicate Homer’s account, but the reality is much more complicated than that. Does the city of Troy prove the Trojan War really happened? For many people, the discovery of the city of Troy proves that the Trojan War really happened. According to this train of thought, such a...

The first trailer for Christopher Nolan‘s feature take of Homer’s The Odyssey is here, and yet the highly anticipated movie has already sold out 70MM Imax tickets at AMC and Regal cinemas. Matt Damon is seen here as Odysseus, King of Ithaca, leading his soldiers home after the Trojan War. There’s barely a glimpse of a monster in the trailer, but per the poem which is set around eighth century BCE, he faces Polyphemus the Cyclops, Sirens, the nymph Calypso and the witch goddess Circe in the treacherous oceans. If anything, there’s a lot of ocean and a lot of...

Classically-educated colonial Americans learned to be wary of monarchy from the Iliad and the Odyssey. It is very likely that, in July 1776, many Americans heard sermons based on the text of Psalm 143:6 -- “Put not your trust in princes….” One suspects that ministers used words even more harsh than those in the Declaration of Independence, where “the present King of Great Britain” was assailed for “repeated injuries and usurpations, all having their direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” George III had been much admired by colonials. They had erected an equestrian statue to...

A sustained effort is under way to deny children access to literature. Under the slogan #DisruptTexts, critical-theory ideologues, schoolteachers and Twitter agitators are purging and propagandizing against classic texts—everything from Homer to F. Scott Fitzgerald to Dr. Seuss. Their ethos holds that children shouldn’t have to read stories written in anything other than the present-day vernacular—especially those "in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm," as young-adult novelist Padma Venkatraman writes in School Library Journal. No author is valuable enough to spare, Ms. Venkatraman instructs: "Absolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived...

For students of ancient civilizations, one of the curious facts is that the site of Troy (Hisarlik in western Turkey), whose walls Homer describes as overlooking the sea, is now 6.5 kilometers inland at the closest point to the Aegean. Millions of modern-day tourists have visited that inland site since Schliemann excavated it in the 19th century. Portions of the walls and towers are clearly visible — but the Aegean is nowhere in sight. Why? Because the world's oceans and seas were different at the time of the Trojan War that Homer celebrated in the Iliad. The seas were higher...

Oxford University has shocked classics students by proposing to drop two of the most important texts from its syllabus. Virgil's Aeneid and Homer's Iliad may be made optional in an attempt to modernise the degree course, amid a drop in schools teaching Latin and Greek. But undergraduates say the works are vital to understanding the subject. Jan Preiss, a second-year at New College and president of the Oxford Latinitas Project, has started a petition to keep the texts. 'Removing Homer and Virgil would be a terrible and fatal mistake,' he said.

When it comes to picking a translation of the Iliad or the Odyssey, readers of Homer sometimes feel as if they are being forced to choose between the beautiful and the good. The most popular translations of Homer are either praised for their poetry or for their accuracy, but not for both. Robert Fitzgerald and Robert Fagles’ translations are known for their lovely verses, but also for taking liberties with the text. Meanwhile, Richard Lattimore’s translation is known for being line-by-line accurate to the Greek, but also for being convoluted and difficult to read. However, his fidelity to the text...

A civilization confident in itself reads the Iliad. A civilization in decline denounces it. Guess which one we are. A confident civilization does not quake at the sight of Homer. It does not avert its gaze from Pericles or issue trigger warnings before mentioning Caesar. It does not treat the Iliad like some toxic spill to be cordoned off by hazmat crews. Yet ours does. As Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath warned in Who Killed Homer?, the gravest threat to the classics is not public indifference but professors themselves—men and women who, having ceased to teach Homer, now cower...

The most famous oracle in ancient Greece was undoubtedly the Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi. However, Greek sources also mention another oracle active in the distant past, one who has mostly been forgotten today but was said to have predicted the Trojan War. This was the Erythraean Sibyl. Much confusion surrounds this legendary figure. So what do we know about her? The source for the Erythraean Sibyl Information for the Erythraean Sibyl, the oracle who predicted the Trojan War, primarily stems from a single source. This is Pausanias’s Description of Greece 10.12. Pausanias, a second-century AD geographer, offers detailed accounts...

Homer’s Odyssey tells the story of Odysseus’ attempt to return home from Troy to Ithaca. Historians agree that Troy was in northwest Anatolia, while Ithaca was off Western Greece. However, a popular theory among some researchers today is that the Odyssey is actually set in the Baltic Sea around Scandinavia. What is the supposed evidence for this, and does it stand up to scrutiny? Why might the Odyssey be set in Scandinavia? The basic reason for this theory is that, according to some researchers, there are many details in the Iliad and the Odyssey which do not correspond to the...

For thousands of years, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were the oldest epic stories that Europeans know of. But is it possible that Homer was, in turn, influenced by the stories of other civilizations to the east of Greece? We are joined by Mary Bachvarova, an expert on both the ancient Greek and Hittite traditions, to explore this fascinating question. This is episode 42 of the "Ancient Greece Declassified" podcast. A Hittite Version of the Trojan War?! | 1:03:07 Lantern Jack | 10.2K subscribers | 329,200 views | November 28, 2021

In Homer's epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Greek hero Odysseus hails from the island of Ithaca in the Ionian Sea. Greek City Times reports that archaeological work conducted by a team from the University of Ioannina has uncovered further evidence of the Trojan War warrior's association with the island. The recent excavations occurred near the village of Exogi at the site of Agios Athanasios, often referred to as the "School of Homer." Archaeologists uncovered significant evidence of a major Mycenaean Age settlement there dating to the fourteenth or thirteenth century b.c., the supposed era in which the...

In the seventh century BCE, the Greek poet Homer wrote the Odyssey. This fascinating tale of adventure and loss would captivate readers for centuries, even millennia. It tells the story of Odysseus attempting to travel home after the Trojan War. One of the most intriguing things about this lengthy poem is that there is significant controversy surrounding the locations mentioned throughout. Based on the best available evidence, where did Odysseus really travel to in the Odyssey? Does the Odyssey take place all over the Mediterranean? The most common belief is that the Odyssey takes place over a very large area....

Christopher Nolan’s latest epic production, ”The Odyssey”, brought Hollywood star Matt Damon to Greece. Filming is underway for the highly anticipated adaptation of Homer’s legendary epic poem in Greece with the production already working hard for the much-anticipated film. With a star-covered cast and a whopping $250 million production budget, this ambitious cinematic project is expected to be one of the most talked-about films of recent years. Matt Damon in Greece to begin filming Matt Damon, who will star in the new film as Odysseus, arrived in Greece a few days ago to film key scenes for the new film...

Homer’s epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey have been hit with trigger warnings by a university for “distressing” content.The University of Exeter has come under fire after telling undergraduates they may “encounter views and content that they may find uncomfortable” in their Greek mythology studies.In what has been branded as a “parody” and “bonkers”, students enroled on the Women in Homer module are told material could be “challenging”.With references to sexual violence, rape and infant mortality, undergraduates are also advised they should “feel free to deal with it in ways that help (eg to leave the classroom, contact Wellbeing,...