In this informal, book‑club style YouTube discussion, Speaker A (the host) and Speaker B (Ilana) explore Homer’s Book II of the Odyssey. They begin by reflecting on the council of the suitors and Antinous’s persuasive arguments, noting that while the suitors have some legitimate grievances about Odysseus’s long absence, their behavior (feasting, abusing servants) is largely condemnable. The conversation shifts to Telemachus’s preparation for his voyage, Athena’s active assistance, and the significance of his journey to Pylos and Sparta. The dialogue then moves to broader questions of heroism: what makes Odysseus a hero, the role of the homecoming in the hero’s journey, and how Odysseus compares to Achilles. Ilana emphasizes Odysseus’s flawed yet resilient nature and argues that a hero can still be heroic without a homecoming if their deeds are known. The pair examine Penelope’s weaving‑unweaving ruse, interpreting Athena’s gifts of craft and cunning as a blend of wisdom and deceit. They debate whether wisdom and deceit are distinct or overlapping, and whether “smartness” underlies both. The discussion expands to the gods: Athena’s proactive support for Odysseus and Telemachus, Hera’s meddling, and Poseidon’s enduring grudge after Odysseus blinded the Cyclops’s son. They contrast the Greek polytheistic pantheon—where gods fight and intervene in human affairs—with monotheistic traditions that portray a more personal deity. Finally, they plan to read through Book VI for the next meeting and exchange a brief personal note about Ilana’s upcoming birthday. The conversation is exploratory, comparative, and reflective, weaving literary analysis with mythological and philosophical observations.
Chapters
So yeah, and how are you today, Ilana?
I'm great. Super excited for today. It's under the weekend and tomorrow.
Terrific. So yeah, what did you think of Book 2? What struck you about Book 2 of the Odyssey?
I thought it was interesting. I know that most of it was taken up by the council that Telemachus held with like the other men and then one guy from— or one suitor. Um, and it was interesting to read it again because I didn't really recognize the amount of— or, um, I didn't really recognize how Antonius, which is that one suitor, um, played a role in kind of swaying the other men's mind. Because I mean, from my standpoint, I think that obviously the suitors are wrong, maybe just because they're the bad guys like we talked about, I don't know. But then after, like, he raises a couple good points. Theseus has been gone for a really long time, we're suitors, like, it's the custom. I don't know if all the things they're doing is right, but he has some good points, and I thought that made it interesting. And then now he's on the part where Athena helps Telemachus gets a crew and a boat, and he's sailing to somewhere else in Sparta, I think.
So would you say that Antinous made you— his arguments made you more sympathetic to the suitors and made them seem like less the bad guys?
Well, not really sympathetic. I understand their reasons, but the way they're doing it is really wrong in my opinion.
So I mean, he's— how long has Odysseus been gone?
Like 20 years or something.
So they're supposed to just wait 20 years, or I don't know, how do you— I mean, Antonius does make arguments, and I guess, and it sounds like you had not thought about the arguments. And so would you say, yes, Antonius makes arguments, but you're not persuaded that they're still completely 100% in the wrong?
I'd say yes, and seducement arguments, they're not completely 100% in the wrong, but they're a lot in the wrong, I think. Because yes, maybe they have a right to be suitors, but they're abusing their power as suitors very much. I don't really know how to, like, what the customs are and stuff, but it's mentioned a lot that they're eating, I don't know, Odysseus's pillowcases, whatever, their food, they're using, like, drinking their wine and abusing their servants and things like that. I'm not sure they're supposed to do that.
I don't know. So I would say in the background of all of this, you know, I would say we all know that Odysseus is, in a sense, is a hero of some kind. Fair enough?
Yeah. Yes.
So would you think— do you think part of it is— I mean, we all know how the book ends, how the story ends. And why do you think Odysseus deserves to be a hero? What makes— what's, you know, again, we haven't read the whole thing. You're familiar with the story, but what makes Odysseus— why is he heroic? What makes him heroic?
In a technical term, you could say it's because he goes on a hero's journey where he like— well, first, there's the whole hero's journey in the Trojan War and then coming home. Um, he faces problems that he has to overcome, and in the end there's a resolution. That makes him the hero technically, in my opinion. But, um, just aside from the technicality, um, since he's coming on the journey home, I feel like a lot of stories are based on that, like going home, a character going home, trying to find their way home or back to some place. Um, even though the bad guys, quote-unquote bad guys, like aren't 100% super bad they still seem like the bad guys because they're doing bad things. Um, and, um, in the story, another point is that it shows that Odysseus isn't like the perfect hero. He's got like a lot of flaws. Like when, just for example, when he angered that Cyclops and then made Poseidon hate him for the rest of the book, that was pretty flawed. So our hero was— our hero's flawed, and that's the key point in a lot of stories, I think. Got it.
I know that you mentioned a couple of things. One thing that's particularly interesting is the notion that maybe coming home, I mean, you know, in Lord of the Rings, you know the Lord of the Rings story, yes?
Yes.
Yes. So, you know, obviously at the end, Frodo comes home and there is kind of a homecoming. Do you think that We just, I mean, it's possible to come home and not be heroic. And so if, is the homecoming a critical part of hero? Would you still be a hero if you never come home?
I mean, your feats, assuming you did something cool or great or saved something or whatever, then you'd still be a hero assuming everybody knows about what you did. And even if you— if they didn't know, I guess you could still be counted as a hero because you did something even if no one knew. But especially since Odysseus was kind of the key point in the Trojan War, everybody knows that because they know the stories, things like that. And then what's interesting is that his home, like his journey home, is the actual story, which kind of like adds another layer on it, which I think is really cool. But yeah, I think that even without a homecoming, the hero could still be considered a hero, at least by the reader.
No, the homecoming piece is interesting. Um, we'll— we can explore more later when we've got more of the book, but would you say that Achilles and Odysseus are similar as heroes, or do you think they're very different kinds of heroes?
I think they're different, and they have different reasons be there, I think, or at least different reasons going home. We're talking about Magesis' homecoming, but they're— I don't think they're the same character. They both have— or one thing I noticed is that they both have a lot of pressure on them. Achilles has pressure because he's like the greatest warrior and he can't lose. He believes that too, but it still adds pressure. And then Odysseus is the king of Ithaca, and he's got a family, so he needs to go home. But on the other hand, Achilles, I think he encountered a prophecy or something that said he wasn't going to go home if he made it to Troy. So he knows he's not going home, but he's just trying to do his best and, I don't know, win a war or something like that. But yeah, I just feel like because of those points. They're really not the same character, especially because Odysseus has to go through all those things to go home.
And I think we should— thank you. I think we should return to that after we get more of the story. But in some ways, given that the Iliad and the Odyssey are two foundational texts, myths, poems, epics— epics is the best term— in Western civilization, it'll be interesting to keep going on the difference between and similarities between Achilles and Odysseus. I want to shift a little bit back to Athena. We talked about Athena last time, and I'll admit I think Athena is my favorite character in this. But this is when it's talking about Penelope weaving and then unweaving. I forget, what is she weaving? Is it like a rug?
Like a tapestry.
Yeah, something like that. This is, she may rely too long on Athena's gift 'talent in handicraft and a clever mind'—so cunning. What this brings up for me is in the past we've talked about Athena as goddess of wisdom, but here in a way I would say we're talking about Athena as a goddess of deceit. Penelope is deliberately being deceitful, and you could say it's deceit on behalf of good reason. She's kind of holding off the suitors, she's deceiving them, And ultimately, we know that that will allow her to reunite with Odysseus. But what do you make of deceit? Would you say that normally wisdom and deceit feel like different things?
I guess they could be defined as different things, but when you're actually being deceitful, it takes a lot of wisdom and cunning, I guess. If she wasn't smart, then I don't think Penelope would have been able to come up with those ideas to pull off the suitors. And then also, she can weave apparently, so I think Athena is like the goddess of crafts, like women's crafts or something like that. I'm not sure how to phrase it.
So are you saying that to be smart, wise, and deceitful are all basically the same thing?
Well, they're not the same thing, but they can be used hand in hand with each other, I think.
So would you say that smart is a precondition of both deceit and wisdom? You have to be smart in order to be wise, and you have to be smart in order to be deceitful, or is that not true?
That was my first thought, but I'm not sure if you need to be smart to be deceitful. I mean, deceitful is like, as an example, is tricking someone, right? So maybe you have to be smart. Maybe you don't. I'm not completely sure.
How about smart and wisdom? Do you have to be smart to be wise?
Maybe not in every case. When you say wise, I think of like an elder who's like seen a lot of things and experienced a lot of things and places. So maybe if that elder wasn't super smart or whatever, if he was super old and seen a lot of things like that, he could be considered wise because he has a lot of knowledge. But then I don't know how that works if he's not maybe mathematically smart. Maybe there's different kinds of smart, I don't know.
Got it. And then, you know, it does— I mean, you've read the Iliad more recently than I have. Clearly Athena takes quite an interest in Odysseus and for now Telemachus, that Athena is very, very proactive in terms of helping Telemachus. Which is implicitly helping Odysseus and Penelope. Were there any gods in the Iliad that were as kind of proactively supportive of Achilles as Athena is of Telemachus, Penelope, and Odysseus?
If I remember correctly, other than Athena, Hera kind of meddled a lot. I'm not sure if it was directly like Achilles or anything like that. If anybody meddled the most, it would probably be his mom, who made the gods promise to do a bunch of things for Odysseus and the Achaeans. But besides his mom, I do remember that Hera did some stuff to help the Greeks and help Achilles, but I'm not sure if it was more than Athena did for Odysseus, because she did a lot.
Well, thank you. And again, when you say meddled with, —my recollection is there's some pieces of Greek mythology where the gods are up there fighting and everything, and in some ways human beings need to suffer kind of their jealousies and fights, and basically the gods are these in some ways nasty people up there doing all these things to each other, and humans kind of get the leftovers. Would you say that was a little bit of what's going on with that in some ways? The poor humans in the Iliad are kind of suffering the various dramas among the gods?
Yeah, I think so. And something I thought of when you were talking about that was as the war begins to escalate, the gods begin to fight, and then they're having a massive argument, and then I feel like that ramps up the war. So maybe they're responding to the gods' actions without noticing or something like that. But that for sure contributes, especially since like half the gods are on the Achaean side and half the gods are on Troy's side. So they're fighting amongst themselves while the humans are fighting. And since they're helping the humans, what they do kind of correlates with what the humans do.
No, and again, I think that old version of the Greek gods kind of fighting and engaged in all kinds of drama seems very different from a God that cares about a particular human being. You know, and one reason this is interesting too is that I don't know how much you know about Judaism and Christianity, but clearly, you know, in Jewish, the Jewish religion, the Jews are God's chosen people. And in Christianity, there's very close bond, you know, between Christians who choose Jesus Christ and God or Jesus as well. And so does it make sense that it's a very different world where the gods are basically fighting with each other and don't care about humans versus a world where the gods care about humans?
Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty interesting. I'm not really sure how, like, religions divided like that, but that's interesting to think about.
Yeah. And that's why I'm interested in, again, I, I've read the Odyssey maybe 4 or 5 times, but not recently. It sounds like you've read the story. It does seem like Athena's focus on Odysseus just seems very different. So that's one of the things I want to track is, what is this? Is it fundamentally a different way that Athena as a goddess relates to Odysseus than in other Greek mythologies? And by the way, I'm not an expert in say Hindu mythology or say Hawaiian mythology. But my sense is in a lot of cases, you know, that there are a lot of religions where the gods, there are lots and lots. First of all, there are lots of gods, you know, monotheism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are known as the monotheistic religions. Zoroastrianism is actually another monotheistic, but most religions or mythologies are polytheistic. You know what that means?
Is that like multiple gods?
Yeah, many gods. Poly is just many. Yeah, and so in kind of in the background, it's sort of interesting, you know, you've got all these polytheistic religions, you've got these monotheistic religions. And do you remember if there are any gods? Well, of course Poseidon. Poseidon is going to play a big role in this. What do you remember about the role of Poseidon in this one?
I think the main The main thing is that he hates Odysseus after he blinded his son, which I guess is for good cause, but the fact that he held on to the grudge so long kind of speaks about something. I feel like he could have given it up a little while ago because his son is fine, he's not dead. But I don't know. But yeah, he tries to prolong and kill Odysseus many, many times. Somehow he survives that, probably because of Athena. And so they're kind of quarreling, Poseidon and Athena, because they're on opposite sides.
Yeah, my sense is the drama, the god drama here is between Athena and Poseidon. And I guess I think for both of us, I just take it for granted, I'm pretty sure we're all cheerleading for Odysseus. And so in some ways, in this one, it looks like more Poseidon's the bad guy and Athena's the good guy. Is that kind of a fair assessment?
Yeah, just looking at the story regularly and not going into the plot.
Yeah. Okay. All right. Lots of interesting stuff here. So yeah, for next time, 2 weeks from now, let's read all the way through Book 6, and then we'll have a bigger chunk to discuss, and we'll get discuss, not discussed, and we'll get more deeply into this. Okay, that sounds great. Now, when's your birthday, by the way?
It's on the 17th, so 15 days.
Okay, so 2 weeks. I think it might be, it might be. Well, if it's on your birthday, we can skip if you want, but, um, happy birthday beforehand, but happy birthday when I see you next as well. Okay, thank you, thank you so much. Bye.
