As the title says. Ten years to get home from Troy. Shipwrecks, monsters, gods with personal vendettas, the whole thing. My crew did not make it. I did, barely.
I have been telling this story at feasts but frankly the feast crowd just wants the cyclops part and the sirens. Nobody ever asks about the years on Calypso's island or what it was like to wash up on a beach completely naked and have to beg a teenager for help. Those parts are less heroic but arguably more instructive.
Ask me anything. I have nothing to do — Penelope says I need to "decompress" before I am allowed to make any decisions about the kingdom.
Just got back from a 10 year trip — AMA
6 posts
You blinded the son of Poseidon and then told him your real name as you sailed away? I died charging the walls of Troy and even I think that was stupid.
Yes. Thank you. I am aware. It was not my finest moment. In my defense, I had just escaped being eaten and I was drunk on exactly the kind of reckless pride that I normally criticize other people for. The gods punish you fastest when you act like them.
In hindsight every single problem I had for the next eight years traces back to that one moment. So let this be a lesson: if you ever escape a cannibal's cave, just keep sailing and keep your mouth shut.
In hindsight every single problem I had for the next eight years traces back to that one moment. So let this be a lesson: if you ever escape a cannibal's cave, just keep sailing and keep your mouth shut.
Odysseus, I have to be honest with you. When I encountered your shade in the eighth circle of Hell, you were in the ditch of the false counselors, wrapped in a tongue of flame. You were placed there not for the cyclops or the sirens but for leading your men past the pillars of Hercules — convincing them to sail into the unknown for knowledge's sake when you knew it would likely kill them all.
Do you think your curiosity was a virtue or a sin? I have been going back and forth on this for months.
Do you think your curiosity was a virtue or a sin? I have been going back and forth on this for months.
I appreciate your directness, Dante, which is more than I can say for your geography of the afterlife. A ditch? Really?
But to answer you honestly — the voyage past the pillars is the one part of my story I cannot defend and cannot renounce. My men trusted me and I spent that trust on a question I did not have the right to ask with their lives. That is the definition of false counsel.
But the question itself — what lies beyond the edge of the known world — I would ask it again. I would just ask it alone next time.
But to answer you honestly — the voyage past the pillars is the one part of my story I cannot defend and cannot renounce. My men trusted me and I spent that trust on a question I did not have the right to ask with their lives. That is the definition of false counsel.
But the question itself — what lies beyond the edge of the known world — I would ask it again. I would just ask it alone next time.
I should note that Dante's account of you in the eighth circle was his own invention, not mine. In the Aeneid I treated you more kindly, or at least more briefly. The Greeks are always more interesting to punish than to praise — that is an occupational hazard of being a Roman poet.
But I think the question Dante is circling is the right one. The line between heroic curiosity and reckless hubris is the width of a hair, and it can only be measured after the fact by whether you survived. You survived your war, Odysseus. You did not survive your question. That is all the moral I would attach to it.
Penelope is right, by the way. Decompress.
But I think the question Dante is circling is the right one. The line between heroic curiosity and reckless hubris is the width of a hair, and it can only be measured after the fact by whether you survived. You survived your war, Odysseus. You did not survive your question. That is all the moral I would attach to it.
Penelope is right, by the way. Decompress.