If I took away one lesson from the Odyssey, it’s that you gotta choose your wife well. Because here’s the range of outcomes. She starts a war in which almost all of your friends dies, she cheats on you while you’re fighting for your nation, and kills you with the man who she’s been cheating with you on upon your return, or she holds the fort down for 20 years, raises your son, and ennobles your legacy.

The Greek heroes in Homer could not have more different outcomes, and it is strongly determined by the woman that they choose to marry.

Now, of course, Penelope is the classical ideal of an amazing wife. But what makes her so great? Why does Odysseus reject offers from goddesses, from Nausicaa, who’s a woman much more younger, more beautiful, from a much wealthier kingdom, why does Odysseus reject Calypso’s offer of immortality to risk life and limb to go back to Penelope? That’s what I want to answer in this video today. By comparing Penelope, as I think Homer invites us t…

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Who is the greater hero? Achilles or Odysseus? I’ve been rereading the Odyssey while retracing Odysseus’s journey over land and sea all the way here to Ithaca. And I wanted to highlight for you the Cyclops episode as one where you really see the difference between these two heroes.

1. The Cyclops Scene

Now these details are unfortunately omitted from Nolan’s adaptation, but in the Cyclops episode, you see Odysseus use his superpower, his ability to lie, to take on new identities, but you also see him commit a tactical blunder that will cause him unbounded suffering. And it’s a scene whose full significance is only available in the ancient Greek. So let me break this down for you.

Achilles, as the classical conception of the hero, is known for his might. Okay, the Greek word for that is bia. Odysseus, on the other hand, is known for his cunning, and the word for that is metis. So that’s going to be very important later on. Now in the Cyclops episode, Odysseus is trapped in …

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What happens to Odysseus after he returns here to Ithaca? After he’s reunited with Telemachus and Penelope, after he kills the suitors, what happens next? Can you imagine Odysseus settling down and being content, living happily ever after here after 20 years of warring and wandering, of adventuring, excitement and pain and grief? Perhaps unsurprisingly, no notable sequel in the Western tradition tells of such a happily ever after ending. The endings that they do tell are quite shocking. Some say that Odysseus leaves Ithaca again and he’s mistakenly killed by his own son. Some say that he kills Penelope with his own hands. Some say that he goes into the Atlantic, drowns and ends up in the Christian hell. Some even say that he finds out that Penelope did cheat on him with either Antinous or with all of the suitors, giving birth to Pan. But no notable sequel that I could find has Odysseus living happily ever after in Ithaca. Why is that?

I’ve been reading the Odyssey with t…

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Odysseus weeps like a woman when he hears stories about the Trojan horse. Why?

At the Phaeacian court, still under disguise, Odysseus listens to a bard sing of the Greek victory at Troy, specifically of his genius with the Trojan horse. This should have been his moment of great glory. It is the ambition of every hero to be immortalized in song. And yet, Odysseus does not glory but instead begins to cry. Nolan’s Odysseus is ashamed of the Trojan horse, but not Homer’s Odysseus who revels in his trickster identity. So why does he weep? Homer’s answer is a lot deeper and darker than Nolan’s.

Homer describes Odysseus crying like a woman who has collapsed over her dying husband’s body as her city is sacked and she is about to be dragged off to slavery when he hears of the Trojan horse. The brilliance of this simile is that the sacker of the city is compared to a victim of the sacking. My guest Harvard’s Gregory Nagy will break down this critical scene and what Odysseus’ crying has to teach us about the genre of epic.

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Companion interviews:

- Harvard Prof: Homer Didn’t Write the Odyssey, This is who did ...:

- This Decision was Worse Than You think | Odyssey Movie Review (Spoilers):

- I Traveled to Ithaca to Answer This Question:

- This One Sentence Explains the Entire Odyssey:

- How to Choose a Good Wife (who won’t kill you):

Johnathan Bi: Greetings from Ithaca, where I’ve been rereading Homer’s Odyssey while retracing the journey of Odysseus over land and sea. And on this reread, a specific scene jumped out to me that I think will transform your understanding of this epic. So it’s been a few years since the fall of Troy. Odysseus is in disguise in a foreign court, and he hears a poet sing tales about the Trojan War, specifically sing tales about Odysseus. The poet sings about Odysseus’s genius of the Trojan Horse, how he led their best men, and how his genius and guile eventually led to the fall of Troy. This should be Odysseus’s moment of great glory, because every hero dreams of being immortalized in song. And yet, Odysseus does not glory. He starts weeping uncontrollably. Why? It turns out that by answering this question, not only will you gain a better understanding of who Odysseus is, but the very genre of epic. Even stronger, it’s going to teach you the unique and interesting relation…

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- Odysseus after the Odyssey:

- Odysseus vs. Achilles:

Music by Michael Levy, "Composer for Lyre" — used with permission.
Spotify:

Website: https://www.ancientlyre.com

If I took away one lesson from the Odyssey, it’s you gotta choose your wife wisely. Here’s the range of outcomes:

• She starts a decade-long war which kills most of your friends (Helen)

• She cheats on you while you are fighting for your nation and murders you at your homecoming (Clytemnestra)

• She holds down the fort, raises your son, and ennobles your legacy (Penelope)

The outcome of the Greek heroes are strongly determined by the woman they chose to marry.

While Penelope clearly is the best wife, most people misunderstand what makes her so great. Why does Odysseus turn down goddesses, a princess who is much younger from a wealthier kingdom, and the very offer of immortality to go back to Penelope?

It’s not just because of her loyalty, but what Homer calls “ὁμοφροσύνη” -- like-mindedness. What makes her the ideal wife is that she matches Odysseus in his defining quality, his cunning. Odysseus on what makes a good marriage:

… Like-mindedness is a goodly gift. For nothing is greater or better than this, than man and wife dwell in a home in one mind, a great grief to their foes and a joy to their friends.

What the names “Odysseus” and “Achilles” mean is fascinating. It reveals the terrifying reality of what a Greek hero is.

• Achilles can be read as ἄχος (grief) + λαός (fighting men) = grief of the fighting men.

• We are told that Odysseus is given the name by his grandfather from ὀδύσσομαι (to hate) = Mr. Hatred.

• The non-ionic pronunciation from which we get Ulysses sounds like οὐλή (scar) which is of course the defining physical feature by which Odysseus is identified. (These are all “folk” etymologies)

The Greek hero is a man of pain and suffering. They cause enormous pain to their rivals: Achilles to Hector and Agamemnon; Odysseus to the Trojans, suitors, and cyclops. But they also cause enormous pain to their friends: Achilles to the Achaeans; Odysseus to his family and the Phaeacians. Lastly, they cause enormous pain to themselves: both lives are riddled with suffering.

While both heroes are men of pain and suffering they are also clearly different. Wily Odysseus is a different archetype than godlike Achilles. So who is the greater hero? That’s what I try to answer in this video essay filmed in Ithaca.

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Companion videos:

- Gregory Nagy on the Homeric Question:

- Odysseus after the Odyssey:

Timestamps:

00:00 0. Introduction

00:27 1. The Cyclops Scene

06:07 2. Lying as Institution

18:17 3. Hero as Man of Pain

25:54 4. Socrates as Hero

Music by Michael Levy, "Composer for Lyre" — used with permission.

Website: https://www.ancientlyre.com
Spotify:

Music by Michael Levy, “Composer for Lyre” — used with permission.

Website: https://www.ancientlyre.com
Spotify:

What happens to Odysseus after the Odyssey? Can you imagine him just settling down in Ithaca after 20 years of warring and wandering?

No notable “sequel” tells of such a happily ever after. Some say he rejects domestic life and abandons Penelope and Telemachus for more adventures. Some say he ends up marrying the Queen of Thesprotia and is mistakenly killed by his own son. Some say he sails into the Atlantic and drowns as he is about to reach Mount Purgatory.

I became fascinated with Odysseus’ ending because I too am a wanderer. I have not settled down romantically. I am a seeker when it comes to religion. I am constantly travelling. And unlike Odysseus, I don’t even have a single Ithaca to return to having grown up between worlds. By asking the question, “Will Odysseus ever settle down?” I wanted to figure out if and how I will be able to settle down.

The interesting philosophical question is this: is wandering good? And, if not, how does one stop wandering? The common advice is to quit “cold turkey,” but what if you should accelerate your way out?

For example, Odysseus had sex with two divinely beautiful goddesses for eight years before he was ready to go back to his wife. Remember that he wanted to stay longer than a year with Circe and had to be convinced by his crew. And Homer tells us that at the end of the seven-year stay with Calypso, the nymph was “no longer pleasing to him,” implying that she initially was (Homer’s Odysseus is much more lustful than Nolan’s).

What if that’s what the wanderer should do in all circumstances: indulge in hedonism until you see the limits of pleasure; make so much money that you cure yourself of avarice; become famous to rid yourself of vanity. What if you should indulge in things most people would say are completely out of bounds but still come out unscathed on the other side by tying yourself tightly to the mast?

These questions around “what ought the wanderer do?” motivated me to investigate the literary explorations of Odysseus after the Odyssey. I’ve picked four of the most canonical accounts – the Telegony, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Tennyson’s Ulysses, and Plato’s Republic. I will explain to you their fascinating plots and what they have to teach us wanderers.

Odyssey Movie Review

Nolan’s Odyssey is so close to being great. Here’s my spoiler (lite) review after just having reread Homer’s Odyssey.

First off, the good: the look and feel of the film is incredible. But the greatest accomplishment must be the pacing. Nolan managed to follow the in media res structure, include (most) of the big episodes, without any of it feeling rushed. I particularly like how he combined many scenes (e.g. Calypso, lotus eaters, and Phaeacians) into one.

If he had just avoided these three mistakes this would’ve been legendary:

1. Odysseus is Overly Moralized

2. Deception is Underutilized

3. Racially-Mixed Ithacans Breaks Immersion (it’s not just black Helen of Troy but the mixed White/Black/Indian/Chinese crew of Odysseus that subverts a key premise of the story)

Each of these contributes to a lack of mystery in the film. I elaborate on each of the points below:

 Homer didn’t write the Odyssey, he didn’t write the Iliad. In fact, there was no person ever called “Homer”.

This is not a conspiracy theory but the considered conclusion of Harvard’s Gregory Nagy after a lifetime of research. Professor Nagy is the most respected Homerist alive and his defining contribution is to uncover the 3000 year old mystery of who (or what) actually produced the epics.

This interview will examine two of Professor Nagy’s radical claims:

1. The Homeric epics were not written, carefully edited, and memorized for performance. They were created on the fly while being sung! That is to say the Greeks somehow developed a method to create amazingly intricate, 12-15 thousand line poems in the middle of a performance.

2. The Homeric Epics were not composed by an individual but cumulatively by countless poets over a millenia. There was never a person called “Homer”.

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What we cover:

00:00 0. Introduction

02:09  1. Homer Didn't Write, He Sang

35:44  2: The Process of Crystallization

1:05:49  3. The Panathenaic Festival

1:38:34  4. Is there Room for Genius?

Johnathan Bi: I’ve been reading Homer’s Odyssey here in Ithaca, where they proudly display a statue of Homer. But what if they got it wrong? What if Homer never wrote the Iliad, or the Odyssey? What if Homer never existed in the first place? This is not some wild conspiracy theory, but the considered conclusion of my guest to Harvard’s Gregory Nagy after a lifetime of research. Professor Nagy is one of the most respected Homerists alive, who’s published over a dozen books on Homer, and his defining contribution is to uncover who, or I really should say what, produced the Homeric epics. If you are at all engaged in creative work, if you’re interested in how to build creative cultures and creative countries, then this is an incredibly important conversation because the Iliad and the Odyssey are two of the most important creative acts in the Western tradition, and learning about how they are made will help you gain a fundamentally new perspective on your own work, as it ha…

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America is hostile to Christianity. Democracy slowly but surely corrupts the faith from within.

Reading Tocqueville & the Founding Fathers between the lines convinced me of this.

Look at the sorry state of Christianity at 250 compared to America’s Puritan founding. That is the result of two centuries of democratic corrosion and this weakening will only continue. What people are calling a “Christian revival” is a mere blip on this macro downward trajectory, a knee-jerk reaction to the excesses of progressivism of the last 20 years. Reading Tocqueville convinced me that America will never be truly Christian, unless it gives up being a liberal democracy (e.g. Integralism).

Look at American Christianity today, it is already more American than it is Christian:

Jesus preaches against wealth and yet I’ve rarely heard an american pastor do so. I hear the prosperity gospel quite often, but never sincere urges to poverty, asceticism, or monasticism as can be loudly heard in every Christian society prior.

Christianity teaches love and humility; the American right co-opts it for hate and superiority. The Bible prescribes universal gender norms, sexual codes, ethical standards; the American left appropriates it for the latest political fads of the day.

But the most hostile democratic force against all religions, not just Christianity, is toleration. The Bible is clear about Jesus’ singular status: “No one comes to the Father except through me.” It’s clear about the demonic or, at the very least, inferior status of the other faiths. And yet most American christians show not just tolerance but a puzzling affirmation of other religions.

Tocqueville saw the terrible cost of this toleration, in a private letter in 1831, he wrote: ”this so-called tolerance … is nothing but a huge indifference.” Christianity could flourish for a 1000 years under persecution. Christianity did flourish for a 1000 years persecuting others. But just 250 years under liberal toleration and what Christians left have already stopped caring about ultimate questions, masking their indifference under the banner of toleration. Perhaps this was the Founders’ plan all along, Jefferson writes: “the way to silence religious disputes, is to take no notice of them.”

To see how strange and corrupting American religious toleration is, one need only look at how other cultures practice toleration. Look at how the ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel treat their Christian minority: they look down upon them as fools deceived by a false Messiah. They don’t hide their contempt either: they openly mock the Christians, but they stop at organized, legal persecution. This was the original meaning of toleration. Toleration came from the Latin root tolerare which meant “to bear, to suffer, to endure.” The ultra-orthodox merely “put up with” their Christian minority.

American Christians, even (maybe especially) the hyper-religious ones, do not behave like that towards their jewish minority. If you behave like that in America, you will be called “intolerant.” Because American toleration requires not just the lack of legal discrimination but a positive affirmation of the other. This concession doesn’t seem like much (in fact, it has infinite benefits) but it completely subverts the original concept. Tolerare originally meant that the thing I’m tolerant of is bad, but I endure it for a greater good. American toleration demands you to affirm the thing you are tolerant of as good to begin with.

This is a radical subversion because tolerare preserves a precious freedom of the mind to come up with one’s own judgements: as long as you do not compel the others’ body you are free to think as you wish in your soul. American toleration does not compel the body but strikes directly at the soul: you are not allowed to discriminate in thought and must affirm the other as good. This is why you hear so often “all religions teach the same lesson” (which, it always turns out, is some mushy platitude around love). American toleration is the most radical and thorough form of intolerance and the death of serious religious thinking.

The ultra-orthodox Jews in their hostility secure the freedom that American Christians lose in their compassion.

Tocqueville came to similar conclusions, on the deadly effects of religious toleration, in that private letter from 1831. And yet, in Democracy in America he defended the separation of Church and State and advocated for the liberal order. In this lecture, I am going to attempt to reconcile this seeming contradiction. What we are going to find is terrifying: democracy unleashes not just one, but four separate forces hostile Christianity. And the separation of Church and state is to protect the Church from these forces as much as it is to preserve the state, for democracies can not function without religion. That is to say, as much as America is hostile to christianity, it needs it even more. This is the tragedy of Democracy: it endlessly attacks the very religious pillar that sustains its existence.

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Companion lectures & interviews:
- Democracy with American Characteristics | Tocqueville’s Industrial Aristocracy

- What All Great Men Want (But Won’t Admit To) | UT Philosopher Thomas Pangle:

Americans don’t take their religion seriously. They are rejecting Jesus when they choose peace over the sword. What the hell do you mean you’re going to raise your son half Jewish and half Christian? Who do you tell your son who Jesus of Nazareth is? Is he the one true God? Or is he a great deceiver? All the religions basically teach the same morality. Love and kindness. Really? Yahweh commands genocide against women and children. The Quran put polytheists to the sword. In Odinism, you have to die in combat to end up in Valhalla. The leading progressive feminists actively campaigned against the women’s right to vote. Why are so many of the great technologists homosexuals?

1. Why Democracy Is Hostile to Religion

1.1 The First Force: Toleration

It’s obvious to foreigners like myself and Tocqueville how strange American religious tolerance is and how corrosive it is to your religious life. But not to Americans. So let me tease this out with a story. So, when I just arrived in…

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Companion interviews:

- What All Great Men Want (But Won’t Admit To) | UT Philosopher Thomas Pangle:

America used to be the most equal nation in the world. There were no aristocrats who lorded themselves high above everyone else, and the social distance between classes was much smaller. When Tocqueville wrote this book, Democracy in America, in this very chateau in the 1830s, this is why people came to America. People came to America for her equality.

In 2016, I came to America for the exact opposite reason. I came for your inequality. For the dazzling heights you can achieve in America, and for the vertical distance to ascend upwards. And I am not alone. The best and the brightest no longer come to America for equality, but to achieve an unequal greatness.

Much has changed in the last 200 or so years. In fact, in the time of Tocqueville, his worry was that America was so equal that it would produce an impressive mediocrity, but that has completely changed. America is now the only Western nation hospitable to greatness, but at the great cost of not just her equality, but…

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