HistoryExtrahttps://www.historyextra.comHome of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast2026-10-15T21:43:49.000Zhourly12000-01-01T12:00+00:00It was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – so why was it destroyed three times?https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-greece/it-was-the-one-of-the-seven-wonders-of-the-ancient-world-so-why-was-it-destroyed-three-times/2026-10-14T10:30:17.000ZWhen ancient travellers of the Mediterranean Rim came up with their lists of must-see architectural marvels, which would be collated into the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, a landmark that always made the cut was the Temple of Artemis.
One such traveller, the second-century BC poet Antipater of Sidon, went so far as to say: “I have set eyes on the wall of lofty Babylon on which is a road for chariots, and the statue of Zeus by the Alpheus, and the Hanging Gardens, and the colossus of the Sun, and the huge labour of the high pyramids, and the vast tomb of Mausolus but when I saw the house of Artemis that mounted to the clouds, those other marvels lost their brilliancy, and I said, ‘Lo, apart from Olympus, the Sun never looked on aught so grand’.”
At its grandest, the Temple of Artemis, or Artemesium, loomed over the landscape of Ephesus, in modern-day Selcuk, Turkey, at nearly double the size of the Parthenon in Athens. A total of 127 columns ran in two rows along all four sides, many adorned with works of art depicting scenes from Greek mythology, and an inner chamber at the centre houses a statue of the goddess Artemis.
Who was Artemis?
Artemis was the Greek goddess of the hunt and wild animals, as well as chastity and childbirth. The twin sister of Apollo, she was typically represented as a youthful maiden carrying a bow and arrow and wearing a short tunic so that she could run during her hunts in the forests.
At Ephesus, however, Artemis was worshipped more for her role in childbirth and her depiction differed from the typical Greek image as it contained elements from other cultures. More of a maternal figure, her statue in the great temple had oval objects all over the torso, thought to represent breasts or eggs as a symbol of fertility.
- Read more | This ancient goddess commanded a Wonder of the World – but why did she have thirty breasts?
How many temples were there?
Long before Antipater of Sidon looked upon the wondrous structure that was the Temple of Artemis in the second century BC, the site had already seen two earlier attempts at a temple. The first went back to the eighth century BC, established by the Amazons, according to legend, before being damaged in a flood.
Around 550 BC, Croesus, King of Lydia and conqueror of Ephesus, ordered the construction of a great temple out of marble to honour Artemis. Designed and built by the architect Chersiphron and his son Metagenes, this would become the model of Ionic temples across the Hellenistic world.
This second temple may well have been the version that ended up on the list of Seven Wonders, were it not for a man named Herostratus. In 356 BC, he burned it down for no reason other than his desire to be famous. He got his wish, but at the cost of his life.
Traditionally, Herostratus’s destruction of the temple took place on the same day as the birth of Alexander the Great. It was even said that Artemis had become distracted by the historic event and so did not see the fire until it was too late. As a man, Alexander visited Ephesus and offered to pay for the rebuilding of the temple, but he was declined. The Ephesians argued that it would not be right for one god to give such a gift to another.
When was the final destruction of the temple?
Instead, they themselves paid to have the third, and most impressive, version of the Temple of Artemis built. It stood for some 600 years before the final destruction came at the hands of East Germanic Goths in the third century. The temple fell into disuse until its official closure with the Christian persecution of pagan beliefs.
Lost for centuries, the ruins of the temple were discovered in 1869 by British archaeologist John Turtle Wood. Further excavations began in 1904 under David George Hogarth. Today, the only part of the temple still standing is a single, reconstructed column.
]]>The Odyssey’s forgotten epiloguehttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/odyssey-podcast-series-episode-4/2026-09-04T09:00:09.000ZWhy did Alexander the Great sleep with a copy of the Odyssey under his pillow? In this final episode of our four-part series, Kev Lochun and classicist Daisy Dunn explore the astonishing cultural legacy of a poem that has been shaping how we think about home, heroism and hospitality for nearly 3,000 years. Plus, they consider what its portrayal of women reveals about power in the ancient world.
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]]>How much of the Odyssey was actually real?https://www.historyextra.com/membership/odyssey-podcast-series-episode-3/2026-08-27T23:00:09.000ZThe Odyssey is a tale of impossible monsters, angsty gods and the unquiet dead – but does that mean it holds no truth?
In this third episode of our four-part series, Kev Lochun and classicist Daisy Dunn turn archaeologist, tracing the real Bronze Age world of feasting kings and heroic warriors that inspired Homer's epic poem. What secrets can we glean from the layers of ancient Troy? What happened to the grand palace complexes of ancient Mycenae that caused them to vanish almost overnight? And why is a 3,000-year-old bathtub so exciting?
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]]>Gods and monsters: the hidden stories of the Odysseyhttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/odyssey-podcast-series-episode-2/2026-08-21T09:00:15.000ZTwenty years away from home: 10 of them spent fighting a war, and 10 more spent battling monsters, gods and his own worst instincts.
In the second episode of our four-part series on the Odyssey, Kev Lochun and classicist Daisy Dunn explore Odysseus's greatest adventures – from encounters with the one-eyed Cyclops to brushes with the so-called witch Circe – and consider what they say about Greek views of civilisation, gender and divine power.
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]]>What is 'Zeus's Law'? The ancient moral code of The Odyssey explainedhttps://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-greece/zeus-law-moral-code-odyssey-christopher-nolan/2026-08-18T00:00:47.000ZWarning: this article contains spoilers for the new Christopher Nolan movie
Few people will leave a screening of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey without the phrase “Zeus’s Law” echoing in their minds. In the film, it’s described as a sacred rule that, whenever a stranger arrives, the host must first offer them food, drink and shelter before asking who they are, or even why they have come.
Early on, Antinous, played with teeth-clenching, borderline-psychotic intensity by Robert Pattinson, openly challenges this principle by berating Telemachus for welcoming a ragged beggar into Odysseus’s hall. The irony, of course, is that Antinous himself is a guest in the household, one of the many suitors who have spent years feasting at Odysseus’s expense while shamelessly exploiting their absent host’s generosity.
- Read more | Is The Odyssey based on a true story? The movie's historical accuracy explained
However, “Zeus’s Law” isn’t a phrase found in Homer, or at least not in standard translations. It’s a modern way of expressing a concept for today’s audiences. The actual name for the sacred code that governed the relationship between host and guest was xenia.
Xenia was the expectation that strangers should be welcomed, fed, sheltered and treated with respect – and that guests, in return, would honour their hosts rather than exploit their generosity.
That was because hospitality was under the protection of none other than Zeus himself. As Zeus Xenios (“Zeus, protector of guests and strangers”), the king of the gods watched over the sacred bond between host and visitor, rewarding those who honoured it and punishing those who violated it.
Almost every major episode in Odysseus’s journey home, from the man-eating cyclops Polyphemus to the slaughter of Penelope’s suitors, can be understood through the lens of xenia.
Here’s what we know about this real-life “Zeus’s Law”...
How old is xenia?
No one knows when the custom of xenia began, but it almost certainly predates Homer by many centuries. The Odyssey is thought to have been composed around the late eighth or early seventh century BC, yet it tells stories set during the Mycenaean Bronze Age, several hundred years earlier. In these stories, the rules of hospitality are presented as ancient, familiar and universally understood.
- Read more | I’m an expert on ancient Greece – here’s what you need to know before you watch The Odyssey
Many archaeologists and historians believe that xenia developed in response to the practical realities of life in the ancient Mediterranean. Travellers crossed dangerous mountains and seas without modern conveniences like hotels, or even reliable maps, meaning they often relied on the kindness of strangers.
Welcoming weary travellers into your home helped create networks of trust between families and communities that could last for generations. In many ways, xenia functioned as an early form of international friendship, connecting communities in a world without passports, embassies or formal treaties.
This is reflected in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. “Zeus’s Law” isn’t presented simply as a lesson in good manners, but as one of the foundations of civilisation itself. The film echoes the ancient Greek belief that the bonds between hosts and guests helped hold society together in an unpredictable and often dangerous world. Without xenia, civilisation itself could collapse.
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Examples of xenia in the Odyssey
Once you understand xenia, it becomes clear that this is the moral framework underpinning almost every major episode of the Odyssey. Time and again, Homer asks the same question: how should a host treat a stranger, and how should a guest behave in return?
Perhaps the greatest violation of xenia in the Odyssey comes not from monsters like Polyphemus, but from human beings. For years, the suitors occupy Odysseus’s palace while he is presumed dead, feasting on his food, drinking his wine and using up his resources as they compete for Penelope’s hand in marriage.
- Read more | Greek gods and goddesses: 15 of the most important deities
Rather than respecting their host’s household, they exploit it. Their bloody, John Wick-style slaughter at Odysseus’s hands might seem shocking, but within the moral universe of the poem it is presented as justice. The suitors have repeatedly violated the sacred obligations of xenia and must therefore face the consequences.
Why does xenia still matter today?
More than 2,700 years after the Odyssey was first written down, xenia continues to resonate because it speaks to timeless questions about trust, generosity and our responsibilities towards strangers.
Few modern societies regard hospitality as a sacred obligation enforced by Zeus, but many of the values behind xenia remain deeply familiar: welcoming guests into our homes, treating them well (and making sure you give them the good towels), and showing others respect, compassion and kindness regardless of where they come from or their social status.
That is why Christopher Nolan’s film places such emphasis on “Zeus’s Law”. It isn’t just a memorable line of dialogue, it’s the central theme. It’s also a reminder that, in Homer’s world, the way people treated strangers revealed their character more clearly than almost anything else.
Don’t miss our podcast series exploring the history of Homer’s Odyssey, featuring award-winning classicist and author Daisy Dunn. HistoryExtra members can listen to all four episodes now
]]>Who are those giant soldiers in The Odyssey? The Laestrygonians explainedhttps://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-greece/odyssey-giant-soldiers-laestrygonians-christopher-nolan/2026-08-18T00:00:07.000ZWarning: this article contains spoilers for the new Christopher Nolan movie
If you left a recent screening of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey with questions about the identity of the towering, metal-clad creatures who descend on Odysseus and his crew shortly after their escape from the Cyclops Polyphemus, you’re not alone.
Nolan deliberately reveals little about these monstrous figures. This means audiences experience the same shock and confusion as the film’s weary Greek sailors, who land on an island hoping for a warm welcome, hospitality and supplies, but are met with cruelty and violence. In the film, the encounter begins with the unsettling sight of a strange, adult-sized child, whose piercing scream summons an army of implacable, merciless warriors. Within moments, the ferocious horde lays waste to Odysseus’s men, forcing the few survivors to flee back to the sea.
- Read more | Is The Odyssey based on a true story? The movie’s historical accuracy explained
The film leaves their identity largely unexplained, but Homer’s original Odyssey tells us much more, and gives them a name: the Laestrygonians. Here’s what we know about them...
Who were the Laestrygonians?
One detail that’s left out of the film is the fact that, as well as being homicidal, these aggressive giants (which appear in Book 10 of Homer’s Odyssey) are also cannibals.
Their king, Antiphates, immediately reveals their true nature when he seizes one of Odysseus’s scouts and abruptly devours him. The rest of the giants soon emerge from the surrounding cliffs, pelting the Greek fleet with huge rocks while spearing sailors “like fish” before carrying them away to eat. Of Odysseus’s 12 ships, only his own escapes. It’s one of the single greatest catastrophes he suffers during the entire epic.
Although monsters such as Polyphemus receive more attention in modern retellings, the Laestrygonians inflict far greater damage. Their attack marks a turning point in the Odyssey: after escaping their island, Odysseus is no longer leading a mighty fleet – just a single, battered vessel carrying the last survivors of a voyage that has become increasingly hopeless.
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How are they different from the Cyclopes?
If Odysseus had a drachma for every time he’d encountered giant cannibals on distant islands, he’d have two drachmas – which isn’t a lot, but it’s strange that it happened twice.
As a result, it’s easy to confuse the Laestrygonians with the Cyclopes, but in the original poem, Homer presents them very differently. The Cyclopes are a race of one-eyed shepherds who live largely in isolation, with Polyphemus occupying a cave by himself. His encounter with Odysseus becomes a battle of wits, ending with the hero blinding the Cyclops before escaping beneath a flock of sheep.
- Read more | How the Odyssey’s Cyclops became the ancient Greeks’ worst nightmare
The Laestrygonians, by contrast, live together in what appears to be an organised city ruled by King Antiphates. As well as utilising brute strength, they also overwhelm Odysseus through sheer numbers.
What do the Laestrygonians represent?
Like many of the villains and monsters in Greek mythology, the Laestrygonians aren’t just a scary tale to frighten the audience. Throughout the Odyssey, every strange island explores a different moral challenge, like the Lotus-Eaters’ seductive forgetfulness and Circe’s temptations.
The Laestrygonians, meanwhile, embody a world where the sacred laws of hospitality have collapsed altogether. In Greek culture, offering food and protection to travellers (xenia, referred to as “Zeus’s Law” in the film) was considered sacred.
The Laestrygonians invert this tradition completely. Their attack also shows just how vulnerable Odysseus really is. This complicated, wily man can outwit a single Cyclops, but he can’t defeat an entire race of giants.
Were the Laestrygonians based on real people?
No one knows for certain if the Laestrygonians represent a real ancient culture. Ancient readers generally accepted the Laestrygonians as mythical beings, but later writers attempted to identify where they might have lived, placing them at various locations around Sicily and Sardinia.
One of the most intriguing modern theories links them to the Nuragic civilisation of Bronze Age Sardinia. Between around c1600 and c1200 BC, the Nuragic people built thousands of massive stone towers, known as nuraghi, that still dominate the island’s landscape today, which may have helped inspire later stories about a powerful race of giants living on a remote island.
- Read more | Greek gods and goddesses: 15 of the most important deities
Supporters of the theory often reference the Giants of Mont’e Prama, a collection of imposing, monumental limestone sculptures discovered in Sardinia in 1974. Dating to the ninth or eighth century BC, the statues depict towering archers, warriors and boxers, some standing more than two metres (6ft 6in) tall.
However, there is no direct archaeological evidence linking the Nuragic people to the Laestrygonians, and most Homeric scholars consider them to be part of the impressively creative world of the Odyssey rather than a description of a real civilisation.
Don’t miss our podcast series exploring the history of Homer’s Odyssey, featuring award-winning classicist and author Daisy Dunn. HistoryExtra members can listen to all four episodes now
]]>Who wrote the Odyssey?https://www.historyextra.com/membership/odyssey-podcast-series-episode-1/2026-08-14T09:28:32.000ZThe Odyssey is one of the most celebrated stories ever told, recounting the tale of Greek hero Odysseus’s 10-year journey home from the Trojan War. It is one of just two ancient Greek epic poems said to be the work of ‘Homer’.
But who was Homer? And why, today, do we ask ourselves: ‘Did Homer even exist?’
In this first episode of our four-part series on the Odyssey, Kev Lochun sits down with classicist Daisy Dunn to unpack the origins of the epic poem – and the enduring mystery around the identity of the man who ‘wrote’ it.
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]]>Pericles: life of the weekhttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/pericles-life-of-the-week-podcast/2026-07-28T13:43:02.000ZAncient Athenian statesman Pericles was a remarkable figure – renowned for promoting democracy, championing the arts and shaping the fate of the Athenian empire – but his legacy of military mistakes and eccentricity has landed him with a somewhat mixed reputation.
Speaking to Emily Briffett, historian Paul Cartledge presents a more nuanced portrait of Pericles, exploring the his political career, cultural influence, personal life and enduring legacy from antiquity to the present day.
]]>I'm an expert on ancient Greece – here's what you need to know before you watch The Odysseyhttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/think-the-odyssey-is-just-a-myth-heres-the-real-history-behind-the-ancient-greek-epic/2026-07-28T13:30:26.000ZIn the late 19th century, an archaeologist was excavating a grave in the Peloponnese, 75 miles south-west of Athens, when he made an extraordinary discovery. At his feet lay a high-stemmed goblet of hammered gold with a pair of modelled birds atop its two handles. Heinrich Schliemann looked at the vessel admiringly before realising why it was familiar. Nestor, an elderly ally of Odysseus, was described as owning “a very beautiful goblet” just like it in Homer’s Iliad. There, the cup was described as footed and gold, with “four handles and two golden doves were feeding on each”. But what was a couple of handles where art was concerned? Nestor’s Cup, supposed Schliemann, had finally been found.
Schliemann, a wealthy Prussian businessman, was notoriously overzealous in his quest to find evidence of Homer’s world. His excavations at Hisarlik, the now accepted site of ancient Troy near the Hellespont, involved digging aggressively through layers of civilisation in search of the lost city of King Priam. Many of the deepest treasures that Schliemann believed to have come from the age of Homer in fact proved to be still more ancient. The gold goblet with doves was eventually dated to about four centuries before Nestor was supposed to have lived.
But Schliemann was not wrong to believe that aspects of what Homer described in his Iliad and Odyssey might be reflected in the archaeological record. It is tantalising to think that, for all their flights of fancy, the Homeric epics do contain true reminiscences and memories of the historical past. While the poems should be enjoyed as poems first and foremost, they are also valuable sources to the historian, who may find them a powerful lens onto Late Bronze Age Greece.
Strikingly old
The composition of the Homeric epics was slow and involving. Conceived in an age before writing in Greece, the poems are commonly believed to have evolved orally over several generations before being set down in writing in the late eighth century BC or just after. What makes them so striking is that the events they describe are far older than this. It would not be inaccurate to describe the two works as the poetic equivalent of historical novels: the stories are consciously set about 400 years before the poems were completed. Homer’s first audience would have been aware of this. For all that their storylines were broadly fictional, the poems were based around a world informed by history and archaeology.
- Read more | Zeus's children: who were the offspring of the god with a libido that couldn’t be contained
In his efforts to describe a truly heroic age in Greece’s past, Homer – working in the eighth century BC – looked to the accomplishments of the Mycenaeans, a Late Bronze Age people who took their name from the Greek city of Mycenae. Located north of Argos in the north-eastern Peloponnese, Mycenae, where ‘Nestor’s Cup’ was found, was well known to Homer. In his poems, it is the kingdom ruled by Agamemnon, who led Odysseus and his men against Troy. It is described as “rich in gold” and “well-built”, “with broad streets”. Historically, it was all of those things, its limestone fortification walls rising more than 10 metres in places, with a 4.5 metre lintel supporting the pair of lionesses above its famous Lion Gate.
The Mycenaeans established important centres across the Peloponnese at cities including Tiryns, Iolcus, Gla, Greek Thebes and Pylos, as well as Mycenae, and maintained cultural contacts as far afield as Egypt and Syria. They were at the height of their powers in roughly 1350 to 1200 BC, a few generations before the presumed date of Homer’s Trojan War.
Golden walls
In the Odyssey, both Odysseus and his son Telemachus encounter palatial societies that loosely resemble those created by the Mycenaeans. Odysseus’s final journey before he reaches his home on Ithaca takes him to Scheria, kingdom of the Phaeacians. “Golden were the walls that enclosed the elegant home within,” sang Homer of the royal palace there. “And silver were the doorposts that stood on the bronze threshold.” Outside were orchards that were forever in fruit. If there seems to be something magical about this people, it is perhaps a reflection of how the Greeks of Homer’s time felt about their own ancestors.
Odysseus, King of Ithaca, himself owns a palace – a faded palace, but a palace nevertheless. He describes his island as “rugged, but a kind nurse to men”. Its relative rusticity may be accounted for by the fact that it sat on the mere fringes of the Mycenaean world. Travellers and scholars have long noted a discrepancy between Homer’s description of Odysseus’s Ithaca and the geography of modern Ithaki. The island Odysseus called home is described in the poem as low-lying and close to Doulichion, Same and Zakynthos. A convincing argument has been made for identifying it rather with Paliki, a peninsula of Kefalonia, which may have been a separate island in millennia past. It lay at some distance from the sparkling palaces of the Peloponnese.
Odysseus has been away from Ithaca for nearly 20 years – 10 at Troy and 10 travelling – when Telemachus sets off in search of information about him. In the third book of the Odyssey, Athena, his father’s long-term mentor, guides him to Pylos. The comparative grandeur of this city is immediately apparent to the youngster. It was no accident that, in Homer’s epics, Pylos is the kingdom of Nestor, owner of the gold cup – for historically it was, like Mycenae, an exquisitely rich and developed centre.
The palace built at Pylos around 1300 BC had a footprint of nearly 6,000 square metres and featured courtyards, a vast columned hall with a central hearth, and running water supplied by an early form of aqueduct. A single storeroom within the complex contained nearly 3,000 cups. There was also a lozenge-shaped terracotta bath built into a grand bathroom. Homer perhaps had this bathtub in mind when he described Nestor’s daughter Polycaste bathing Telemachus during his visit in the Odyssey. The tub is certainly wondrous for, as Homer says, “he comes out of the bath looking like the immortal gods in his physique”.
WATCH | Daisy Dunn dissects the Odyssey trailer, offering a spoiler-free rundown of the film
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By Homer’s time, this and the other Mycenaean palaces and city walls were but ruins, many of them badly charred. Soon after the putative date of the fall of Troy, conventionally placed in ancient times at 1184/83 BC, the Mycenaeans entered a period of decline that culminated in the destruction of their illustrious centres. Homer’s tale of the Trojan War has sometimes been read as an allegory for the real-life devastation and decline suffered by the inhabitants of Troy and other palatial societies at the end of the Bronze Age.
The Trojan citadel was built and rebuilt many times, but one of its grandest iterations was savaged by fire around 1180 BC. The palace at Pylos was engulfed at a similar date, Mycenae was ravaged not much later, and the sites of Thebes, Iolcus and Tiryns ceased to be inhabited in the same period. The destruction of the palaces – whether by man, natural disaster, or a combination of both – presaged centuries of change, in which the population size of the Peloponnese nearly halved, the art of writing was lost, and the quality of art and grave goods declined.
The Homeric epics belong to the end of this period, when Greece was growing richer again and a new form of alphabetic writing was developed, borrowed and adapted from the Phoenicians. For many of the people of Homer’s time, nevertheless, visiting the sites of Mycenae and Pylos with their splendid ruins would be like us visiting a burned-out Hampton Court Palace if we had known only villages of wattle-and-daub.
The parallel may be extreme, but the archaeology of the Late Bronze Age – including the grand citadel at Troy – certainly inspired awe in Homer. The sheer scale and magnificence of the architecture could only be explained if the men of that time were stronger than their descendants and more important to the gods. And so Homer presents the “wide and very beautiful wall” surrounding Troy as the handiwork of Poseidon, god of the sea. Odysseus’s ally Diomedes is said to lift a boulder so heavy that more than two men of Homer’s own time would be needed to carry it.
Speculation about what the architects of the Bronze Age societies must have been like also helped to shape Homer’s characters. The protagonists of his epics are presented as a heroic race, closer to the gods than their modern counterparts, both physically and temperamentally. Odysseus and his men even eat like gods, feasting regularly on meat, while the real-life eighth-century BC Greeks survived predominantly on vegetables, fish and beans, with meat reserved mainly for religious festivals.
The Odyssey in a nutshell
The plot of Homer's epic
Odysseus is the only man still trying to reach home following the sack of Troy a decade earlier. As the poem begins, he is detained at Ogygia with a nymph named Calypso. The gods hold a council and agree to send Hermes to make Calypso release Odysseus and set him on his way home to Ithaca. Athena approaches Odysseus's son Telemachus in disguise. The young man is surrounded by callous suitors, who have taken up residence in Odysseus's palace and are pressuring his wife, Penelope, to marry one of them. The goddess encourages Telemachus to visit Pylos and Sparta to seek news of his father. Odysseus leaves Calypso's island on a hand-built raft, only to encounter troubles at sea. Poseidon is vengeful because Odysseus had blinded his son Polyphemus. Odysseus survives the god's storms and washes up on Scheria. There, Nausicaa, a princess, leads the bedraggled Odysseus to her parents' palace. Odysseus tells his hosts of the challenges he has faced. Having left Troy with 12 ships of men, he sacked the city of the Ciconians, and came up against the Lotus-Eaters, whose flower could make men forget their homecoming. He travelled to the land of the Cyclopes where he blinded Polyphemus after he had eaten several of Odysseus's companions. The rest escaped his cave by clinging to the underside of the Cyclops' sheep. Further on, they encountered the Laestrygonians, who speared many of the men like fish. On the island of Aeaea, Circe turned some of Odysseus's men into pigs, and made Odysseys her lover for a year. Odysseus then descended to the underworld before sailing past the Sirens, between Scylla and Charybdis, over Thrinacia, isle of the cattle of the Sun, and – the last man standing – on to Ogygia, where the story began. The Phaeacians of Scheria put Odysseus aboard one of their magical ships home. Athena disguises Odysseus as a beggar and Penelope suggests a contest for her hand. Odysseus is the only man who can string his own bow and shoot an arrow through 12 axes. Reuniting with his herdsmen and Telemachus, recently returned from his travels, Odysseus leads the slaughter of the suitors and disloyal female slaves, before making his way to his private quarters. Penelope tests him by asking him to move their bed. In revealing it cannot be moved, Odysseus proves his identity, and can finally embrace his wife in love. The souls of the suitors are dragged to Hades and Athena creates peace between their families and Odysseus.
Bones of the dead
Studying the graves of their ancestors provided the Greeks with further confirmation of their heroism. Some of the wealthiest Mycenaeans were laid to rest in beehive-shaped tombs covered by high mounds. The best-preserved of these tholos tombs, the so-called Treasury of Atreus, had a dome some 40-feet high and was named optimistically after the father of Agamemnon. Analysis of the bones of the dead interred in Bronze Age grave circles at Mycenae confirms that they ate a lot of meat and were on average at least three inches taller than their descendants.
Weapons and armour found in these graves bear a strong resemblance to those described in Homer’s poems. Although iron was the metal most commonly used in warfare in Homer’s time, the poet evoked the heroic age of the past by giving his soldiers bronze spearheads, swords and daggers. Fragments of boar tusk have been found in the Mycenae graves, suggesting some historical basis for Odysseus’s helmet, which Homer describes as having tightly set rows of “white tusks of the bright-toothed wild boar” lining its outside.
A large repository of clay writing tablets, well-preserved at Pylos as a result of being burned by the fires as in a kiln, reveals a historical foundation for many of the jobs described in the Odyssey. What was written in Linear B on the Bronze Age tablets as “wanax” or “leader” became, in Homer’s Greek, “anax”, a position claimed by Telemachus on Ithaca as well as by Agamemnon. Women listed on the tablets as “flour-grinders” find their modern counterparts as grinders of wheat and barley, “the marrow of men”, at mills in the Odyssey. The poem even contains a reference to such tablets as these in what was either an intended tribute to the literacy of the earlier age, or an accidental slip made in the new age of writing in Greece.
- Read more | Three thousand years ago, the ancient Greeks turned an even older civilisation into a monster
Indeed, just occasionally, Homer gave himself away, and traces of his age infringe upon the historical setting of his narrative. The Cyclopes encountered by Odysseus on his voyage home, for example, are characterised as uncivilised because they lack public assemblies for law-making. The eighth and seventh centuries BC witnessed the establishment of the Greek polis (city-state) as an institution in which laws and assemblies would play an important part.
There are also references in the epics to Gorgon shield devices, cult statues and temples, which did not appear in any number until Homer’s time. The development of the epics in fact coincided with the development of hero cults, some of them dedicated to Homer’s own characters.
Meat-eating heroes
Homer’s revival of the worlds of the Late Bronze Age was not always determined or conscious. The use of words such as ‘anax’ for ‘leader’ or ‘lord’ may have been intentional, but other words and verb forms have clearly been preserved by being recited down the long ages of the poems’ composition. It is probable that some of the evocations of Late Bronze Age society were similarly memories and products of hearsay passed down through the ages rather than mere historical staging. The result was a melting pot of old and new that has proven utterly irresistible to readers and historians alike.
Homer’s Odyssey has earned a particular place in our hearts because it is often the poem we encounter first in one form or another. Stories of Odysseus’s adventures on his long journey home – his encounter with the Cyclops Polyphemus, his enjoyment of the Sirens’ song, his passage through Scylla and Charybdis – have often been extracted and retold.
In many ways that journey encapsulated the final voyage away from an antique age of meat-eating heroes, monumental palaces and emotionally invested gods, and toward stark Iron Age modernity and all the promise it held.
Much has been written about Bronze Age collapse, but the story of the homecoming of the last hero, a product of a long-lost era, resonates beyond all others. In returning to Ithaca, Odysseus not only closed a chapter in his life, he opened a door onto the future of the Greek world.
Daisy Dunn is a classicist and the author of books including Homer: A Ladybird Expert Book (2019)
]]>The Odyssey | Podcast serieshttps://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-greece/the-odyssey-podcast-series/2026-07-24T15:20:49.000ZThe Odyssey is one of the most celebrated stories ever told, recounting the tale Greek hero Odysseus’s journey home from the Trojan War. It should have taken him weeks – and it would have done, had he not angered Poseidon. Instead it took him 10 years, an adventure spanning impossible monsters, angsty gods and the unquiet dead.
In this podcast series, Kev Lochun and classicist Daisy Dunn explore the background, hidden meanings and real history within the Odyssey. Over the course of four episodes, discover why we can't say for sure who wrote the poem, his encounter with the one-eyed Cyclops and the so-called witch Circe, and the real Bronze Age world of feasting kings and heroic warriors that inspired Homer's epic poem.
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