#the odyssey
I made this for class and am proud! Seems like it could find a home on tumblr
Oh, this is beautiful, OP!
[video description: line-drawn animation of the story of the Cyclops from the Odyssey. The Cyclops goes about his day, affectionately caring for his sheep. The Cyclops is happy with his life. He sits in front of his cave and looks toward the horizon, where he sees something approaching that he thinks is another Cyclops, so he sets the table with good food and puts out bedding for his guest. But the other Cyclops never arrives, and this makes the first Cyclops sad.
While the Cyclops is sleeping, the thing that was on the horizon arrives. It’s a Greek sailing ship that beaches itself. Warriors come out of the ship and wait next to the big rock that seals the cave. When the Cyclops rolls away the rock, the men sneak into the Cyclops’ cave. The Cyclops doesn’t see this, because he’s running to the beach to see what is there. He finds Odysseus’ ship and examines it, but finds nobody there. This confuses the Cyclops. He goes back into the cave with his sheep, rolling the stone across the entrance, sad that the guest he was expecting isn’t going to come. He drinks his wine then lies down in his bed to sleep.
While the Cyclops sleeps, one of the warriors who has been hiding in the cave stabs the Cyclops in the eye with a sharpened staff. The Cyclops leaps up in pain and fear and strikes out with his shepherd’s crook, trying to find who hurt him. The warriors escape the Cyclops’ wrath by hanging on to the underneath of the sheep as the sheep leave the cave. The Cyclops pats the sheep on the back as they leave, but instead of the affectionate pats of earlier, he’s now looking for the man who blinded him.
One of the men grabs a lamb as he runs toward the ship. The distressed ewe tries to follow as the lamb bleats in fear, but the man makes it to the ship and the ship pushes away from the shore, leaving behind a distressed ewe and an angry and sorrowful Cyclops.
The song that plays throughout is “Nobody” by Mitski. The song is about being lonely. At the point at which Odysseus and his crew arrive on the Cyclops’ island, the word “nobody” is repeated over and over and over. Then there are some more verses, but from the point at which the Cyclops is blinded, the only word sung is “nobody.”
The last thing in the video is a quotation from the Odyssey: “Nobody – that’s my name.”
/end description]
I scrolled for ages and couldn’t find the original post, but credit to @terpsikeraunos
Tall queen, short king (srry for any inconsistencies/inaccuracies)
I love Penelope sm <3 fav greek milf
Odysseus
Tall queen, short king (srry for any inconsistencies/inaccuracies)
this is one of the best Odysseuses and Penelopes I’ve ever seen WOW
I love Penelope sm <3 fav greek milf
some people get punished by the gods for attacking their children or being incredibly messed up.. i get intentionally trapped at sea for doing things like “Organizing a siege that destroyed their temples”
no heaven or hell when you die, everyone is just herded into a field with a big scoreboard saying which person did the most War Crimes
my friends, theres nothing i enojy more than a drink of my wife’s drugged wine , while tasting my wife’s wine with my war comrades and my friend’s son, in my palace with my wife
i am a hero of the trojan war who says stuff like “i often sit in my halls weeping and sorrowing for the men who perished in the broad land of troy” and “i love to it when my wife mixes my drink with drugs to quiet my pain and strife.”
by Homer
What’s it about?
The exciting sequel to the Iliad, this one’s about a journey, a lengthy series of failed attempts by Odysseus to get home. In English, “odyssey” means “journey”, but originally it just meant “thing about Odysseus”.
He’s the guy with the Trojan Horse, right?
In an episode famously absent from the Iliad, the Wooden Horse of Troy was indeed Odysseus’s idea.
I’ve started it, but where’s Odysseus?
He’s not in the first four books, which concentrate on the efforts of his son, Telemachus, to control the royal household over the ten years Odysseus has been gone. Although if you’ve read Game of Thrones and you can’t handle a narrative that changes character focus, you should present yourself to the relevant authorities at first light.
The many suitors for the dowager queen are ruining the tiny kingdom and food supplies are running low.
Why doesn’t he just kick them out?
Firstly, they’re armed. Secondly, they’re entitled to ask his mother to marry. Thirdly, there is a strong cultural expectation that if anyone shows up at your place, you have to feed them. It’s just a thing. It’s never questioned.
What should I say to make people think I’ve read it?
“I want to go home. By the shortest route possible.”
What should I avoid saying when trying to convince people I’ve read it?
“The bit about the Wooden Horse is my favourite part of this book too!”
Should I actually read it?
Yes. There are lots of fun adventures with gods and monsters and using your brain to get out of sticky situations and it’s got a proper, old-school, slaughterhouse happy ending, which doesn’t happen a lot in Greek literature.
Circe Offering the Cup to Odysseus by John William Waterhouse
@readingancientclassics on Instagram is dedicated to discussions of ancient texts, reviews of myth retellings, and group read-alongs of classical literature. I’d love for you to join me there
reading the odyssey in the morning sun
Achilles explaining that
they will never defeat Agamemnon:
the trojans without him:
Submitted by anon
“Circe?”
“Yes Odysseus?”
“Where’s my crew?”
DA Poets
Honestly, any poetry is DA poetry if you can recite it from memory or sound intelligent while speaking of it.
• T. S. Elliot
Didn’t write much poetry, but what he did write is dense with meaning
• Wisława Szymborska
Any of her poems are instant winners, for a great collection I would recommend Map: Collected and Last Poems
• William Shakespeare
Classic, cannot go wrong with any of his works
• Anne Sexton
For bonus points, listen to the song “Mercy Street” by Peter Gabriel based on the poem “45 Mercy Street”
• John Milton
Paradise Lost is always recognizable by name
• Homer
Both The IliadandThe Odyssey are the best known works, bonus points if you are able to read them in their original Greek for the full effect
• Edgar Allen Poe
Although The Raven is his most notable work of poetry, his short stories are also enjoyable
• Robert Frost
An acquired taste compared to my other favourite poets, but my top four are definitely “The Road Not Taken”, “Mending Wall”, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, and “Acquainted With the Night”
• Mark Twain
Recognizable in name and work
• Lord Byron
An older poet, much of his language is obsolete in the modern era yet conveys meanings we could not hope to comprehend without it
• Sappho
An excellent romantic, “Slender Aphrodite has overcome me with longing for a girl” Bonus points if you read it in the original Greek for the full effect
• Walt Whitman
The modern-day version of a classical poet: free verse is his specialty!
• Edgar Allan Poe
The O.G. dark academic, the literature teacher’s favourite Halloween lesson. Nothing can beat the simple and unsettling Poetry of Poe!
• Oscar Wilde
Nothing will ever be as iconic as The Picture of Dorian Gray has become in the DA aesthetic! a definite must-read.
Αἰνείας (Aeneas)
αἰνός, a tale or story
αἰνός, grim, dire, awful
αἰνή, praise or fame
Ὀδυσσεύς (Odysseus)
ὀδύσσομαι, to feel wrath, to hate
Ἀχιλλεύς (Achilles)
ἄχος, pain + λαός, the people
ἄχος, pain + κύδος, immortal glory + κάλλος, beautiful
i think it would be really interesting to try to draw a map of odysseus’s voyages in the odyssey *without basing it on a map of the actual mediterranean.* i’m not talking hisarlik to ithaki with stops on corfu or sicily or wherever, i’m talking “okay so calypso is seven days from scheria and scheria is one night’s journey from ithaca, pylos is about a day east of ithaca, the underworld is by the cimmerians and that’s apparently far to the north, and odysseus goes there from circe’s island which is all the way on the east and it’s about a day’s sailing, but the laestrygonians are also really far north, far enough to have a midnight sun” and no i don’t care that you can’t sail straight north to the arctic circle from the eastern/central mediterranean. i’m talking a fantasy-world map.
update: calypso is at the west edge of the world, circe is at the east edge, the laestrygonians are at the northern limit, and the cimmerians are at the southern limit. presumably ithaca is the omphalos.
secret odyssey geography unlocked using only internal evidence from the text (except for the fact that troy is a ways east of ithaca and thrace is slightly west of troy)