In this informal YouTube conversation, Speaker A and Alana reflect on having just finished reading Homer's The Odyssey. They begin by noting the paradox of the text feeling both ancient and familiar, and discuss the sheer age of the poem and the challenges of translation. The dialogue moves to recurring motifs—constant references to meat feasts and the “rosy‑fingered dawn”—which they find both humorous and emblematic of the epic’s style. They then explore the relationship between mortals and gods, focusing on Athena’s assistance to Odysseus, questioning whether the Greek gods were believed to be literally real or symbolic, and debating the historicity of Odysseus and the Trojan War, citing archaeological hints about Troy. Alana contrasts ancient Greek worldviews, rooted in myth and divine causality, with modern scientific perspectives, noting how cultural differences shape perceptions of truth. The conversation shifts to genre: they consider whether The Odyssey qualifies as a love story, weighing the central bond between Odysseus and Penelope against the suitors’ ambiguous connection to Penelope. They discuss the moral complexity of the suitors’ slaughter—whether it is justified, overly gory, or satisfying narrative closure. A brief tangent touches on the hospitality of Phoenician hosts and Poseidon’s wrath, leading to a personal anecdote where Speaker A relates his own visit to Crete to the epic’s setting. The talk concludes with plans to choose another work to read together, leaving the next reading choice open. Overall, the dialogue blends literary analysis, personal reaction, cultural comparison, and speculative history, offering a multi‑faceted, conversational take on The Odyssey.
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Um, so yeah, we're finally done with The Odyssey, uh, and yeah, I want to kind of get your take on it. I mean, in some ways, you know, it's sort of weird to read old, very old things, and this is a very old thing. In other ways, it feels familiar. I mean, does that sound right? Is it in some ways weird, in some ways familiar, or it's totally familiar, totally weird? How does it land for you?
By old, do you mean like the age of the text or—
Yeah, the age of the text.
That I've read.
No, no.
Oh yeah, I think it's a little bit. Sorry, go ahead.
A little bit weird?
Um, a little bit. It's not weird that I'm reading it because it's so old. I feel like even if it was written today, if it had the same text, you know, it'd be the same. But I think it's really cool to think about how, you know, old the Odyssey is, especially in its original language and how it's been translated. I get to read it, which is awesome. I'm so glad people are out there doing that.
Good. What do you like best about it, having finished this version?
Um, I— what do I like best? I enjoy reading it. Um, in like the poetic way. I'm getting more into that now that, now that I've read a little bit of the Iliad and the whole Odyssey. It's not as strange as it was to me a couple months ago, which is good because I was able to understand a little bit more and read it faster.
Um, I guess one of the things that I wonder about is, uh, so for me I'm very struck by, in some ways familiar. I mean, just very concretely, I love— do you like roast meat?
I love roast meat, yes.
I would say it seems like every two pages, in every two pages, yeah, there's a lot of meat, a lot of meat, which is nice, and a lot of rosy-fingered dawns as well, and so exactly all of that kind of things, and then at the same time there are some things that are different, like the relationship with the gods, You know, both of course Odysseus and Athena, and then there's the thing about Penelope and Artemis, you know, and occasionally other gods, you know, Zeus cracking the thunder a couple of times for an omen. Do you like— I mean, presumably you don't have any relationship with any gods, correct?
Uh, no. Not that I know of. It'd be cool if I did, but no.
Well, actually, let's play with that 'be cool.' So do you think it's cool that, um, Odysseus has this relationship with Athena?
Well, I mean, I think it's cool because Athena is helping, or trying her best to help him, you know, get home. Even though it took him a really long time, she helped him with the suitors and planning, and he wouldn't have been able to decide as a beggar. As he did without her help, because that was like divine help. I don't know another word, but, uh, she disguised him, and without her, things would have gone differently, I think. Um, and I'm obviously not in such a situation as his, but I guess when I said it would be cool to have relationship with a god like that, it will have some divine powers used.
Maybe I'll speculate, maybe, um, human beings would love to have some great power behind them. So when we go into our battles, whether it's, you know, jiu-jitsu wrestling or slaughtering the suitors, we've got this power behind us. I mean, maybe this is a mean way to put it, but do you think that— well, I guess, do you think the gods were real for the Greeks? Or do you think that there was a person called Odysseus at one point thousands of years ago, and that he actually heard Athena? Or how do you make— or do you think that this was fantasy or imagining? Or how do you, how do you understand all of that?
Um, well, for starters, I'm not exactly sure if Odysseus was a real person or if, um, Trojan War actually happened. I know I've watched a TEDx video or something about how, you know, they've been finding things like in the area where Troy would have been, so like it's possible that it actually could have happened. Um, besides the Odyssey, I don't know of any firsthand accounts of Odysseus or him talking to Athena, if we're talking about gods and things like that. Um, my family isn't too religious, so I'm like originally I was reading all this as just a story and not like actual history, but I realize now that it could be ancient history even though it is like a story. I'm not sure if anybody knows that this was actually real, but, um, I think that the gods were real for the ancient Greeks, like how modern people believe in, you know, God and other religions and things like that. Um, I don't know if Zeus threw down thunder at every single point in time, like right on cue, or if it was a coincidence or not, or if that actually happened. It'd be cool if it actually happened, but I'm not sure.
Do you think that people back then were quite different from us in terms of, say, kind of consciousness and how they thought about the world?
Yeah, for sure. Uh, well, today we like believe in science you know, we know, at least we think we know, different, um, like what's true or not, why the world goes around, things like that. But they believed that the world works for entirely different reasons. And it's cool to read about that because, you know, like you said, every other page they're sacrificing whatever, 300 heads of cattle or whatever. Um, and I've never actually seen that happen, so that's really cool to read about.
And is it cool in the sense of just interesting to see different cultures and how they are, or is it cool in some other way?
Um, well, I— it's cool for both. It's interesting to see, um, how they worship their gods and how they react and, you know, respect them. Um, also because I've, you know, I've never directly pray to anything, I guess. I don't know if that's what you would call it, but, um, it's just cool to read about how they're interacting with everything in the world even though they have different beliefs than me and everyone else.
Got it. I'm going to shift to a different aspect. Would you call this a love story or not a love story or, uh, nothing— no relationship to love?
Uh, there's a relationship to love, but I, I think it depends on what you define a love story as, because there's the love story of Odysseus and Penelope, and I don't know if it counts, but the love story between the suitors and Penelope, and a little bit with Helen and Menelaus because you see them in the beginning and it's, you know, coming back from the Trojan War, which in a sense is a love story even though it's about a war. I don't know. Um, when I think of a love story, I usually think of it being more direct and not in this context, but since the end goal is Odysseus coming back to his family and his wife and things like that, I guess you could count it as a love story.
So we'll go back to Odysseus and Penelope in a minute, but what is the case for describing The Suitors and Penelope as a love story?
Um, I guess I just threw that in there because it's a big part of the story, and even though it might not be for love, you know, they just want the throne or whatever, um, you could say it is. Maybe some of them are actually in love with Penelope, who knows? And I've never actually read like an adult love story or a romance book or whatever, so, you know, I wouldn't know, but that just came to mind when you asked.
I think you're probably being overly generous to the suitors. Um, I don't see it.
Yeah.
Um, but how about Odysseus and Penelope? In what way is that a love story, or is that not a love story?
Um, I think it is. I mean, I know that— I don't really know. Well, I know they love each other, but I know that the way they got together is different than people today would. Like, I think Odysseus was a courter and a suitor of Penelope, and either her dad chose her to marry Odysseus because he's the prince of Ithaca, and he— I don't know, he's a good man, some other reasons. I forget the whole story, but you know, that's different than today, like dating and waiting for love and things like that. I'm sure there was love between them in the beginning, at least a little bit, but he was still courting her. Partly for marriage reasons, I think. But I think it still is counted as a love story because in the end, you know, they loved each other, um, and Odysseus is making a hero's journey back to his wife.
So, got it.
I think so.
No, fair enough. Um, and I see how, yeah, we don't know much actually about how they got together. I don't know much. But early on we talked about how, you know, the early books of the Odyssey foreshadowed the slaughter of the suitors, and you expressed some satisfaction at that coming. When it actually happened, did you enjoy Odysseus slaughtering the suitors?
Um, well, enjoy is a big word, but it was cool to see, uh, what the book had been building up to for a lot of actually come to truth, especially when it was all over and Penelope was talking to her maid and she was like, "No trick me, old woman," something like that. That was cool to see because she was like in disbelief, right? I think that was more satisfying than the actual killing.
Got it. Was the killing excessively— I mean, it was very descriptive. Was it excessively gory and descriptive, or were you okay with that?
Uh, since I'm not actually watching it, I'm just reading it. It wasn't, you know, I could handle it. It wasn't that bad.
Got it.
I'm sure I could read more porn stuff.
Do you think the suitors deserved it?
Uh, it depends on what you think deserving means, because on one hand they did deserve it. You know, they were repeatedly asked by Telemachus, if I don't be, to go away, but they didn't. Um, you know, even that one village elder said they brought it upon themselves, whatever. But on the other hand, maybe they don't deserve to die. Maybe they could have resolved it. On the third hand, or the other other hand, if Odysseus let them live, then they'd probably find some way to try and like get back at him, or, you know, murder him, or, you know, try and do something else. So that would have been way more complicated. Um, so I guess it depends. It's kind of a nice ending to the story, you know, if you let him live, then all those other things could happen. But on one hand, they do deserve it.
It is tricky to kind of evaluate, um, you know, old things by contemporary standards. There's— it's kind of— I think our minds struggle with how do we, uh, because it is bloody and gory and, you know, it's pretty extreme by modern standards. Um, yeah, no, anything else on the Odyssey before we move on?
Um, oh, I, I thought I had one part that I thought was kind of interesting, uh, when Odysseus was going back to Ithaca from Phoenicia, I think. Um, you know how they were at first like really open to travelers and things like that? Like they treated Odysseus super well and brought him back home. But then Poseidon sunk their ship on their— on the way back. And then they were like, yeah, we're never letting anybody else in again, which I thought was interesting because that means they respected Poseidon and saw that as a sign or something. But I felt like it was also a little bit hasty. But I don't know, I just thought that was interesting.
Got it. And if you study this in the future, I would say the whole relationship between gods and men and what exactly are the gods doing, and, you know, I think it's very interesting, and especially how seriously do we take the gods, or some people think of the gods as almost, you know, something psychological. But yeah, I've probably read this 8 times or something like that, maybe 10, and every time I read it, it's a little bit different. And it's funny, this time for me, the biggest thing in a funny way was All the meat eating. I forgot that they're eating meat all the time.
Yeah, they are though.
Uh, and by the way, I have been to Crete, and so when he was describing himself as a, you know, having been stranded on Crete or living on Crete, being from Crete in the fake version of the story, it was cool because I've actually been to Crete, uh, to visualize all that. So someday you must go to Greece, okay?
I will, I promise.
Um, in which case, uh, let's— we don't have to figure out now, but we should read something else together. Do you have anything that you would like to read together? Do you want to think about it and get back to me?
Oh, I don't have any ideas right now, but I'd love to think about it.
Okay, think about it and get back to me, and I look forward to reading something fun and interesting together.
