Professor David Peimer
Homer’s Odyssey: The Foundation of Western Literature and the Greatest Story Ever Told

Professor David Peimer - Homer’s Odyssey: The Foundation of Western Literature and the Greatest Story Ever Told

- Okay. So thanks again, Emily, for all your help. And hi to everybody, everywhere. Hope you are well and that things are going good. So we’re going to dive in today with Homer’s “Odyssey,” one of the pieces of literature that I really not any love, but I think is quite a remarkable piece and I think one of the greatest. And the reason for doing it, I know we’ve started France and French history and so on, but it’s a such a foundational text and such a foundational story which feeds into so many things of Western literature that we’ll look at as we get more and more back into European and various countries around Europe. So that’s one of the reasons for starting with it. And obviously Mr. Homer and the “Odyssey”. I’m going to go into a little bit about the myth and how the myth works for me and the story, a little bit of the tiny bit of historical information of what scholars more or less think might have happened ‘cause of course, nothing is definite. And then, most of today is in, we’ll look at the story itself. And we try and make some meaning out of the story itself and just what on earth is resonant about it for us today as one of these remarkable myths. I put somewhat provocatively at the bottom that it is the foundation of Western literature. Obviously there’s the Bible, many other things as well. But as a poem, as a piece of imaginative fiction writing, although how much is the Bible is, there’s also up to debate. And is it the greatest story ever told? Obviously that’s a debate and it’s thrown out as a question for all of us. There are many others, pardon me, there are many other stories. But because this text comes at the beginning and because it’s a written story, I think that it has such foundational importance and its legacy and the influence over 2,800 years.

I mean, it’s extraordinary 'cause most scholars think it was written or put together, composed around 2,800 years ago. That’s an extraordinary length of time. And that it has survived in various forms is quite something. And still so taught, studied, read, influential, referred to is I think a remarkable achievement and is testament to something, you know, similar to maybe the level of Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe and so on. So Homer’s “Odyssey,” and I’m going to look at the question of how the myth works as well. He begins the whole thing with, “Sing in me a muse, and through me tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of contending, the wanderer, harried for yours on end.” Of course, these are more contemporary translations from the ancient Greek. So it’s gone through many translations in many languages, you know. And I’m choosing the ones which I think speak to us today. “Sing in me a muse,” 'cause let’s remember, these were songs that were sung in the beginning and only later probably around, people reckon 5, 600 BC where they were written down but not, when it’s imagined Homer possibly lived and originally did it, if it was him alone, about 800 BC. So that’s 2,800 years ago. But it was sung, it was sung often and spoken, but mostly sung and using the harp and the lyre and other various instruments. So you had to be a pretty skilled performer to keep an audience going for number of nights to do it. So “Sing in me,” I think is important that it starts like that. And it, what I want to show, I want to go on with a couple of things here.

Okay, we all know, of course, Odysseus. And in the ancient Greek, his name is Odysseus in the story of the “Odyssey”. And in Rome, in Roman, in in Latin, he became Ulysses. So obviously the same fictional character, but that’s the only difference. There is no other difference. And of course, the inventor of the Trojan horse, the idea of the Trojan horse, which we all know about so well, how it is permeated so powerfully, not only in military matters, but in so many aspects of I think human life. This here is a tablet on the left hand side. This is the oldest tablet found of the “Odyssey”. And it was found near, what they reckon was the temple of Zeus in the ancient city of Olympia. And it’s dated to very early Roman times, which is, you know, probably 150 BC. So this is it. And it is actually the words in ancient Greek. And it’s the, as I say, the oldest tablet ever found of the “Odyssey”. On the right hand side is the oldest papyrus parchment found in Egypt, which is actually the words of the “Odyssey”. Obviously none of this is written by Homer, it’s written by scribes, you know, many, many centuries later. But these are the two oldest fragments we have, papyrus and on tablet. And what we see here are 13 verses of the poem. And quite extraordinary when you see it in such a concrete way like this, you know, the papyrus and on tablet. The reality in a way of suddenly spanning so many centuries of history, I think hits one. As I said, they reckon it was written about the 8th century BC, could have been earlier.

If the Trojan War happened, if Troy existed, which is conflicting evidence, but there is, I guess the scholarly approach would be more that there was a city or something of Troy, a trading centre, possibly in Turkey. I’m using these hesitant words because not definitive. And it was handed down in oral tradition for centuries before these sort of thing, tablets and papyrus, would’ve been inscribed and written. So written maybe a few hundred years later afterwards. It is the seminal works in western literature, which I’m going to come into why I think so. As a poem, it is over 12,000 lines. I mean, that’s an extraordinary number of lines if we just try and imagine for a moment. And obviously, you know, it was also written, interestingly, when people analysed the ancient writings, it was written from right to left and there would be no punctuation. So there’s no beginning and end of sentences, there’s no capital letters. It’s just written, you know. This is before punctuation, full stops, commas, et cetera came in. From right to left, and then the next line would be left to right, right to left and left to right and go on like that. Just interesting 'cause it shifts one perception of the act of reading in a way. Alexander the Great is really central because he carried a script, a copy of Homer, everywhere he went. I’m not getting into the story of, you know, part of when he conquered Darius the Great of Persia and the great Battle of Gaugamela, which is one of the great battles, victories of all time. And when he got to Darius the Great’s tent and he had left a gold box and Alexander put his copy of Homer inside the gold box carried it with him everywhere for the rest of his life.

He was obviously taught it by Aristotle. Aristotle was Alexander’s teacher for at least five years, four or five years that we know of as a teenager in Macedonia. So then Aristotle got, when he was conquering Egypt and went to see some Oracles and various other, has a dream that he must build a city and in the city must be a library. Thus comes the city of Alexandria and the Great Library of Alexandria, as we all know. And what is one of the most copied texts, hand copied, obviously, copied texts is Homer’s “Iliad” and “Odyssey”. And one of the reasons I think it survives is through that trajectory of Alexander doing that. Even though the library and many other things were destroyed, et cetera, et cetera, texts, 'cause there were so many copies survived. It was the text for teaching Greek high school kids, let’s used today’s phrase, teaching students in ancient Greece and in parts of the ancient Greek empire of the times, the literary text. So copies were made. Obviously we know that Odysseus masterminds the Trojan horse, he masterminds the victory over Troy, which I’m going to come to, and he’s the wiliest, we can use words like which ancient Greeks would’ve used of wily and ingenuity, inventive, cunning. And I know cunning has a pejorative meaning today, but if we look at the true meaning of it, you know, intelligence, creativity with intelligence of how to outwit, outthink. And I’m going to talk about three guys, Odysseus, Agamemnon and Achilles, who are three of these central characters in the “Odyssey”. Because the “Odyssey” takes place after the Trojan War.

The “Iliad” is mostly about war and the brutality and the gruesome horror of visceral physical brutality of war. That’s the “Iliad.” And the “Odyssey” is about the end of the war and Odysseus’s journey over 20 years to get back to Ithaca to his wife, Penelope, and his son, Telemachus. So the “Iliad” is entirely about war and the 10 years war in Troy. And the story of the Trojan horse is actually in the “Iliad,” In the “Odyssey,” Odysseus tells the story much later in the “Odyssey.” He refers to it. But it’s the actual story of the “Odyssey” as a poem is about when Odysseus and his soldiers leave in their votes to try and get back to Ithaca and back to Greece. And the 20 years and all the things that happened with the gods and all that. And obviously the “Odyssey,” the journey. I want to give you just a couple of things at the beginning because Odysseus is the character who outwits, the character who uses cunning and inventiveness with creativity. He’s a quick thinker all the time of how to solve problem situations, Achilles and we get it from the “Iliad” and a little bit in the “Odyssey,” and Achilles is huge in the “Iliad.” Achilles is the man of action. He is the great hero, heroic soldier. Alexander wanted to be like Achilles, Caesar, many others till today. And Achilles is the soldier. Achilles is an all or nothing man. And he’s the brute. I’m going to like go straight in and I’m going to fight and I’m going to kill and I’m going to win. It’s all or nothing, you know. And he’s fantastically passionate, but he also has a moral call, which is pressed a few times by Odysseus and others.

So he’s much more, the man will lead the calvary charge without thinking too much and just dive into battle. Decisive man of action. Odysseus, and that’s why the example of the Trojan horse, of course, is going to outthink and how to win in life, not only in war. Agamemnon is the king of all the Greeks. And I’m not going to go into the details of why the war happened, but Agamemnon is the king. Odysseus is only the king of Ithaca. Achilles is a smaller chieftain, let’s say. But they need Achilles 'cause he’s, and his soldiers are the strongest. So Agamemnon, they need them and so on. But Agamemnon is full of what, in the ancient Greek word, hubris, pride. He is the king. He is the big shot. Everybody listens to him. And if you don’t, woe betide you. He steals, for example, in the “Iliad,” he steals while they’re on the beach and in their tents, you know, trying to decide how on earth to conquer the city of Troy with it’s walls. He steals a slave of Achilles and says, “No. Well, I’m going to have this woman, you know. You can’t have her. Actually, I’m going to have her.” Achilles is furious and refuses to fight. Well, Agamemnon can’t do anything. And Odysseus negotiates a way for Achilles to get back. And Agamemnon gives up. He is that kind of a character, Odysseus. He’s the thinker through it all. Achilles, “You took my woman Agamemnon?” you know. “Well then, to hell with you. I’m not going to fight for you, you know, until you gimme my woman back.”

The other thing that happens with Agamemnon, and it’s about the pride and the power of the ultimate authority, the king is, before he leaves, the winds are not going good. And the gods tell him, “You must slit the throat of your daughter. Number one, it’ll make the winds better so you can sail to Troy. And more importantly, it’ll toughen you up to be as cruel and harsh as you need to be. To be a leader of hardened soldiers, to take on the great city of Troy, the trading city, conquer and defeat it and come back. And to prove that you are tough enough, you will slip the throat of your own daughter.” The Gods tell Agamemnon. He’s freaked. He doesn’t want to do it, but in the end does it. But his wife, Clytemnestra, doesn’t know. He tells Clytemnestra, he’s preparing the daughter for a wedding with Achilles. So she comes dressed in beautiful white and everything, et cetera, ready for the wedding. Clytemnestra arrives and you can imagine, and he slits her throat. And his wife, the mother of the daughter is there. All of this goes on. When Agamemnon later, that act, which he thinks the gods are telling him, in order to be brave enough, to be a king, you know, to be proud, strong enough, you’ve got to do that in order to win. Well, payback, Clytemnestra goes back absolutely furious. Has a big affair. And later, together with her lover, out of revenge kill Agamemnon. What are all these myths? What are all these stories? They tell us about three different kinds of character, of human being, male or female I think. The one is filled with authority and pride. Shakespeare’s phrase, “Dressed in a little bit of authority.” Agamemnon is the king, hubris. B

ut the payback is too painful to bear. Achilles, the man of action. Everything is black or white. It’s either this or that. Eventually after the Battle of Troy, he’s killed in the battle of Troy, as we know, the Achilles heel, et cetera. The arrow, you know, hits him off Paris, et cetera. And Achilles on the journey from Troy back to Ithaca, goes into Hades, into the land of the dead to visit Achilles. And Achilles says to him, and Odysseus, “Oh Achilles, here you are. You’re the great remarkable what, you know. You are my hero.” And Achilles says, and I’m paraphrasing, “Odysseus, big mistake. I would rather have been a poor slave and lived a natural life and died a natural death and lived a long good life than have died so young, although I was famous.” So every one of the characters has the Faustian bargain, has the flip side in Homer. Hubris. What happens with Agamemnon, Achilles, you know, the defiant and physically strong leader out there just going to go and smash and grab, finished. Price that he has to pay the Faustian bargain. Odysseus has to learn so many things over 20 years in order to grab to be a man, and one of those things which I want to explore in today, I’m going to play this from Bob Dylan’s Nobel lecture. This is only a couple of minutes section where he spoke about the influence of Homer’s play, Homer’s poem on him from very early days when he’s young. I think it’s quite an amazing piece of writing.

CLIP BEGINS

• [Dylan] The “Odyssey” is a great book whose themes have worked its way into the balances of lot of songwriters, “Homeward Bound,” “Green Green Grass of Home,” “Home on the Range,” and my songs as well. The “Odyssey” is a strange, adventurous tale of a grown man trying to get home after fighting in a war. He’s on that long journey home and is filled with traps and pitfalls. He’s cursed to wander. He’s always getting carried out to sea, always having close calls. Huge chunks of boulders rock his boat. He angers people, he shouldn’t. There’s troublemakers in his crew, treachery. His men are turned into pigs and then they’re turned back into younger, more handsome men. He’s always trying to rescue somebody. He’s a travelling man, but he’s making a lot of stops. He’s stranded on a desert island. He finds deserted caves and he hides in them. He meets giants that say, “I’ll eat you last.” And he escapes from giants. He’s trying to get back home, but he’s tossed and turned by the winds. Restless winds, chilly winds, unfriendly winds. He travels far and then he gets blown back. He’s always being warned of things to come, touching things he’s told not to. There’s two roads to take and they’re both bad, both hazardous. On one you could drown and on the other you could starve. He goes into the narrow straits with foaming whirlpools that swallow him, meets six headed monsters with sharp fangs. Thunderbolts strike at him.

Overhanging branches that he makes a leap to reach for to save himself from a raging river. Goddesses and gods protect him but some others want to kill him. He changes identities. He’s exhausted. He falls asleep and he’s woken up by the sound of laughter. He tells his story to strangers. He’s been gone 20 years. He was carried off somewhere and left there. Drugs have been dropped into his wine. It’s been a hard road to travel. In a lot of ways, some of these same things have happened to you. You too have had drugs dropped into your wine. You too have shared a bed with the wrong woman. You too have been spelled bound by magical voices, sweet voices with strange melodies. You too have come so far and have been so far blown back and you’ve had close calls as well. You have angered people you should not have. And you too have rambled this country all around and you have also felt that you’ll win the wind that blows you no good. And that’s still not all of it. When he gets back home, things aren’t any better. Scoundrels have moved in and are taking advantage of his wife’s hospitality. And there’s too many of them. And though he’s greater than the mall and the best at everything, best carpenter, best hunter, best expert on animals, best seaman, his courage won’t save him, but his trickery will. All these stragglers will have to pay for desecrating his palace. He’ll disguise himself as a filthy beggar and a lowly servant kicks him down the steps with arrogance and stupidity. The servant’s arrogance revolts him, but he controls his anger. He’s 1 against 100 but they’ll all fall, even the strongest. He was nobody. And when it’s all said and done, when he is home at last, he sits with his wife and he tells her the stories.

So what does it all mean? Myself and a lot of other songwriters have been influenced by these very same themes and they can mean a lot of different things. If a song moves you, that’s all that’s important. I don’t have to know what a song means. I’ve written all kinds of things into my songs and I’m not going to worry about it, what it all means. When Melville put all his Old Testament biblical references, scientific theories, protestant doctrines and all that knowledge of the sea and sailing ships and whales into one story, I don’t think you would’ve worried about it either, what it all means. John Donne as well, the poet priest who lived in the time of Shakespeare wrote these words, “The sestos and abydos of her breasts Not of two lovers, but two loves the nests.” I don’t know what it means either, but it sounds good. And you want your songs to sound good. When Odysseus in the “Odyssey” visits the famed warrior, Achilles, in the underworld, Achilles, who traded a long life full of peace and contentment for a short one full of honour and glory tells Odysseus, that it was all a mistake. “I just died, that’s all.” There was no honour, no immortality. And that if he could, he would choose to go back and be a lowly slave to a tenant farmer on earth, rather than be what he is, a king in the land of the dead. That whatever his struggles of life were, they were preferable to being here in this dead place. And that’s what songs are too. Our songs are alive in the land of the living. But songs are unlike literature. They’re meant to be sung not read. The words in Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be acted on the stage just as lyrics and songs are meant to be sung not read on a page. And I hope some of you get the chance to listen to these lyrics the way they were intended to be heard in concert or on record or however people are listening to songs these days. I return once again to Homer who says, “Sing in me O muse and through me tell the story.”

CLIP ENDS

• Okay, I’m going to hold that there with Dylan, and go on to, just give me one sec. So, it’s not necessarily Homer at all. It’s just an image, an imagined image of Homer. These two pictures here. But what we really get is an idea of how some of the ancient Greeks might have looked and might have lived. 'cause these are taken from statues of, you know, five or four, 500 BC. Okay. So what is this all about? I mean, just to summarise, I mean most people think he was maybe a poet. Was he blind? Wasn’t he maybe from somewhere in Turkey, you know? But there’s nothing definitive at all. So, I don’t want to spend time on that. Obviously, the story of the “Odyssey” is a journey. It’s about cunning, it’s about ingenuity, it’s about the values to live by and that Odysseus has to learn all sorts of things. He romanticises Achilles, but Achilles then regrets. “Yeah, fine. I was the great hero. I was the, you know, heroic. I was powerful. I achieved fame and glory, which was a great value in ancient Greece and in our times.” In fact, the whole of the Iliad I would say can be summed up in three words. The “Iliad” is about the pursuit of fame. Anything to be famous, anything to have glory and famous in life 'cause it’s driven by Achilles, his rage, his prowess, everything. I mean, the story of the “Iliad” is driven by Achilles. So it’s about the pursuit of fame and the depiction of the battles. I’ve mentioned already, you know, what I think Agamemnon. I think that that the story of Odysseus is about learning. Well, there’s a price to be paid if one goes helter-skelter for fame.

There’s a price to be paid if one goes helter-skelter for hubris, authority, the kingship, Agamemnon And Odysseus, and that’s why the story of the Trojan horse is such a powerful metaphor, is about cunning or what Bob Dylan calls, “Trickery,” and other scholars are called a the trickery, you know. It’s not quite the trickster of Jungian archetype, but it’s about trickery, cunning, outwitting, ingenuity, creative thinking to outwit others, you know. What kind of human do we want to aspire to be in our lives? And of course, we go through all three at various times. And there are many other characters that we also go through. I’m just choosing three at the moment. And this is part of the journey we bring in theatre, the poetry, the music, the themes of war, love, hate, revenge, trickery, businesses in it, religion, so much reference to nature and the seas, the wine dock, the seas, so often described as wine dock or you know, the back of the sea, you know, the huge waves, the small, it’s all metaphor for life and the journey. Obviously the power of storytelling to make meaning of our experience and perhaps learn a few things through storytelling and making meaning for ourselves, little children, you know, once upon a time, making meaning of life through stories.

Story of temptation, of madness, of god’s, God, you know, so much of human nature itself. If the “Iliad” is about the pursuit of fame, this for me is about learning, whether we call it trickery, ingenuity, inventiveness, whichever or cunning. So, if you can go onto the next slide, please. This is a slide from the end of the, right at the end when Odysseus arrives in Ithaca and he arrives and he’s the only one who survives the 20 years, all the shipwrecks and all the tales that happened on the story. And he’s washed up on the shores in rags, you know. He’s at 20 days with, you can imagine. He smelly, he’s filthy, everything. Anyway, he arrives. And he hears that there are 108 suitors who have been vying for the hand of Penelope and to marry her and she’s trying to resist. And because he’s cunning, he’s not Achilles. He’s not going to march up to, you know, what’s his home and his palace and his wife and his son, Telemachus and say, “Right, I’m back, everybody. Hello, I’m home. Hi honey, I’m home.” He thinks, no. Be smarter. Go and suss out what’s happening first, like a scouting party and see, and then assess what to do. So he dresses as a beggar. And this is a clay statue from ancient Greece. This is an actual one taken from archaeological discovery of Odysseus dressing as a beggar, you know, with a stick and going back into the home as this beggar, lonely and everything. On the left hand side is Penelope. And you know, supposedly this is another drawing from ancient Greece, statue, sorry, this is another version of Achilles coming, sorry, of Odysseus coming as a beggar to Penelope. Doesn’t believe. What are you talking about? The suitors are there? Who are you? Just a poorly beggar, you know. Get lost. So he user his cunning again, even to test Penelope, to test the suitors. Is it safe to go back home or not?

Odysseus, I’m not going to just march into Troy and try and conquer it like an idiot, you know. I’m going to suss through cunning, how to destroy it by deception. As it says in the Bible, and says the Sun Tzu of ancient China, “By deception, shall we wage war.” He’s aware of all these things and the necessity even with his own wife. Go on to the next slide, please. So this is here, once he’s back in Ithaca in the home. And Penelope sets up a test. “Well, are you really a Odysseus? I haven’t seen you for 20 years. I don’t know if you are or not. You’re a beggar.” But she knows only Odysseus had the strength to pull back the bow and the arrow to that level and be able to shoot it. No other man has been able to show the same prowess and strength and Odysseus does it. And through that, he kills on the right hand side some of the 108 suitors that he and Telemachus, his son, and his Penelope behind him proves. He’s tested by Penelope. He tests Penelope and the suitors, you know, before acting, and then of course achieves it. And this is from an ancient Greek mural from ancient Greece. If you can go on to the next slide, please. So this is again, showing that same killing of all the suitors, the 108 suitors in the poem and Odysseus is taking back his rightful place. The important part I want to make is that, life is always testing.

And the whole journey of 20 years of Odysseus, everything is a test of all the different aspects of character to ultimately forge what Jung would call individuation or to grow to maturity or adulthood as a human being. “What are the characteristics and attributes that we need to not only survive but to live a good life?” as Aristotle said. Okay. We can do the next slide. Thanks. Now, this is a fascinating story. This is, “I am Odysseus, known to you all by my deceptive skills. My fame extends all the way to heaven.” So we are combining the idea of fame, which is the Achilles line and deception, which is the Odysseus line that I’m pushing. Now, this is when on his way back and all these men in the ships and they are shipwrecked onto an island. Anyway, they end up with the cyclops, these huge evil giants who’d eat people and eat some of his soldiers and everything. And the cyclops captures them all and they’re in the cave. And Odysseus is clever, of course. So he waits until, and he feeds the main cyclops, whose name is Polyphemus. He feeds Polyphemus, this huge giant, feeds him plenty wine. And he gets so much wine and he gets drunk and Polyphemus falls asleep. And while he is asleep, Odysseus gets all his soldiers and they stab out the one ear, the one eye of Polyphemus. So the cyclops can’t see. Wakes up screaming and shouting, “He can’t see.” And adieu clever again tells all his soldiers to lie under the belly of the sheep of the cyclops.

And as the sheep go all the way out of the cave and out of the fields, they’ll get back to their ships on shore. But underneath, because the cyclops, Polyphemus, he hears the sheeps going and he strokes the top of the sheeps. It doesn’t feel any escaping soldiers because they’re underneath the belly. Odysseus thought ahead through cunning. And that’s how they’re all here and all the soldiers escape. “It’s a cunning plan,” to quote Baldrick in the Rowan Atkinson “Blackadder” piece. But then here comes the payback, which Homer prose it all the time. Odysseus and the soldiers, you know, most of them get back to the ship and the ships and they’re ready and there. And on the ships he shouts out to Polyphemus. He shouts out, “Well, you know, I defeated you. I conquered you and you the great cyclops and everything, et cetera. And I’m Odysseus. I’m the hero. And Polyphemus, the head of the Cyclops says, "You’re a Odysseus?” And he’s furious. And what Odysseus doesn’t know is that Polyphemus’ father is Poseidon, the god of a sea. So he tells his father, the god of the sea, and lo and behold, Poseidon steps up and makes it hell on earth the rest of the sea journey trying to get back to Ithaca. So hubris comes in for Odysseus. He’s too proud. He’s got to brag. “Hey buddy, I outwitted and look how good I am. I’m going to shout it out to the world.” In comes Homer with the Faustian bargain, the price to pay. The other thing fascinating is that, when Odysseus is leaving, when they’re all there, he says, “Who are you?” And he says, “Nobody.” This is before getting back to the ship. So then when they’re all going out and suddenly Polyphemus realises they’ve all gone and he’s in terrible pain, this is before Odysseus shout out his real name. He’s in terrible pain ‘cause his eye’s been speared.

And all the other cyclops say, “what’s going on? What happened? Who did this to you?” And he shouts out, “Nobody.” Because Odysseus earlier on told him his name was Nobody. So cunning and then comes hubris. It’s so human, these stories. Okay. If we can go into the next slide, please. These are all from ancient Greek, vases and pictures and so on, obviously. Okay. So, this is the story of the Sirens. And we know the story, I’m sure, where they go past the island of the beautiful singing magical of the sirens and the beautiful voices of these women singing to lure to seduce and so on. And Odysseus tells all his men, “Cover your ears with beeswax because then you won’t hear it, you won’t be seduced and you won’t all be tempted up. It’s a story of temptation. The other one was a story of hubris and courage and cunning. There’s a story of temptation in life. And they won’t be tempted because their ears are blocked, because the beautiful music of singing is going to just make them all magically fall into a trance and go with the Sirens onto their island. And this is here the picture. And Odysseus says, "But I want to hear the music. I want to hear their singing.” And he tells his man, tie me to the mast of my ship. And this how you see him tied to the mast. So he can hear it. And he’s fighting to get free 'cause he wants to go. He’s caught up. He’s in a trance. He’s hypnotised by the temptation of the beauty of the singing and of these women. But he can’t because he’s being tied up. And because the sirens are so upset that they’ve been outwitted, the one siren commits suicide and jumps over into the sea. And that’s her falling there on the right.

And we can have the next slide, please. This is her falling again. You can see. The next slide, please. Okay, this is another interesting one on a Greek urn of the same image of the siren, of Odysseus being tied and the siren, you know, falling. But it’s a different kind of Odysseus. It’s much more of a proud one. The other one is him tied and utterly restrained, totally full of temptation but held back. He can’t. Here, it’s a different relationship between temptation and the tempting siren that is seen. And he’s shown to have more agency here. So it’s, you know, these are all open to such interpretations. We can go on to the next slide, please. Okay, so we have those stories. We also have the story of Aeolus. “Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is the man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another. I mean these are phrases we all know but it originates with Homer, you know. What a what a person says and what’s in their heart, two different things. These ideas and the ways of writing originate with Homer, you know, where so many phrases come from Shakespeare and so many others. But a hell of a lot, and I can’t go into them, 12,000. I can just give a few glimpses of a few phrases. And I love the way that it’s written. Hades, of course, is the land of the dead. "Hateful to me as the gates of Hades. I hate the gates of death.” You know, not exactly the gates of heaven, it’s the gates of eternal hell. He’s the man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another. It’s just beautifully written for me in this translation and of course used many, many times. And this is part of, this is linked to the story of Aeolus, where Odysseus at one of the islands and there’s Aeolus, who’s the God of the winds and who gives them hospitality.

'Cause there’s another theme in ancient Greek value, and a theme of the perm is, what do you do with a visitor, whether you’re a king or whether you’re a peasant> What do you do with a visitor comes asking for a little bit of food. Our times, I guess, it might be a homeless person or it might be a person who lost their job or anything terrible has happened. What do we do? Do we show hospitality or do we reject and walk past the beggar on the street? And Homer deals with it in this little tale, where they stop at the home of the Aeolus, the of God of the winds, gives them hospitality for a month, food and wine and relax and recover their health and so on. Then he gives them a west wind 'cause he is the god of the winds. Gives them a west wind, which will carry them home to Ithaca. But unfortunately, the god also gives him a gift of a bag and it’s tied up. And the crew members sneak aside from Odysseus and they’re so tempted. Temptation, again. Greed. They think it must be treasure. It’s a God who’s given us the bag. Let’s open it. Maybe it’s gold. See what the treasure is. And they open it and it’s the four winds, north, south, east, west, the four winds. And just as they’re getting towards Ithaca, because they didn’t trust them, because they didn’t respect us hospitality, and they greed took over, the four wins come in, blow all the ships off target.

And they’ve got to spend more years trying to get back to Ithaca and home. It’s everything that Homer is so human with these human nature of contradiction. On the one hand, yes, I’m brilliant. I outwitted Cyclops by going under the sheep, you know. Polyphemus couldn’t even touch the top of the sheep, wouldn’t touch humans. But I couldn’t resist it. I shouted at the end, “I Odysseus outwitted you. Yeah, I didn’t know that your father is Poseidon, and controls the sea.” Okay. Or we get the wind finally and the hospitality. Thank you so much, Aeolus, you know. Lovely God, et cetera. Going home, finally, can’t resist temptation and greed. Let’s just see what’s in that bag. Maybe it’s jewels, whatever. And everything has got its Faustian bargain, everything has got payback, everything has got its contradiction and paradox. And for me that is such human nature of Homer. You can go on to the next slide, please. What is ultimately getting back to Penelope, getting back to Ithaca? Homer writes us towards the end of the whole poem, “There’s nothing noble or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye, keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.” For me, it’s not romanticised. He’s never romantic or sentimental in this poem. I don’t think Shakespeare is either, you know. I don’t think it’s romantic or sentimentality. Look at the way, “Two people who see eye to eye keep house.” It’s not romantic love, hearts, you know, as man and wife confound their enemies and delight their friends.

A value to way of thinking about it in a very different, non idealistic and non possibly romanticised way. You can go on to the next one please. So these are some of the great phrases to share with you from the 12,000 lines in the poem. “Men are so quick to blame the gods. They say that we, the gods devised their misery, but they themselves in their depravity, designed grief greater than the griefs that fate assigns.” It’s the way he’s bringing together human nature, the gods and how they’re so quick to blame fate, blame the gods, blame the stock market, blame the I decision made to invest, or the decision I made to sell or divorce or marry or do this or do that. I blame something outside, never myself. I didn’t devise my misery. I can blame others, not me. And these are the gods speaking back in the poem, which Homer writing. “Designed grief greater than grief that fate assigns.” We design it because if we can’t acknowledge it in ourselves. Odysseus has to learn, temptation in myself, has to learn all these things, pride, all these other things, in order to become the adult male, the adult figure if you like. I think one of the main themes of the story. And then another lovely line that I just love, one of the characters in the poem says, I didn’t lie! I just created fiction with my mouth.“ The wit and the humour. There’s so much of the wit as well, you know. How we justify. But when we do it with trickster wit, you know, we self-aware and we’re playful comedy. If we can go on, please. "Let me not then die ingloriously and without a strong,” let me just move this here. One sec. “And with art a struggle,” okay?

“But let me first do some great thing that shall be told among hereafter.” So it’s not the fame and glory and the pursuit of fame and glory like the “Iliad” and Achilles who ends up being, you know, in the land of the eternal dead. He’s a king of the dead. Big deal. Means nothing to him. “Let me do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter,” but it comes through struggle. Life is test, life is struggle, life is painful, dangerous, hard, struggle, a fight. But let me never be a victim. Let me see what great thing I can achieve that men shall tell hereafter. Never in the entire perm does Odysseus say he is a victim, you know. And the horrible things, the terrible things, no. He’s always thinking of a way of trickery, cunning, ingenuity to find a way to solve the problem, overcome the test. “There’s a time for making speeches and a time for going to bed.” It’s so simple it appears banal but this is where it originates from. “Be strong with my hearts; I’m a soldier. I’ve seen worse sights than this.” Let’s remember the worst things we’ve seen when we moan and winch and complain about the daily minutia of life and how the minutia of life can upset and freak us so much. But they’re minutia. They’re small things. “Sing O muse, of the rage of Achilles.” That’s in the “Iliad.” That’s very different to the beginning. And that’s close to the beginning of the “Iliad”. Very different to the beginning of the “Odyssey”. “There is the heat of love, the pulsing rush of longing. The love’s whisper, irresistible, magic to make the sanest man go mad.” So there’s the magic of love, there’s the passion, the beauty, everything. So male or female, the longing, everything. Beautiful words of poetry.

Magic, and then comes the flip side as always with Homer, the Faustian bargain or the price to pay, “magic to make even the sanest man go mad.”“ It’s not just love is blind or whatever. The way he puts it is far more insightful 'cause it’s always dealing with the double thought, you know. Fall in love, be passionate, but be aware there may be the price to pay. You may go a bit mad with it. Okay. Next slide, please. "Ah how shameless, the way these mortals blame the gods. 'From us alone,’ they say, ‘come all their miseries.’ Yes, but they themselves, with their own reckless ways compound their pains beyond their proper share.” It’s rational and it’s poetic. The language, the shame is the way these mortals blame us, gods. “‘From us alone,’ they say, ‘come all the miseries.’” These are the gods talking about, you know the ancient Greeks, the gods are talking to the human, the humans are talking to the gods. It’s so much more interactive. It’s a bit like some of the Psalms of David. He’s debating, arguing, discussing with God and many other parts, you know. They’re interacting, they’re debating, they’re discussing. It’s not just one monolithic story pushed down. It’s a constant dialogue, constant debate. There were over 2000 gods that the Greek created in their stories and tales. There is no way anybody can remember or know them. So, you just constantly in dialogue and argument and debate. And that’s the way to be with each other. It’s a Socratic way of living. Debate, philosophers, argue, discuss, come to decisions and so on. It’s Socratic, you know, goes through, Socrates, Plato.

It’s like all of the great philosophies. It bequeathed a method of philosophical, of thinking which was put into words and writing, in poetry, in Homer and of course, in Plato and Socrates and others, you know. A way of thinking which was concretized in literature and in writing. Okay. If we can go on onto the next slide, please. Okay. So I have to, sorry, if we can go back to the one, oh no, let’s say it here. Let’s say here. Okay, obviously it’s been so many influences. There’s James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” which is a story of a Jewish guy, Leopold Bloom, one day in Dublin. And all the tests and trials, there’s so many stories. The “Odyssey” is 24 books because a role of papyrus in those days was regarded as a certain amount of length. And one long roll of papyrus equaled one of the books. And so whether it was made afterwards in Alexandrian library or not, we don’t know. But it was in the end, 24 books and it corresponded at the time to 24 letters of the Greek alphabet. So, you know, all of this is thought through. This is highly intelligent poetic brilliance. Anyway, and later, so many of the influences, you know, the Margaret Atwood’s book, there are just so many others, obviously in comedy, which I can’t resist. James Joyce’s, “Ulysses”.

Leopold Bloom is a version of Ulysses, you know, who is a Odysseus. And all the journey and the trials and tribulation and tests that he goes through are Leopold Bloom and the Jewish guy in Dublin in one day. And he mimics or copies, to a large degree, the stories of all the tales. There’s so many, of the islands and what happens and all, I’ve just given you a few. We can’t go into marvellous in in the time. And James Joyce is trying to find a contemporary way to link to ancient, the foundation of western literature and civilization to me, or part of it anyway, and you know, the beginnings of the 20th century contemporary times. And of course got to go into Homer. Why call him Homer? Even the name Homer is so evocative. Suppose we chose the wrong god chosen every time we go to, you know, I love it that Homer is so relaxed and chilled. Got to just, you know, take it easy and just take an easy way out of life. So, Agamemnon is one thing, hubris in the price to pay. Odysseus, trickery and cunning, et cetera. Achilles man of action, defiance and everything is just black or white. Homer, let me just chill, watch TV, have a beer, relax. All these different archetypes in the Homenian way that we can live by or we live aspects of in our own lives as we go through them. A couple of other themes from the ideas really from Homer’s poem. An eye for an eye is inside the poem, you know. The notion of that the justice should equal punishment, justice should give an equal punishment for the crime committed. There’s the idea of homecoming, coming home from a long journey. The need, the longing to be home, to go home. And what that means emotionally, metaphorically, and literally, of course is so profound. Wait, I don’t have to go into that even more.

To be reunited with the ones that we really love or reunited with who we really were as children, as young kids or somewhere, somewhere where we felt at home, wherever that might be. Where is home actually, you know? It’s not only a Greek value, but I think it’s so contemporary, especially in our times today. Things are so transient, so quick, speed, everything. So, you know, we can be anywhere at three clicks, we can travel the world in our imagination, clicks on a screen, on a phone. But where is home for us? And I think all of this is metaphor and myth, mythical story that Homer is trying to get at. Well, what are these values? What do they really mean? Where do we belong? Where is home for us? Then I want to say that in the first translation to English, rarely, the good translation, was in the 16th century. Then in 2018 there was a BBC poll, 2018, BBC poll where so-called many experts in readers and many, many wide variety of people were asked, “What is the most enduring narrative in western literature?” Homer’s “Odyssey” came up as number one, and I think there’s a reason. Okay. There’s the idea of wondering, obviously the journey and finding ourselves being in the lost and found column in the newspaper.

But lost and found, and how do we refind ourselves? It’s all in the poem. The idea of friendship and what does it mean to be hospitality and not. There’s the idea of which I haven’t gone into, but the the word mentor is mentioned in the poem quite a few times. And it comes from the ancient Greek and from Homer, where Odysseus only tells the truth when he feels he is safe and that he’s been mentored. When he feels safe to tell the truth. He does not tell Penelope when he gets back that he is her husband. “I’m Odysseus. I’m back. Hello. You’re my wife.” No, he goes back as a lonely bagger in rags. He’s got a test at first to feel, am I safe? When I’m safe, then I tell the truth. And it’s a powerful idea inside the whole poem. Only when I feel safe can I tell the truth. Do I feel okay to tell the truth, the real truth in life? I’ve said that life is hard, it’s tough, it’s dangerous, it’s painful. Odysseus never sees himself as a victim in the 12,000 line poem. It’s, how am I going to solve it? What am I going to do? I’m freaking, and I’m this and I’m that. And I’m all emotional, I’m anxious and scared and depressed and terrified. But I’m going to find a way through. Suffering is inevitable. Life is hard, painful, dangerous. What is our mission? Our purpose? Odysseus asks himself, “Why have I come on this battle for Troy? Why have I come to fight Troy? Why have I persuaded Achilles to come? Why did I go with Agamemnon. Yes he’s my king, but what’s my mission? What’s my purpose here? And he asks the gods and the gods teach him on the whole journey back. I’ve got to find what it is to grow up and be an adult in the world and live in the world today, you know.

Obviously revenge and so many other stories, et cetera, cunning, and so many other things. And I want to end, if I may with a, I’m paraphrasing from George Steiner. "What is the meaning of the myth? What is ultimately the meaning of myth? Why do we read stories, which even the Bible, there’s so many myths, there’s so many legends and things? Why bother? Okay, there’s metaphor and literature and so on. What is this poem achieving that goes beyond? And from the meaning of myth, and I think that George Steiner gets it, he talks about, and what it’s linked to me with a Jungian idea of individuation. And I’m not particularly a Jungian, I’m just using the idea, you know, of growing up in this way with the hardships influence, the traps of life and so on. "Myths are more than history made memorable,” George Stylist says. “Myths are more than history made memorable. Myth is the story of the unconscious, gives our great myths life. The haunting truth of our human nature is in our unconscious and only myths can really reveal it, the truth through stories. And the universality of the myths reveal the human, the universality of our human stories. Myths are more than history made memorable.

Myth is the story of the unconscious. It is how we reveal the unconscious to ourselves and to others through myth. And through that we can learn a few things maybe about human nature and our own lives.” And I think the fact that this guy, Homer, has captured that and the meaning of myth spreads, suddenly why we do it comes through Homer. Not just doing the myth and the poem, but why do it? Why tell the stories and everywhere endlessly. Together with the content of some of these main ideas, a few of them I’ve tried to tease out today of, what it is that gives us an idea of how to live, how to live. And what values? And it’s got nothing to do with moral right or moral wrong or fashionable morals of a particular historical era. It’s got to do with our unconscious and what’s our story. Okay. Thank you very much, everybody. Can take questions, if that’s okay, Emily?

• [Emily] Yeah, sure. Do you need me to read them or can you see them?

• Thanks if you can. Yeah, I can’t see them here. Thank you.

Q&A and Comments:

• [Emily] For sure. Let’s see. The first two questions,

• Wait a minute. I might be able to get them. Sorry Emily, just one sec. Oh no, I managed to get there. Sorry.

• Okay.

• It’s okay. Thank you. Okay. Hi, Barbara, from Pikesville. Okay, great.

Francois, this is, I’ve put together a couple of translations here. So it’s not just one. There’s some from the original but some others.

Barry, great question. There are a couple of the translations ‘cause it’s such a long poem. If there’s anything edited by a guy called Richard Lattimore, I would go with that translation because the translations that Lattimore and a guy called Grene, they got together the best translations of the ancient Greek plays. And for me of the poem of the “Odyssey,” anything put together by Richard Lattimore or Grene.

Q: Myrnex, “How do they date the Dead Sea Scrolls?”

A: I’m not sure, actually. May now have to check that. Thank you.

So, okay. Oh, thanks for your help. I appreciate.

Gita, “David is now top set on the screen.” I don’t know, okay. We will get it sorted out, this digital madness. Thank you.

Q: Does Dylan say, “Art in general sense is faith?”

A: I think that Dylan once said that art is about inoculating us against disillusionment. I remember watching an interview with him once where he said that. But he said quite a few things, you know. What for him art is. But I think what he’s finally said was much earlier in his life. What he’s finally saying here with this, you know, what does literature do? It tells us the stories where we try and capture something about human nature. Something about the truth of what is life really? What is human nature really? And it’s not totally, we can’t make total meaning of it, like one and one equals two because it’s written in myth or poetic or metaphorical form. It’s artistic. So that’s part of the difficulty. But part of the magic of it is that, we can endlessly come back to the same art and find so many meanings. And I think that’s part of the magic for me of art, literature, poetry, music, painting, everything.

Sam, “Emily Wilson’s translation.” Yeah, got the buzz. It’s a very good translation that, Sam. thank you. Alexander Pope is very good. It might be a bit dated for us today, but it’s very good. Emily Wilson is really good. Thank you. You heard it.

“Penelope is cunning,” absolutely. And I haven’t had a chance to go into this. But the “Iliad” is much more about the men and war and you know how you deal in all different ways. War is a metaphor for life. The “Odyssey” is much more about the female because the sirens are female. The cyclops is not. But Penelope, obviously, and there are many, many other female characters who are the gods. There’s a Athena I haven’t even mentioned yet. But you know, many of the gods and many of the characters are female. And the tests that both have, so there’s far more centrality of the female voice in the “Odyssey,” you know, and it clearly comes after the “Iliad”. So he is dealing much more with man and woman. Penelope is equally cunning, absolutely. First of all to resist 108 suitors. And secondly, she doesn’t trust, “I haven’t seen this guy for 20 years. You suddenly pitch up and you say, you’re my husband, What the hell’s going on?” And there’s a story about how the bed was made. 'Cause the only way, he convinces who the strength of drawing the bow and the arrow but she’s still not totally convinced. She says, okay, “Come. Come to bed with me, but move the bed.” And he says, “But the bed can’t be made 'cause when I made the bed, I made it up oak in such a way that it’ll go into the earth. Bed can’t be made.” And only Penelope and Odysseus would’ve ever known that. And so, she has a double test for him at the end. Smart cookie.

Okay. And I think it’s an example. And many of the other women characters all the way through, I can’t get into it, Clytemnestra, Agamemnon a little bit I managed to show, and there are many others, but they test all the time. Temptation, you know. Come on Odysseus with the sirens and the beautiful singing and so on, you know. Okay. Then finally, another God says, “All right, all right. We’ll let him go, you know. I offer him immortal love, he doesn’t want, immortal life he doesn’t want it. He wants to go home instead of immortal life. Okay. Ciao,” you know. So testing is part all the way through of the men and the woman.

Spot on. Thank you. Sarah, thank you. You read every word of Homer. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Two theories at Homer. Two experts. Yeah. That’s great. And there are a lot of wonderful lectures on it. One can find on YouTube. Okay. Just want to go through here. Sorry, just going through here.

You heard it. Tom, most accessible translation is Emily Wilson.

Q: Anything with Lattimore and Grene, who would’ve edited translations?

A: Emily Wilson’s good.

Ed, “The Bible deals with such similar philosophical questions.” Absolutely. I haven’t even had a chance to go into, but the links between the Old Testament in particular and the “Odyssey” and some of these stories, the ways of thinking and so many of these ideas is fascinating research happening in the last decades of similar philosophical questions as you say, Ed. Absolutely. Mitzvot, “both,” exactly. Justice, righteousness and other things. Susan, “Lattimore’s translation.” Yep. Great. Thank you, Susan.

Dennis, “Making the punishment fit the crime is echoed by W.S Gilbert in Mikado.” Yep, absolutely and many others. But this is where it starts to be written about. That’s the key I’m really getting at. As literature foundational, it’s written not only sort of oral storytelling. Sandra, enduring narratives.

“How about Adam and Eve disobeying God and eating the apple.” Yep. Test big time. Where’s the justice?

Rita,“ What about Penelope’s abstity, strength to hold on with one child, the husband is away.” Yes. So Rita, what I’ve tried to draw about women and men is much more in the “Odyssey”. You know, the female characters are as powerfully important.

Susan, “Many of our family stories become missed”. That’s fantastic, Susan. I love that. They do. We retell them years, decades later.

Sarah, “Another worth mentioning the poem "Ithaca” by Cavafy. I don’t know that. Wonderful.

Thank you. Barbara, “No, I did not have anything. It connected with the programme.” Oh, thanks. Okay. Tyler, thank you. Everyone, thanks. Barbara, thank you. Patricia, you’re also kind. I really appreciate. Judy. Debbie, you are very kind.

Josie, “The Solzhenitsyn in "The Day of the Life of Ivan Denisovich” use Homeric reference. Great question. I don’t know. Haven’t thought about it, actually. Great question, Josie.

Arabella, “The best modern translation is Robert Fagles. Captures the lyrical essence of Homer’s poetry.” Fantastic. Thank you. It’s another one. Judith. Okay, really appreciate kind comments. And then, just to go on here. Okay.

And Susan, “To add to Dylan’s list of songs, the name of Peggy Seeger’s album, "Penelope Isn’t Waiting Anymore.” Great. Lovely. Thanks, Susan.

Q: Mara, “Why did Odysseus set out on his hero’s journey?”

A: Well, he’s furious in the beginning because, there’s a long story, but one of the gods allows him to be persuaded by Agamemnon to persuade Achilles to join them on the battle 'cause Agamemnon can’t leave. There’s the wind story with his daughter. And until Achilles brings his army of the best fighters, the best Greek soldiers to Troy. And Odysseus allows himself to be persuaded by a god, and by Agamemnon to to use his cunning to persuade Achilles to go and fight the battle. But he’s furious and he eventually gets revenge on the god and has him killed much, much later in the poem. Why did he set out? Pursuit of fame, pursuit of glory, other things as the same, as Achilles in the “Iliad.” So what Odysseus has to learn is, if you go for the pursuit of fame, great. But there might be a lot of Faustian bargains, prices to pay after or during or not. But Homer is always setting up the paradoxical contradiction. Esther, thank you kind comments.

Tanya, “Richard Whitaker has translated both using Southern African illusions.” I didn’t know that, Tanya. Thank you. Sarah, okay. Thank you. Appreciate. Rosemary, Robert Fagles’ great.

Q: Elliot, “Did myth create proverbs?”

A: That’s a fascinating question ‘cause when I was researching for today, I went back to a whole lot of ancient Greek proves. There’s ones where, you know, there’s so many, Pericles and so many others. There are so many from this one small little group, of how many people were living there, how many were literate, how many were over these hundreds of years. I mean, so much came out of there. I mean, it just touched one tiny little thing.

Q: “Did myth create proverbs?

A: Maybe, or maybe the other way around. We can’t be definitive, I don’t think. Great question, Elliot.

Alfred, "Don’t forget the memory and faith of a dog.” Yes. When Odysseus arrives at the shore of Ithaca, ragged, exhausted, and you know, he puts on the rags and all that. The first creature that recognises him is his dog of 20 years ago, full of fleas, old and then so on.

Homer says, “It’s the dog that will recognise you first. My great hero, Odysseus, nobody else.” I’ll leave that for your own meaning.

Tanya, both poems. Great. Thank you Tanya. Tanya, “The death of the dog is unforgettable, captures the loyalty.” And again, the question of loyalty in the poem as well. Great point. Thanks, Tanya. Ruth, thank you. Very kind.

Q: Jillian, “Possible to do a talk with the links between the Bible and the Greek word you just mentioned?”

A: I don’t know if I’m the best qualified. I think may need somebody who knows far more about the Bible than I do. But it’s a lovely idea. Maybe a joint discussion will be fantastic.

Arabella, “'Ithaca,’ Cavafy, if I’m pronouncing it right, it’s a brilliant summation of the ‘Odyssey.’ It’s fantastic.” Thank you. “Ithaca gave you the marvellous journey. Without her, you would not have set out. Wise, you would become.” Exactly. He’s got to learn wisdom, cunning, all these things.

Q: Ralph, as you say, “Was it time when writing shifted from right to left, left to right?”

A: Yes, but I don’t know exactly when and I don’t know which group did it. Great question. Honey, thank you. Uzi, “Comparing the ‘Odyssey’ to 40 years in Sinai.” Well these stories of wonderings and what they’re meant to teach us, whether they happened or not, doesn’t matter actually. It’s what do these myths of wondering actually teach us for our life and to understand human society and nature? Great question, Uzi. Susan, thank you.

Judith, “Recently read Plutarch on the use of reason by irrational animals, on which he tailed on an incident in ‘Odyssey.’” Plutarch, I love Plutarch and is brilliant. You know, Beckett towards later, later in his life, the last 10, 15 years went back to the ancients, the “Odyssey’s”. I mean Beckett is full of it, James Joyce, so many are full of Homer. It’s unbelievable. I can’t even touch on it right now. Not only Homer Simpson, but so many of the writers as Dylan mentions. And we go back to Plutarch and so many. There’s something so profound that it’s a reason it’s lasted two and a half thousand years, 2,000 years. Tom, really appreciate.

Q: “Could you consider talking "Troilus and Cressida?”

A: Yeah, of course. Shakespeare’s, you know, reference to it. Yep.

Great. Thank you so much, everybody. Really appreciate and hope you have a great rest of the weekend. Emily, thank you for everything.