Greek Mythology Stories - Myth of Creation, Heracles, Trojan War, Odyssey (3.5 hours ASMR)

hello everyone as an introduction let's begin with our first story of the night the first of many and this one is about the myth of creation at first before the world existed there was nothing only a primary void a nothingness chaos out of the void after an undefined period of time because time itself didn't exist yet primary divine beings emerged they were as much beings as they were essential principles dimensions of this new world in creation the earth geya the abyss tartarus the darkness herebys and love heroes without main assistance gaia gave birth to the sky uranus who then fertilized her from the union of earth and sky twelve beings were born the titans six male and six female after the birth of the twelfth and last of the titans cronus gaia and uranus decided no more titans were to be born but their union kept producing creatures the giant cyclops with a single eye or the monstrous hundred-handed ones other giants with 50 heads and 100 hands they were all thrown into a tartarus the abyss by uranus who disowned his monstrous offspring this made gayer furious she convinced her latest born titan cronus to castrate his father he did this and he became the ruler of the titans with his sister and wife female titan rear he ruled over the other titans forming a court around them cronus power was undisputed but he couldn't find peace because he had betrayed his father and he feared that his offspring would do the same so each time rhea gave birth he snatched up the children and ate them several of their children including poseidon demeter hera and hades were eaten this way but ria hated this and she tricked her husband when another son juice was born she wrapped a stone in a baby's blanket and cronus ate the stone instead of his son years and years passed hidden from his father jews became an adult and resolved to seek revenge against his murderer's father one day zeus poisoned cronus drink which caused titan to vomit cronus threw up all his children and the stone which had been sitting in his stomach instead of jews for all these years zeus joined by his brothers and sisters challenged cronus and the titans to war for the kingship of the gods and at last with the help of the cyclops that they had freed from tartarus the children were victorious cronus and the titans were imprisoned in tartarus for the second time the order of things had been turned upside down by your son betraying his father and jews who now ruled the world with the other gods around him at the same concern a prophecy said that his firstborn would be a god greater than he so when his first wife metis a descendant of the first titans became pregnant he swallowed her that this didn't stop their child from being born goddess athena burst forth from jew's head already fully grown and dressed for war nevertheless athena was accepted the moon gods and their circle expanded aphrodite aries apollo and many more were born from two siblings or they appeared spontaneously from primordial principles the gods lived on mount olympus under the eye of jews and with this new order the first age the age of gods came to an end then began the age of gods and mortals the world had been populated with weak creatures that had a ridiculously short lifespan humans gods mingled freely with them falling in love with humans and producing demigods or heroes they also punish them or educated them demeter gave them agriculture hestia looked after their earth some of the god's secrets were also revealed to mankind such as fire stolen by prometheus the son of the titans and given to men as time passed the gods became less interested in interfering in human affairs they withdrew to mental imbues and would now only intervene punctually to help or punish depending on their interest in mortals or just on their whims and this is how the age of gods and mortals came to an end a new age began the heroic age heroes sons of gods and mortals accomplished extraordinary feats that would stay in memories for thousands of years sometimes with the help of gods war against their will in this new heroic age perseus theseus valerifen heracles jason hector achilles ajax or odysseus explored conquered thought and sometimes met their tragic fate so tonight we're going to spend our time together in the company of gods heroes and mortals and relieve episodes of the grand fresco that this heroic age of greek mythology is there is going to be dozens of stories that are part of bigger epic tales the labors of heracles the idiot and the trojan war and the odyssey in between the stories i'll tell you about the origins of greek mythology its functions in greek society how greek and later roman literature started a tradition of storytelling and archetypes of stories that are still very much with us today there is a lot to say but we are going to take things in order and as usual you can navigate the story using the timestamps in the first command if you fall asleep and wish to return at another time no effort is required on your side just let me do the work so adopt a comfortable position and feel free to close your eyes anytime you just need the sound of my voice to guide you the stories i'm going to tell you are already available on streaming platforms like spotify or apple music if that suits you better there is a link in the first comment and you can also listen to them on patreon as podcasts as a patron of this channel on top of supporting it you can also download audios and videos including this one to have them offline and access new posts updates and surveys every week so first we will follow the story of heracles condemned to accomplish extraordinary labors across greece and beyond to redeem his sin then we will relieve the trojan war which account is based on the idiot and multiple other tales that were added later and after the trojan war we will follow the incredible journey home of king odysseus one of the greek heroes of the trojan war has told india odyssey so let's begin once upon a time juice the king of gods had an affair with a mortal woman he was used to it and he had fathered various children with mortals including perseus the grandfather of the young beauty he now vince's alchemy that was her name had a face and eyes that were as charming and as irresistible as aphrodite's the goddess of love and beauty her wisdom was surpassed by no one and it was said that she could please men like no woman before her alchemy was married to amphitrian one day her husband went to war and deuce took the opportunity to trick her into sleeping with him using his powers he persuaded her that he was amphitriane returning early from an expedition and he spent the night with her making her pregnant on the same night her real husband returned and alec mini understood she had been tricked but they also slept together and she became pregnant again now burying twins from two different fathers but twos had a wife too goddess era and when she found out what her divine husband had done again she entered in a generous rage and swore to get revenge from the soon-to-be-born child of her husband zeus was a trickster and so would she the king of gods knew that alec mini was about to give birth so hiro persuaded him to swear an oath that the next male to be born in the house of perseus would become high king thinking he would grant the title to his own son juice was happy to oblige but as soon as he swore the oath hiro went on with her plan she knew that another son was to be born soon in the house of persia's eurystheus she hurried to alegmini's dwelling and slowed the birth of her twins by forcing the goddess of childbirth to sit cross-legged with her clothing tied in knots near the soon-to-be mother this goes to the twins to stay trapped in the womb and then she calls durieth tears to be born prematurely making him the high king in place of jew's son she too could fool her adulterous husband whose son would have no title alec mini could finally have her twins the son of jews named alcides and the son of amphidrian i figures for fear of heroes revenge alex mini exposed the infant but he was taken up by goddess athina who often protected heroes the sons of gods with mortals athena brought him to hera who didn't recognize the child and who also had a motherly instinct out of pity for the abandoned child she nursed him but the baby had so much vigor and circled so strongly on her breast that he goes to her pain she pushed him away and her milk sprayed across the heavens forming the milky way a thinner protein fent back to his real mother and he was raised by his mortal parents sadis was a strong and brave little boy but his parents knew that hero had not been abused and was still after him she once sent two snakes to the twins bedroom to buy the sides but the boy good them without fear broke their necks and was later found by his parents playing with them in an attempt to protect him from the goddess wrath they renamed him he reckless glory of hearer in the hope that this would appease her anger it didn't and after sending various old deals his way she plotted her big revenge heracles had reached adulthood and in the city of thieves he had married the king's daughter megura and had three children with her his happiness and love for his family were unbearable to hear her she inspired a feat of madness inherently in his uncontrollable rage he killed his entire family his wife and his children devastated by what he had done heracles fled to the oracle of delphi the ancient sanctuary where resided pitya the priestess of apollo the oracle who could see the threats of the future and guide important decisions hero was still unsatisfied and in a new blow she inspired the oracle so that it would direct heracles to serve urethers the high king the same uretheus who owed his title to hiro's actions when she had accelerated his birth heracles was said that his sin would be redeemed if he served urathius for 10 years and accomplished any task he would be instructed to perform heracles accepted and went to urethers and he started a series of extraordinary accomplishments that would cement his legend the twelve labors king urethers accepted to give him various feats also called labors and the first one was to slay the nimian lion in the northeastern part of the peloponnese was a town called nemia that lived in terror of a monstrous lion a creature that couldn't be killed with weapons because it was protected by a magical golden fur its clouds were sharper than the sharpest sword and they could cut through any armor heracles hoped he could kill it at a distance with arrows because he didn't know about its impenetrable fur but when he found a lion and shot several arrows at it he understood this wooden work as dear arrows bounced off the creature herakles needed another plan at night the lion lived in a cave with two entrances heracles blocked one so that the creature wouldn't be able to escape he was armed with a club that he used to stun the beast and then he strangled it with his bare hands making the magical golden fur users after slaying the lion he tried to skin it with a knife but he couldn't pierce the fur even after sharpening the knife with a stone goddess athena was watching him and she inspired him to use one of the clouds because they were the sharpest weapons in the world and it worked here eclisse turned the fur into a goat that he wore from this momentum a coat that was impervious to the elements and most weapons and would protect him for the rest of his adventures he returned to urethers carrying the carcass of the lion on his shoulders to the surprise and terror of the king eurytheus told him that from now on his labors would be increasingly difficult heracles was often depicted in the antiquity and after with this fur cape and his club this is the nemean lion's skin in this first labor he shows the kind of courage physical strength and intelligence that are typical of greek heroes but what is a hero actually because this is a word that is used a lot and its meaning has evolved a long history nowadays her definition of a hero could be a person who is admired for extraordinary acts of bravery or fine qualities it can be a real person dead or alive or even a fictional character and so fictional that sometimes the hero of a story is just the main protagonist regardless of his or her capabilities and actions in greek antiquity the meaning of hero was more restrictive heroes were warriors with an exemplary life living and often dying in the pursuit of honor they were commonly extraordinarily gifted and had divine blood so heroes were mythical rather than real characters they belonged in the mythology and literature and even a very brave real greek warrior would never have been called her hero so among the various characters to various persons real or fictional that we may call heroes nowadays the modern sense of heroes as fictional characters like superheroes or the main protagonists in fiction in general is actually the closest to the ancient meaning of the word for the greeks and another characteristic of ancient greek heroes was that they were always flowed they could behave with arrogance almost like children they could be too naive sometimes foolhardy they could embark on expeditions or ruin people's lives for trivial reasons but generally contrary to gods in ancient literature heroes evolved they didn't stand for a fixed concept or an aspect of the world like gods did greek god says in many other pantheons represented or dominated something war thunder the seas the skies love death they are depicted in ancient greek literature with human-like characteristics in the sense that they have feelings they have passions they fight between them they have a personality but they never change heroes are much closer to humans and they have a narrative associated to their existence they always go on a journey where they discover the world and themselves they learn they face dilemmas and they build a legacy that will survive them the archetypal hero apart from heracles is a achilles who fought in the trojan war on the side of the attackers the greeks he is the central character of the iliad the tale by a greek poet homer of the fight between the trojans and the armies led by king agamemnon hercules had superhuman strength on the battlefield and he was protected by some of the gods especially athena but he was also whimsical able to lose his humanity and become uselessly cruel for example he withdrew from the war and came back only to avenge his friend and lover killed by hector another hero and trojan prince who thought on the other side her kitties killed hector and dragged his body around the walls of the city to humiliate an enemy that was already dead he was known for his uncontrollable rage that made him act unwisely and he was clearly depicted as flowed imperfect the main heroes were worshiped as half gods they had their temples and we know their lives and mythical accomplishments through literature which developed multifaceted characters and told stories like probably no other culture before at least in a written form that we can know of and because heroes change and they can die they are relatable they can be role models and they can serve to tell cautionary tales this makes them a bridge between mythology religion and literature their stories were not only entertaining they were edifying too maybe after the greco-roman antiquity when these characters resided in popular culture and disappeared in religion their cult disappeared the saints replaced them culturally be it in the christian or muslim traditions there are saints whose lives are exemplary but not exemplary because they were born perfect rather because they went on a heroic journey of a spiritual nature they accomplished great things miracles they are not heroes in the classical sense of the term but maybe they played the same role in a popular culture as a replacement of this antique heroic figures that were very famous in the antiquity in ancient greece and later in rome heroes were a big part of popular culture they were absolutely not obscure characters only known by a minority but we have many more things to discover about mythology and anti-culture so for now let's return to heracles and his second labor the second labor was a trap prepared by hero who kept tormenting heroglis she had raised a terrifying monster just to slay heracles the hydra and she inspired eurystheus to demand heracles kill it the hydra was a water monster looking like a giant snake with multiple heads its there was a lake the lake of leona which was known to be one of the entrances to the underworld the monster was unapproachable because its breath was poisonous and it was so toxic that just the scent of the creature was deadly it had multiple heads and even more terrifying was the creature's ability to regrow them when a head was chopped two new heads replaced it so that the creature became more and more powerful as it felt only oblivious warriors would have dared attack such an invincible monster upon reaching the swamp near lake lerner the creature's lair heracles covered his face with a cloth so that the poisonous fumes could not affect him the hydra's lair was a spring a cave where it stayed most of the time and emerged from time to time to terrorize the villages around herakles shot flaming arrows at the cave to force the monster to appear and when it did he confronted it the fight began and heracles repeatedly chopped heads but more kept replacing them due to the monster's evil regeneration powers the fight looked hopeless and short of solutions hereklies had to back down and the hydra returned to its lair realizing that he couldn't beat the hydra in this way herreklis called for help on his nephew the son of his twin his nephew ayolos was astute and inspired by athena he had the idea of cauterizing the open stamps immediately after heracles would chop their heads which would prevent new heads from regrowing they returned together to the hydra's lair and confronted it again but hero was watching and seeing that heracles was now winning the struggle she sent a giant crab to the scene to distract him but heracles crushed it and now the hydra had only one head left its immortal head that would live on even separated from the body the thinner gave her heracles a magical golden sword and with it he could cut off the last head that kept the creature alive then he placed the head under a rock and dipped his arrows in the hydra's poisonous blood his second task was complete and again he came out of it stronger he returned to urethers for his next assignment the hydra like the lion before was a tectonic creature maybe you've heard this term associated with the world of h.p lovecraft the author of horror novels the word kutonic means subterranean there were several words in greek for earth one that is more famous is gaia which refers to the surface of the land kuton is another word for earth but it means in or under the earth so hectonic or tonyan creature came from under the earth or from the underworld but they were catholic deities too deities living under the earth such as adas the god of the dead and the king of the underworld or persephone the daughter of the goddess of fertility and agriculture demeter who had been captured by aiders this catonic gods were worshiped and offered sacrifices differently from olympian gods the pantheon of gods governed by zeus who lived on mount olympus the origin of this distinction between hectonic and olympian gods and the way their girls perform their rituals is not well known some archaeologists have supposed that kutonic deities could be remnants of the religion that existed in greece many centuries before the emergence of what we call greek civilization it is believed that the proto-greeks arrived in the south of the bergens in the third millennium bc they settled in greece but little is known of their predecessors the populations probably mixed and we don't know much either about their reciprocal contributions to the emergence of greek culture but maybe to an extent the myth and the religion in ancient greece were influenced by the pre-greek or pre-healing cultures but back to the labors because i still have many to tell you heracles had triumphed once again against a terrifying creature uretheus was inspired by hero and like her wanted he released to fail so as monsters couldn't get them rid of him they came up with a new task one that would not involve killing a beast and that heracles would really be unable to complete in greece and even yet another fantastical creature who hinned a female deer that was sacred to artemis the goddess of the hunt and animals the hint had golden ankles and hooves of prawns it was a shy and harmless animal but it was so fast that it was said it could overrun an arrow in flight jurisdice speaking for hero ask heracles to capture the hind and that looked like a perfect plant the hint was too fast to be captured and heracles strength would be useless but even if he did capture it this would anger artemis for the desecration of her animal and she would punish him for the offense probably by death it seemed to the plan couldn't fail whatever heroclies would do so as his third labor heracles was sent captured a hint he had begun the search when one day as he woke up he saw the shine of the hint's antlers and started to chase it on foot every time he would come close to it the animal accelerated and easily escaped days passed weeks passed heracles kept chasing the kind all over grace and even beyond to the land of the hyperboreans north of greece month passed and finally one day his perseverance was rewarded the hind had a second of distraction and he took advantage of it the animal was caught heracles returned with the hind but on his way back he encountered artemis and her brother apollo he begged the goddess for forgiveness explaining that catching the hint was part of his penance and that he hadn't chosen this labour he promised to return it as soon as the animal would have been presented to urethers artemis was not as bitter and vindictive as hera so she understood and forgave him eurystheus and hero's plan had failed again when herrigles presented the hint to the king he was told the creature would become part of his collection of exotic animals but heracles could not let this happen because he had promised to return it so he accepted to end it over on the condition that eurystheus himself came out and take it from him the king came out but it was a trick heracles freed the hand and it's printed back to its mistress leaving no chance to the king to catch it heracles blamed eurystheus for not being quick enough and he could get away with the tricky situation here was in there are different versions of this labor in other versions here grease captures the hind when it is asleep or it traps it with a net because as the rest of mythology these tales were told and rewritten by multiple others greek initially and then roman rome adopted a great deal of greek myth and gods together with many other aspects of greek culture and science the 12 labors of heracles were initially 10 or maybe even less but as new chapters were added to the story it changed eurystheus would have demanded ten neighbours this is a point of the story that was solid well established but as new chapters new labors were added authors needed to reconcile the ten labels storyline with a tradition that now contained 12 different tasks performed by heracles so later after the classical period of greek culture a little variation was added two labors were disqualified by urethers the slaying of the hydra because heracles had received help from his nephew and another one i'll tell you about later this is why heracles had to go through 12 labors to finish the list of 10 heuristics and hero gave him there are also episodes involving centaurs half men half horse creatures and the wisest of all of them kyren who had received the gift of immortality or prometheus the titan credited with stealing fire from the gods to give it to men these characters appear in different labels depending on the versions but they're going to be featured in our next label because after three labors heroclies was not even halfway into his penance and he was now ready for his fourth assignment the fast running creature had been no match to herocles so this time eurystheus and hira return to a dangerous animal in the primitive islands of arcadia a place where no humans in their right mind would go because it was populated by wild creatures that ate human flesh lived a monstrous bore a giant wild pig the animal stayed on mount herimentos but sometimes it entered in a rage that made it run around the country and lay waste to the farmer's fields the wild boar was dangerous and so were the inhabitants of mount terrymentos a large group of centaurs live there with their chief kyren hereogles may be able to defeat one monster at a time but what could he do against dozens of monsters so they instructed the hero to capture the boar what the conspirators ignored was that heracles was friends with followers a kind and hospitable center he visited his old friend on his way to mount herimentos they soon went to a fullest cavern to eat and heroclis asked for wine fellas had a jar of wine an ancient gift from dionysius the god of wine making and madness followers agreed to append a jar but that was foolish of him the smell of wine attracted the other centaurs they started to drink and became mad centaurs were only albumin they were naive and brutal creatures so they attacked heracles our hero had to shoot at them with his poisonous arrows which made them retreat to kyren's cave kyren was immortal and the wisest among centaurs so once the creatures had been scattered heracles visited him to gain advice on how to catch the boar because the animal was at the same time very fast and very strong kyren told him to drive it into thick snow the snow would slow down the bore and exhaust it and so it was done here scoot the ball banned it and returned to your tears the king was so frightened of the monster that he hid inside a half-buried jar used for storage and baked therapies to get rid of the beast which the hero did it seemed that killing or capturing creatures was definitely not the kind of task that would make hercules fail so three days later when he had recovered his temper urethers gave him a new labour he was sent to clean the stables of king orgias argias owned the largest stables in greece and they housed the single greatest number of cattle in the country the livestock was also immortal and produced an enormous quantity of manure the task of cleaning these tables looked so discouraging that they had never been cleaned it was even impossible to enter the stables and they were known all around greece for being the filthiest place in the entire country heracles had gained glory capturing or slaying monsters and eurystheus understood it had been a mistake to give him the opportunity to shine cleaning stables would not only be impossible it was humiliating here eclipse left two kingoja spanners eurytheus rubbed his hands with glee already imagining how the glorious hero would be ridiculed herakles visited hodgias and offered to clean his stables the king accepted and even offered her atleast one tenth of his cattle if the job was finished in one day he didn't think for a second this was possible but all had underestimated iraklis ingeniosity instead of trying to clean the stables directly he used nature to do the work there were two rivers passing nearby here atleast dug ditches and diverted them to make them pass through the stables so in just a few hours the waters had taken away everything and left the stables as new when he returned towards to claim his prize one-tenth of the cattle the king reacted angrily he refused to honor the agreement arguing that the rivers not heracles had done the work the king's sons supported their father except one five years her eclipse killed them all and gave the kingdom to failures he then returned to uristias but like odious uristios refused to discount the success of this labor because the waters had done the work and additionally because heracles had been paid for his work with his labor of slaying the hydra also disqualified because he had received help hereklies had completed five tasks but only three were finally accepted leaving seven more the main theme in this fifth labor is the use of ingeniousity intelligence to achieve what's otherwise looked impossible this is a recurring theme in greek mythology and so is the idea that nature can be put to work by man to demultiply his output and his well-being this conception of the world that nature is a force that can bear and should be tamed by the intellect and technique is a specificity of greek culture technically it is something all civilizations did of course agriculture tools or the use of fire are ways to use nature to our advantage but the greeks theorized and praised it this conception was passed to other anti-cultures especially to the romans and it became a trait of western culture for better or worse more than 25 centuries ago the seeds of this relation between mankind and nature were already present in this myth not only the labors of heracles the myth of prometheus about the transmission of fire stolen from the gods to men also carries the belief that through the acquisition of knowledge and technique men elevate themselves they gain power to act on nature and come closer to the status of gods through this elevation this ingeniousity would come handy again in the sixth neighbor for his sixth labor eurystheus center regress your swarm of birds dwelling in a swamp in a region called steam valley these birds were a plague to the entire region their big swear of bronze their feathers were of metal and sharp they could launch them at their victims and everywhere they went they left poisonous dung had migrated to a swamp in steam failure bred and multiplied from their nesting place they swarmed over the countryside they ate crops and fruits and they attacked people so might try to hunt them but the birds had wounded and killed their attackers with their pigs that were sharp enough to pierce any armor erikris walked to the marsh where they nested but he couldn't reach the nests of the birds because the ground would not support his weight once again he was in trouble but goddess athena was watching she gave him a rattle that could be very noisy and heracles understood how he could make good use of it he climbed to the top of a mountain that overhang the swamp and shook the rattle the birds were frightened into the air quick as lightning heracles shot many of them with his poisonous arrows the rest escaped far away never to break the region again he brought some of the dead birds to uratheas as proof of his success and was now ready for his seventh labor the six first labors had taken place in the peloponnese the south of greece except for the hand of the hind that had taken heracles further to the north for this new assignment hera and uretheius decided it was time to send heracles far away to capture the cretan bull on the island of crete the kingdom of miners for a long time already this bull had a terrorized creed and miners was not innocent of it at the beginning of his reign in crete he had prayed posadan to god of the seas and protector of crete to send him a white bull as a sign of his right to rule rather than any of his brothers posadan had sent minus the bull larger than any other and white as snow with the understanding that the animal would be sacrificed to him when minus saw the bull he found it so extraordinary so fine that he didn't want to sacrifice it so he sent the animal to his herds and substituted another inferior bull for sacrifice but gods couldn't be fooled so easily posadan saw that the king had tried to keep the gift and he decided to punish him he has got us aphrodite to make the queen pacifier fall in love with the pool and aphrodite made it happen of this unnatural affair a half man half bull creature was born the minotaur then posadan passed on his rage to the pool causing it to sow destruction upon the island desperate about what he could do miners consulted the oracle at delphi after which she ordered the construction of the labyrinth to hold the minotaur that the minotaur's father the bull was still loose and had been raking havoc on great for years it leveled walls destroyed orchards and uprooted crops miners gave helice permission to take the bull away heracles captured it and shipped it to urethers this chapter of the myth refers to the cult of the bull which was very ancient in crete and the south west of anatolia we know it dates back several thousand years thanks to archaeologic discoveries the iconography around the bull was very present in minoan culture which was the culture of creeds before it was integrated to the greek world the bull was a tonic animal that is to say from the underground you remember we talked about tonic cults earlier and greek myth about bulls such as the cretan bull and the minotaur are probably a product of the integration of these sculptures but actually this labor of heracles was added later after most of the other labors and maybe as a result of the connection between crete and the city of haitans another famous myth that i told you about in another story is the labyrinth and the minotaur it also includes this connection between haters and greed because the starting point in the myth of the labyrinth is this mythical tradition of sending young athenians to the labyrinth where they would be offered in sacrifice to the minotaur hereklies was now ready for his eighth labor and this one would take him to trace to the north east of greece urether sent him to capture and bring back a terrifying herd of four mares four horses that fed on human flesh and belonged to the king of trey's diomedes the king fed them with servants that had displeased him or guests that expected to find shelter in his palace and ran to their death instead diomedes was a half god to night heracles the son of iris the god of war and a princess from his father he had inherited the cruelty and brutality and there was no negotiating with them the males had to be stolen hiro and uristias hoped that this new trap would finally get rid of heroclies not only were the four males dangerous so was their owner and he was a king and a half god heracles travelled to thrace he took the horses but soon he was chased by a diomedes and his men in their stable the horses were kept tethered to a manger but as soon as he freed them they became hard to control and the hero needed all his strength to keep them together and avoid being eternal alive with the horses biding with a chain he traveled by day and rested by night on his way back to greece but the king approached and heracles had to fight him he won the fight killed diomedes with an axe and fed the body to the horses to calm them as soon as they finished eating their previous owner the horses became calmer heracles took the opportunity to bind their mouth shut and he could easily take them back to uris tears the king dedicated the horses to hera and this is how heracles completed his eighth labor but the hero was not done with harris offsprings yet for his ninth labor eurystheus was willing to please his daughter she wanted the belt of hippolyta the queen of the amazons hippolyta was a daughter of iris and her father had offered her dispelled as a symbol of her power over the feared tribe of the amazons who tried off warrior women the amazons lived far away from greece on the coasts of the black sea and herakles gathered a group of companions to set sail to their land when they arrived quinnipito received him well as the amazons respected strength and had heard of his exploits she agreed to give him the belt but hiro was watching again and would not let him succeed so easily she took the appearance of an amazon and walked among them sowing seeds of distrust she claimed heracles came to abduct the queen or kill her the amazons were alarmed and set off on horseback to confront him but when heregree saw them approaching he thought hippolyta had been plotting all along and would not handle the belt in a rage he killed the queen took the belt and escaped by the sea the amazons could not go after him on horseback and he managed to return safely to the court of uristars with the belt accomplishing his ninth labor the amazons were a recurring myth in ancient greece depending on the otters they were located in different places the north or the south of anatolia of turkey or even the coast of libya they appeared in the georgian war on the side of troy they vote against the greeks maybe the myth has roots in the existence of female warriors in the steps north of the black sea tombs of such warriors have been discovered but the term amazon has passed to modern language to name wire women in general it is also the reason why the largest forest and river in the world are called amazon when the first explorers arrived in brazil they named them after the mythical land maybe after seeing native people with long hair that made them think about female warriors the myth of the amazons has also sparked interest among psychologists and psychoanalysts because it obviously relates to the sexuality and the representations of women in greek society ancient greece was extremely patriarchal women could not be citizens participate in public life they are present in mythology but always in a secondary position they always matter more because of the feelings and actions they inspire to men they are never subjects in the sense that they cannot modify their destiny thanks to their will or their abilities in these contexts amazons are a weird and a bit scary myth they don't need men they go to war they form their own political community for the male authors who wrote about them they probably reflect a mix of repulsion and fascination as a counter model of greek society now that heracles had returned from the land of the amazons he was ready for his tenth labor eurystheus and hira decided to send him even further away this time to the extreme west of the mediterranean sea he was asked to obtain the cattle of gerion a giant who dwelt on an island where the sun set gerion was a terrifying monster with three heads he honed her two-headed hand which was the brother of cerberus the three headed down that watched the doors of hell but his cattle was the most magnificent in the world that was a long journey and heracles had to cross the libyan desert to travel to carrion's island frustrated at the heat and exhausted by the distance he shot an arrow at the sun out of anger helios the sun was impressed by his courage and gave him a gift a magical golden cup that he used to sail across the sea from west to east each night thanks to the cup heracles could arrive at the island in a few hours but as soon as he landed the two-headed dog attacked him the hound was no match for heracles who killed him with one blow of his club the noise had attracted gerion who sprung into action he is a three heads wearing three helmets the giant was way too big to be vanquished with a club and his multiple heads made it impossible to hide from him but heracles had his poisonous arrows he shot one so forcefully that it pierced the giant's forehead girion was dead and ericktes could return to greece with the cattle but the journey was very long and hera was there again to stop him she sent a gadfly to bite the animals causing them to scatter it took heracles a full year to retrieve them all in another attempt to stop him hear a send a flood that raised the level of a river so much that heracles could not cross with the animals but the hero was never short of resources and energy he piled stones into the river to make it shallower after several more months he finally reached the court of eurystheus where the cattle was sacrificed to the whimsical goddess heracles was now only two labors away from completing his penance and hero and uretheius were beginning to worry that he would succeed how to make things even more difficult for him maybe by sending him to a place nobody could locate this is how the idea for his eleventh labor appeared urethers demanded heregreens bring three of the golden apples from the garden of the desperadies the esperidis were the nymphs of evening the daughters of the sunset who lived in the west these supernatural beings were the daughters of titan atlas they looked after and orchard a garden that belonged to hiro where extraordinary golden apples grew the goddess was very fond of this garden when her marriage with jews took place different deities came with nuptial presence for her among them the goddess of earth gaia who were third branches having golden apples on them hiro greatly admired these branches and begged gaia to plant them in her garden the asperities were given the task of taking care of the garden but they occasionally picked apples for themselves so to watch the nymphs hiro also placed a never-sleeping dragon as a guard the location was far away to the west where the mediterranean sea and the world ended it was unknown and well protected there was no way heracles would triumph this time the hero didn't know where to look for the garden so he went to one of the most ancient gods in the world the primordial father of waters the old man of the sea a god older than posadan himself the old man of the sea had no sympathy for era and he helped him indicating the way to the garden of the experience when heracles arrived he found atlas the titan who carried the heavens on his shoulders and he tricked atlas into retrieving golden apples for him he offered the titan to hold up the heavens for a while so that atlas could go take the apples in the garden atlas accepted and the experience or the dragon did not worry as he was the father of the nymph when atlas returned with three stolen apples he decided that he didn't want to take the heavens back and would instead let heregrees do the work but erickles had thought about it before he accepted to let hitler's go to greece deliver the apples to eurestiers on the condition that the titan would take the heavens back just for a short moment so that he would be able to adjust his cloak more comfortably the naive titan agreed and took the heavens back but heracles just walked away with the apples leaving atlas to his fate the elephant's labor was completed eurystheus and hero were dismayed again at his triumph and tried to imagine the most difficult labor they could think of and they came up with his 12th labor heracles was asked to go to the underworld and capture cerberus the three-headed giant dog that was the guardian of the gates of the underworld the underworld was a terrifying place where aiders reigned and dictated the rules mortals kept trapped there and even heroes like theseus had not been able to return to prepare for his descent into the underworld heroclis went to hayden's to be initiated to its mysteries god's hermes and athena guided him along so that he would be ready heracles descended through a cavern that was one of the entrances to the underworld and after some time in this dark place he found aidas and asked to god for permission to bring cerberus to the surface hades knew about his labors and how hero had repeatedly tried to cheat against heracles he gave his permission but on one condition the hero would have to subdue the beast without using weapons heracles overpowered cerberus with his bare hands and succeeded again then went up and returned to the peloponnese to bring it to uristias the king was terrified again and fled to the big jar where he had already hidden when presented with the wild boar he was so scared that he offered herekies to release him from any further labors if he returned cerberus to the underworld and so it was done after years of service to eurystheus and twelve impossible tasks in which he had succeeded thanks to his bravery strength and intelligence heracles was finally free and washed off the scenes hero had made him commit but the twelve labors had not only erased the past they had made him stronger more knowledgeable and wiser through this initiatory journey he had learnt about the world about himself he had thought and so have we as we followed his footsteps once upon a time so long ago that men almost lost the memory of these events the king of gods jews became annoyed at the quantity of humans and half gods populating the earth since he had overthrown his own father cronus and began to rule the earth together with other olympian gods men had multiplied and among them walked too many heroes and demigods born from the relationships between gods and humans zeus himself was not the last to get involved with humans he was unfaithful to his wife era and from his relationships with mortal women many children were born adding to his worries he learned from a prophecy that he would be overthrown by one of his sons like he had overthrown cronus before and like cronus had overthrown his own father uranus at the dawn of times the threat was serious and yet another prophecy stated that a son of theatres a young and beautiful sea nymph jews had fallen in love with would become greater than his father in order to get rid of all these problems tooth came up with a plan first he ordered the theatres to be married to an elderly king pillius and he made sure all the gods were invited to the wedding when all the gods arrived bringing many gifts zeus ordered hermes the messenger of god to stop iras the goddess of discord at the door iris was a minor deity that she had the power of creating strife of sowing the seeds of discord between gods or between men insulted hear us threw a gift of her own from the door just like juice had expected a golden apple on which was inscribed to the fairest this apple became the most desired prize in the assembly and three goddesses immediately claimed it for themselves athena hero and aphrodite they argued over the apple each of them convinced that it should be theirs but they couldn't come to an agreement and none of the other gods would dare to give an opinion in favor of one for fear of antagonizing the other two zeus smiled under his beard as the first part of his plan was working just as expected he had manipulated the three goddesses into a bitter feud eventually he ordered hermes to lead the three goddesses to paris the prince of troy and he ruled that paris would decide to whom the golden apple should belong troy was the most powerful wealthiest city of all cities and it was protected by walls so high and so strong that no army could ever dream of defeating the city paris was a prince of troy but he didn't know it he was raised as a shepherd and kept away from the city because of a prophecy saying that he would be the downfall of troy as an anonymous and unknown shepherd there was no way he could fulfill the prophecy and threaten the powerful city led by hermes the three goddesses went batting in a spring and appeared to him naked in their perfection for the sake of winning paris approval and get the apple paris was unable to decide between them so after a while the goddesses resorted to bribes athena offered paris bravery wisdom and the abilities of the greatest warriors as the goddess of military glory and knowledge she thought there was no way paris would refuse here was all about power and influence she offered paris control of all asia and more power a human king had ever had but aphrodite the goddess of beauty and love also had weapons and she knew the heart of young men she offered him the love of the most beautiful woman in the world helen of sparta helen was married to menelaus the king of sparta and her legendary beauty was famous all across the known world paris couldn't resist and he awarded the apple to aphrodite to the anger of athina and hira he couldn't know it yet but doing so he had accomplished jew's plan to bring wall to the world and as the prophecy said he would be the downfall of troy and many warriors and heroes would also die because of the folly of gods and men alike so paris had granted the golden apple to aphrodite and his prize would be the love of the most beautiful woman in the world helen of sparta helen's beauty was of divine origin her father was juice himself and her mother was leader a princess who had become a spartan queen zeus was used to trick mortal women into sleeping with him when he fancied them to approach leader he had taken the form of a white swan unafraid by the bird and seduced by its elegance the princess had let zeus have his way with her from this relationship helen was born and she was raised by the king of sparta as his daughter the king ignored he was not her real father helen was already a charming child but as the years went by and she turned into a woman her beauty grew in fame all around greece and she soon had scores of suitors willing to do anything to marry her her father was unwilling to choose one of them for fear that all the others would retaliate violently among these suitors was odysseus of ethica an island and one of the damaris kingdoms of greece odysseus may not have been the strongest or the bravest of all the suitors but he was the most astute and on top of helen he had also set his eyes on another spartan woman penelope in exchange for the support of the king of his own suit towards penelope he came up with a plan that would solve the dilemma get helen married without retaliation from all the other suitors if they wanted to have a chance to be chosen all suitors would have to swear an oath that they would defend the marriage of heaven regardless of whom the king would choose this way none of them would be able to deny the wedding and retaliate once helen's hurtspend would have been announced all the suitors swore the oath to stay in the race and the king could now make his choice as promised odysseus got his support for his suit of penelope and could take her back to etika the king of sparta chose many layers a man with great wealth and power menelaus had promised aphrodite a sacrifice a hundred oxen if he won helen and he had sent his brother agamemnon petition for her his wealth and influence made him a good political choice however many layers forgot about his promise of a sacrifice to aphrodite and the goddess became irritated at him helen had two brothers castor and pollocks and one sister clayton nostra one of the brothers should have inherited the throne of sparta but they became gods both of them and so the throne went to helen's husband menelaus this is how menelaus became the new king of sparta after the death of helen's father clytemnestra helen's sister was married to agamemnon menelaus brother and agamemnon became king of my city another greek kingdom it seemed always well the two brothers had married to two sisters succession issues were solved and menelaus couldn't be happier with his beautiful wife but they ignored zeus plan the feud between goddesses and the judgment of paris which had led to helen being promised by aphrodite to the trojan prince by promising helen to paris aphrodite had not only won the contest for the golden apple she had also taken revenge on many layers for forgetting about his promise to sacrifice a android oxen in her honor as these events unfolded in sparta paris had returned to troy now knowing that he was a prince of the city and he had been recognized as such it was now time for him to claim his prize the love of helen of sparta troy was not a part of the greek world the greeks or archaeans these are synonyms lived in and around the peloponnese and on islands on either side of it in the union and aegean seas troy was a foreign city and kingdom in the east on the coasts of anatolia so under the cover of a diplomatic mission paris travelled to sparta while king menelaus was away he had gone to great aphrodite was watching ready to deliver helen to paris just before paris entered the royal palace in sparta she instructed her son heroes the little winked god of desire to shoot an arrow at helen the arrows of euros made people fall immediately in love with the next person they saw and made them physically attracted in a way that couldn't be suppressed as soon as helen saw paris she fell in love with him taking advantage of the king's absence the two lovers sailed to troy twos and other gods watched these events from mount olympus and the king of gods was satisfied with how the seeds of discold he had manipulated iras into sowing we are now beginning to flourish one of the most powerful herkian kings the king of sparta menelaus had been humiliated by a foreigner taking his wife with her consent and all of helen's suitors had sworn to defend her marriage to many layers following odysseus trick to make them accept it they were now bound to take part in the inevitable war that would oppose the akiens and the trojans to take back helen and restore menelaus honor in a desperate attempt to avoid the war menelaus traveled to troy with his closest ally had his ears they tried to recover helen by diplomatic means but it failed the while was now about to begin there are still many events and characters yet to intervene but let's pose for a moment and take a look at the historicity of all this the primary source of the story of the trojan war is an ancient greek epic poem called the iliad attributed to hammer together with the odyssey also attributed to hammer these two poems are the central works of ancient greek literature there is no doubt that these texts are ancient they are dated to around the 8th century bc when their oldest known written form appeared but we don't know for sure whether homer existed or whether he is a legendary figure some scholars believe he was a genius poet and author the first ever in western history to leave his name attached to literary works others favored here hypothesis that the idiot and the odyssey are the result of a process of working and reworking by many different contributors in that case homer would be just a legendary figure created to embody this literary tradition the poems are written in epic or homeric greek which was a literary language in the 8th century bc the ancient greek language was far from unified there were various dialects and like in chinese languages or in arabic there was a literary form of writing that was quite different from the way people actually spoke in everyday life in western countries in modern times this distinction between spoken and written languages has diminished a lot we still don't write exactly as we speak and when we do it sounds very informal but there is no longer the kind of major distinction between the spoken vernacular and the written form that existed centuries ago in other languages a big distinction between two forms two registers of the language still exist i gave the example of arabic before there are many arabic speaking countries but people actually learn distinct varieties or registers of the language when they grow up one is the arabic dialect spoken in the country in everyday life and even in the most of the national media these dialects have diverged with time and distance and nowadays someone from morocco or algeria would have a hard time communicating with another arabic speaker from the persian gulf in their respective dialects but there is also a more formal register called modern standard arabic which directly comes from classical arabic and this one is a identical all across the arabic speaking world it is used as the official language and in written communication it is also the register taught in schools and used for every formal situation the mastering of standard arabic is an indicator of how educated people are but the vast majority of arabic speakers can navigate to some extent between the everyday informal dialect and the literary form of arabic it has now been strongly attenuated but english had the same kind of distinction between an elevated literary language and a colloquial form that was spoken every day in the 11th century 1000 years ago there was an old form of english that served as the official and literary language but it was displaced by latin and the old french after the norman conquest of england this didn't make the spoken english disappear and england had completely different languages coexisting at the time depending on whether it was spoken or written and on the level of formality a standardized literary english emerged over the following centuries replacing latin and it became dominant by the end of the middle ages but as it developed in the middle ages and into the renaissance it absorbed a lot of terms from classical languages from latin from greek from word french and through this process many words many terms with latin roots made their way into the common english and have remained a part of it this is why english speakers can easily recognize many words in a french italian or spanish text these latin-based terms arrived via literary english and then over the past two or three centuries all western countries have gone through a process of merger between the two registers something of this remains we don't exactly write as we speak but for several centuries already western languages have lost this distinction between the everyday and the literary registers so that was a long digression so let's return to homer i was telling you that the iliad and the odyssey were written in a literary form of ancient greek and that homer may or may not be a single author ancient greeks believed that the idiot had exaggerated events for the sake of poetry and storytelling but they didn't question the historicity of the trojan war they thought it had happened several centuries before the time of classical grace around 1200 bc but did they also believe in the myth to god's intervening in human affairs and the heroes walking the world it's hard to know for sure that classical writings seem to indicate that the population actually believed them to be generally real even though people were unsure about some of the details that might have been exaggerated by storytellers the educated elite was more split some believed there was a part of truth others rejected mythology as superstition war and equivalent to fairy tales but all across greece mythology was respected because it unified people and it was culture too there was no strict distinction between mythology literature theater a lot of activities and traditions in ancient greece were deeply rooted in religion and mythology from the legitimacy of city-states to the economic activities of temples to a theater or the olympic games it was in nobody's interest to attack the myth and so they were passed from generation to generation with new artists adding new anecdotes to them so mythology never stopped evolving but the core of greek mythology that was present in classical greece probably started to emerge 1000 years before around the 18th century bc it was transmitted orally for centuries until it began to be put in writing as far as we know around the 8th century bc the time of the idiot and hodisei the importance of this body of stories cannot be underestimated and maybe you've noticed that they often sound very familiar even when we don't know them this is because they are the basis for large parts of western storytelling tradition and these stories have been rewritten retold countless times they keep being riddled nowadays with different characters and different settings just for example think about what i told you earlier of the story you may have recognized the storyline of sleeping beauty goddess eras is banned from a wedding and takes revenge with a curse this is exactly the bad fairy male efficient cursing the princess because she was not invited those multiple affairs the attempts at revenge by error against hieroglyphs the rivalries between gods and goddesses the initiatory journeys of heroes the misunderstandings leading to dramatic consequences the cautionary tales we know all of this we see it in movies and tv shows we read it in novels and comic books there are a lot of universal elements in these that are found in many cultures around the world but when it comes to the storytelling traditions in the west and in the middle east too they were fixed and put in writing at the time of ancient greece primarily in mythology and stories like the dragon war so let's return to our story troy had refused to deliver helen back to her minerals and the war was now unavoidable as all the greeks all the aqian kingdoms were bound by oath to defend the marriage of helen and the king of sparta menelius asked his brother agamemnon the king of missani to uphold his oath agamemnon agreed and sent a miseries to all hakian kingdoms to ask them to observe their oath no greek warrior or hero could ignore the call among them was ajax ajax was a great grandson of jews and a famous warrior he was a colossus known to be fearless in combat another hero the greeks counted on was achilles and achilles was no stranger to this story because he was the son of thetus the nymph who had been married to an elderly king at the beginning of our story the same wedding when jews had plotted to have eras so discord among the goddesses with the golden apple akitis had been the subject of prophecies before the war even began one said that he would either die of old age after an uneven full and happy life or die young in a battlefield and gain immortality through poetry when he was a child another prophecy announced that troy could never fall without his support this last prophecy was told by a calcus an ogre from the city of argos calcus was a seer he could receive knowledge of the past the present and the future from god apollo and he also joined the aquian army theatres was very fond of her son aikidis and she tried to make him immortal she went to the sticks the river that ran to the underworld and she bathed him in it when he was still an infant this made hercules invulnerable wherever he was touched by the water of the sticks but she had held him by the hill meaning that this small part of akiti's body had remained mortal and vulnerable to injury after this aikidis grew up to be the greatest of all mortal wires he was not only strong fast and agile he was also brave and perfectly confident in his abilities he had been sent to the centaur chiron to be trained together with ajax and no other warrior in greece would have been foolish enough to defy him but his mother knew the prophecies especially the one that promised him to die young in battle and as soon as the word of the upcoming war with troy spread across greece she was terrified for his life so she had hidden him on the island of skyross in the aegean sea at the court of king like comedies when the emissaries arrived odysseus and ajax they just disguised her son as a woman hoping they would not find him but they did they blew a horn which happened when invaders were arriving and instead of fleeing hercules saved the spear and prepared for combat he was found out and to the despair of his mother he decided to join the aquian army the greek forces gathered and calchus the yoga was among them the sacrifice was made to apollo to attract his favors and know what the future held after the sacrifice a snake slithered from apollo's altar to a tree where there was a sparrow's nest the snake ate the mother sparrow and her nine chicks before turning to stone cancers interpreted this as a sign that troy would fall but only in the tenth year of the war the way to troy was by the sea beyond the aegean sea and to carry greek forces an immense fleet of more than a thousand ships had been gathered but as they set sail to anatolia a storm scattered the fleet and ended the invasion before it even began it took eight long years to gather it again but the determination of many layers agamemnon and their allies like odysseus paid off eight years later the fleet was ready again it comprised 1200 galleys each with dozens of wires from all over greece mainland greece the peloponnese deer aegean islands crete itica hundred thousand men ready to attack the most formidable city in the known world but as the fleet was ready to depart the winds ceased completely in a way that was unnatural and suspicious could some of the gods be against the greeks cancers the prophet was called to explain what was happening he revealed that artemis the goddess of the hunt and wild animals daughter of jews and sister of apollo was punishing agamemnon agamemnon had killed a sacred deer and boasted that he was a better hunter than artemis herself she had been irritated by his actions and bragging and had decided to make him pay chalice also revealed that the only way to appease artemis was to sacrifice the own daughter of agamemnon ether janae agumemnon refused initially but there was no other way if he wanted to lead the expedition and observe his oath to his brother so he finally performed the sacrifice a more vengeful goddess-like hero would have certainly let the sacrifice happen but artemis had a good heart so at the last moment she took pity on the girl she took her to be a maiden in one of her temples and she replaced her with a lamp if a janae was saved the winds returned and finally the herkians could set sail to troy the idiot is famous for telling the story of the trojan war but not in the way i'm telling you at the moment the idiot actually covers only a few weeks of the war near the end but it also alludes to many events that happened before the odyssey also brings more elements and the rest is a long tradition shaped by many others over the centuries there are often different versions of some episodes i have chosen one for tonight but variations exist we are now going to see events that happened over the first nine years of the war before the iliad begins the greeks had gathered forces from their many kingdoms but troy also had allies from anatolia from trace many peoples had answered its goal for help the trojan alliance was no less formidable than the greeks this was not just a fight against a city it was a fight of the greek world against barbarians and eastern peoples gathered under the trojan banner two worlds were about to start fighting from mount olympus zeus watched with satisfaction his plan unraveling the earth would be cleaned of its too many warriors and demigods spawned by himself and other gods and this was a divine conflict too on the greek side hiro and athena the two angry goddesses that had lost the golden apple to aphrodite on the trojan side aphrodite posadan the god of the seas and apollo who would hit the greeks later will see how and the trojans also had their heroes the most notable of these heroes was hector son of priem and brother of paris priyam was the older king of troy he had fathered many children including princess hector and paris and also typhobus and helenus hector commended a trojan army and also was a terrific warrior on a par with greek heroes like ajax or achilles had made a prophecy about the arrival of the akiens the first of them to walk on trojan land will also be the first to die obviously no one dared to step off a ship knowing this once again odysseus solved and saved the situation with one of his tricks he threw his shield to the beach and landed on it another greek protest saw this and thought odysseus had landed first so he did too but in fact olysius had not really walked on trojan land since he was standing on his shield so it was protest who fell victim of the prophecy soon after landing he engaged in single combat with hector and was killed by the trojan leader however things went rather well for the greeks on this first day they killed many trojans and occupied the beach whereas the trojans fled to the safety of the walls of their city the walls were the most formidable in the world they were so high and so strong that legend attributed their built to gods poseidon and apollo themselves following the retreat of the trojans behind the walls the greeks besieged troy for the nine following years the walls were so big that an assault was unthinkable and the city was so large that it couldn't be entirely circled meaning that troy could still receive supplies in the hope of forcing the trojans out the greeks sent armies led by heroes like ajax and achilles red lands of trojan allies the kiddies raided several cities and among the loot from these cities he brought back a slave pre-sales of remarkable beauty agamemnon also captured another seducing slave crisis but the trojans would still not exit the safety of their walls knowing that time was on their side because the arkhans could not afford to stay far away from their kingdoms forever and this strategy began to pay off by the end of the ninth year a mutiny erupted in the greek army thousands of warriors refused to obey their leaders and demanded to return to their homes it took the horror of ikedis to convince them to stay for now but the worst was still to come for the akians and this is the moment when the tale from the idiot begins in the tenth year of the siege the father of crises the slave captured by agamemnon was a priest of apollo he came to agamemnon to ask for the return of his daughter agamemnon refused and insulted the priest which enraged apollo himself the god afflicted the okien army with plague forcing its leader to return crises to her father compensation for the loss of the slave agamemnon used his position to take achilles slave precise insulted and enraged by this akitis decided he would no longer fight and he withdrew from the war for now seeing the morale of their enemies shaken the trojans decided it was time to end the siege so for the first time since the landing both armies faced each other a duel was agreed between two champions many layers of sparta and paris of troy the two men who initially fought for helen paris was no match for minor layers and was beaten to save his life goddess aphrodite snatched him from the field refusing to let the man who had chosen her to die the two armies began fighting again under the city's walls on each side warriors and heroes gave all they have to root their enemies inspired by gods who supported their sides inspired by athena greek king diomedes even wanted goddess aphrodite herself thousands fell this day but ultimately the battle ended inconclusively during the following days the trojans exploited this psychological advantage and the absence of aikidis to drive back the greeks to their camp akilis observed what was happening from afar following tradition greek warriors were paired with a companion they were best friends and sometimes lovers akiti's companion who was also his relative was patroclus and following achilles withdrawal from the war petroglyphs had also withdrawn to stay with him patroclus wanted to fight and seeing the progress made by the trojans akitis allowed him to do so wearing his armor and leading his army the next day petroglyphs covered himself in glory leading to greeks he drove back the trojans to their city and saved an apparently desperate situation the greeks were inspired by this man they've thought to be aikidis since patroclus was wearing his armor as the trojans re-entered their city in chaos patroclus was even close to a storm it as the trojans would not have time to close the doors but at this moment fate and the will of gods hit apollo stopped the akiens from entering troy and hector appeared starting a fight with patroclus thinking he was achilles patroclus didn't have the strength of his companion and couldn't beat the best trojan hero he was defeated and killed by hector after the death of their leader in this counter-attack the greeks let the trojans return to their city once again the situation was in a dead end but achilles was maddened with grief over the death of patroclus he swore to kill hector in revenge and this meant re-entering the wall he was reconciled with agamemnon and received precise back from the greek king his armor and set of weapons had been lost because patroclus used them so he received new ones forged by ephesus the god of metal working and artisans himself on the next day he killed many trojans on the battlefield and early killed the trojan hero aeneas who was saved at the last minute by posadan once again the trojan army returned to the city but goddess satina protector of achilles was watching she disoriented hector and made him stay outside the two most formidable heroes of the war akitis and hector now faced each other a kid is burning with hate at the killer of petroglyphs an epic fight followed a kid is inspired by athena and hector by apollo and aphrodite but no one could vanquish aquities in a duel and that day hector was defeated and killed blinded by hate achilles dragged hector's body from his child and refused to return it to the trojans for burial all the king priyam of troy was devastated by the loss of his favorite son and afterwards he was guided by hermes the messenger god to hacked his tent where he begged for the return of hector's body touched by the sorrow of her grieving father achilles agreed and gave the body back after which a funeral could be organized for hector but the war went on troy was still resisting even after the loss of its leader in a further battle once achilles managed to enter the city with a small group of akians at this point when he broke in the girls gathered and argued over a kids he had killed so many including many of their children that several gods thought his time to die had come mortals even heroes are of little importance to gods and they agreed on this inspired by apollo paris hit achilles with a poisonous arrow in the hill the only part of his body that could be wounded the hero investigated as poison runs through his veins and collapsed on this day the prophecy announcing that he would die young and become immortal through poetry was fulfilled aquiles was no more but three thousand years after he still lives in memories with achilles dead the greeks had lost their best hero and the war was still not over the end of the war came with one final ruse and after years of fighting hate violence and revenge it is not force but rules that ended it odysseus devised the rules a plan a giant hollow wooden holes in which himself and a group of soldiers would hide the next day when the trojans woke up they sold the beach empty of soldiers and the immense fleet of the greeks had gone the vikians had apparently withdrawn from the war only the giant horse on wheels stayed on the beach believing the war was finally over and filled with joy the trojans dragged the horse into their city several voices warned against keeping it saying that it should be burnt but athena made sure they were ignored the trojans decided to keep the horse as a trophy and turned to a night of celebration to them the war was finally over and they had prevailed or had they because in the middle of the night when the moon was full the ikea and fleet returned what odysseus and his men emerged from the horse and killed the guards and then they opened the doors to the greek army the greeks entered the city that night and killed the sleeping population the sack of troy continued into the day the greeks were filled with rage after 10 years of pointless fighting they committed a massacre and even threw hector's infant as the annex down from the walls of troy to end the rail line more innocent than ever died and the most powerful city in the world fell the story of troy was over but history never ends a few survivors led by trojan hero aeneas went on a journey that ended in italy were settled this story is told india a need by a roman arter virgil he is the one who made the trojan horse legendary as the horse doesn't appear in the area that ends before the fall of troy greek kings went back to their lands on difficult journeys especially odysseus this is the story of the odyssey that i will tell you another time through the iliad and multiple other texts that were written later the trojan will remain continuously famous during the antiquity the middle ages and to our days it was widely believed to be historical in the antiquity but in the west as it was a part of greek mythology it became increasingly seen as a myth among others in the 19th century scholars considered try to be purely mythical or being a story made of several different stories until in the 1860s enter the ruins of a roman city which itself had been built on a greek settlement the ruins of a large city from the bronze age corresponding to the location and period indicated in the idiot were discovered on the site a lot of artifacts made of copper silver gold where an earth they have been called priam's treasure after the name of the legendary king of troy most of them were actually found on a part of the site that doesn't correspond to the bronze age city so it is far from sure they are related to the ancient roy but still they are well preserved ancient and a remarkable archaeological treasure so troy did exist in the bronze age we have no way of knowing whether the trojan war was fictional already happened and was exaggerated or was a combination of several walls but what we do know is that a city existed there and long before the supposed dates of the trojan war the ancient greeks estimated the war happened around 1200 bc but the earliest remains excavated at troy are from 3000 bc and archaeological studies on the site indicate that the city was destroyed around the 12th century bc at a time that corresponds to the mythical trojan war and more broadly the dates correspond to a widespread phenomenon in the near east called the late bronze age collapse about at the same time between 1200 bc and 1150 bc ancient greek kingdoms babylonia the heated empire in anatolia the egyptian empire they all collapsed politically and culturally trade routes were interrupted cities were abandoned and the dark age started for centuries in various parts of the eastern mediterranean we don't know exactly the reasons it could be a temporary change in the climate maybe caused by volcanic eruptions it could be invasions or the effects of iron-based metallurgy that began to spread and maybe led to walls or maybe just a series of coincidences but it happened and maybe the story of the trojan war is an expression of this collapse that shook the early greek world and from which the greeks needed several centuries to recover fully as always mythology is never entirely made up it has roots in reality it is a way to explain history society and the human experience once upon a time all the kings of grace united in a war a war against the most powerful city in the world troy for ten long years they besieged the city the gods got involved and supported their champions countless warriors and many heroes fell on both sides finally the greeks vanquished the trojans in no small part thanks to a ploy imagined by the king of ithaca for his ears they built a large hollow wooden horse in which greek soldiers stayed hidden and pretended to withdraw from the war blinded by joy that the war was finally over and their judgment troubled by the gods who had decided that troy shall fall the trojans dragged the horse inside their walls at night the hundreds of greek ships came back to the shore and a small group of warriors led by odysseus that had remained hidden in the horse slayed the girls and opened the city doors from inside that night what force and bravery had not accomplished in ten years trickery did troy fell defeated by ruse some even said by her last and honorable stratagem but glory is always on the side of the victors and the greeks celebrated their victory looting and destroying the city that had resisted for so long they had remained far from home for such a long time that all of them warriors and kings alike now only wished to go back to their land their wives and their homes each king each captain led their men back home families were finally reunited after 10 long years of waiting but not all of them following the end of the war almost all greek kings had returned except odysseus in his small island kingdom of ithaca his wife penelope and his son telemachus who was still an infant when he had gone to war were still waiting for their husband and their father odysseus had been missing for several years and only the thinnest thread of hope to see him again one day remained odysseus wasn't dead and his protector goddess athena had not abandoned him but his way back home would be one of the most extraordinary adventures ever told and this is the story i'm going to tell you tonight long before the trojan war odysseus had reigned over his island of ithika with his wife penelope a spartan princess he had fallen in love with her when in sparta and brought her to ethica years later helen of sparta was abducted by paris of troy in the event that led to the trojan war and her lawful husband menelaus called upon the kings of greece to defend his honor and retrieve her odysseus was one of them but he had no taste for adventure or war especially far away from home so he tried to avoid being involved by pretending he was mad when menelaus said voice arrived initica he hooked a donkey and an ox to his blow and he started sewing his fields with salt the stratagem was quickly discovered when one of the envoys placed his infant the young telemakers in front of the blow odysseus had to stop exposing that he was only pretending to be mad he had to follow them and participate in the war contrary to so many heroes who were examples of bravery and went by a very strict honor code odysseus was more cautious he wasn't a coward and knew how to take risks for example when years later he stayed inside the trojan horse but he was also a family man not an adventurer and was deeply attached to his land it would have deeply saddened him to know what had happened in ezekiel in his absence seeing that he still hadn't returned from the war several months after it had ended dozens of suitors from ithika had invaded his palace where penelope and telemachus still lived they wanted penelope to acknowledge that her husband was dead and each of them aimed to persuade her for her hand in marriage the suitors had not waited for the confirmation of odysseus's death to start stealing from him they lived in his house ate his cattle and harvest and disrespected his wife by pressuring her becoming bolder and more insolent here today telemachus had grown up to become a young man he enraged each day a dear impudence of the suitors but didn't know what to do to restore order any thicker but this was about to change for these years i had always had a protect dress goddess athena thanks to her powers she knew that odysseus was still alive and why he had not returned he had ingert poseidon god of the seas during the trojan war athena was firmly on the side of the greeks whereas other gods like poseidon aphrodite and apollo supported the trojans they had had to accept the fall of troy but poseidon had kept a grudge against odysseus as the greek king was directly responsible for the fall of joy and he had done it using a horse animals that belonged to poseidon one day the god of the seas left mount olympus the residents of the gods to accept the sacrifice far in the south in ethiopia eftina took advantage of his absence to ask jews king of the gods to finally allow alicias to return jews consented to it and athena immediately drew up plans to help the lost hero at the time of these events odysseus was held captive on an island he had been a captive for several years already kept against his will by calypso a nymph but since his departure from troy before his arrival to calipso's island extraordinary adventures had happened to him he had left troy with twelve ships hoping he would be back to ethica a few weeks later but his companions wanted to return with more treasures than they already found in joy and they insisted to launch a red a raid on ismarus a defenseless coastal city in thrace not far from the fresh ruins of troy odysseus didn't like the idea as he was eager to return home as soon as possible but after 10 years of war the looting of troy was not enough of a prize to many of his warriors and he finally agreed to the red the greeks sacked the town they divided the treasures among themselves and then began to feast despite odysseus advice that they live immediately while at this maros odysseus spared the life of a priest of apollo and of his family to thank him the priest gave him a bottle of black wine some gold and a mixing bowl the wine was a strong and divine drink it was so concentrated that for each cup of wine 20 times as much water was added to it to dilute it odysseus didn't know what to do with this bottle of wine but it could always be useful so he kept it preciously tired by the fight and their feast the greeks fell asleep in the ruins of his morals but the next morning the inhabitants returned with reinforcements and the looters were surprised by an angry crowd that outnumbered them they had to escape and odysseus lost many men in the process before he could embark with the survivors and continue his journey to ethica but poseidon was watching and he was decided to punish odysseus that he held responsible for the fall of joy he sent storms that drove the small fleet of course and scattered the ships after days of fighting the elements odysseus ship reached an island that could offer temporary shelter and let them repair before resuming their journey home on this island they saw a lush vegetation beautiful flowers and appetizing fruits that grew naturally and made it resemble a natural garden they soon realized that there were inhabitants who smiled at them and welcomed them but they didn't seem particularly interested in asking them where they came from they saw that the inhabitants spent their days sleeping and eating the flowers and fruits of the magnificent tree at the center of the island when asked what this tree was they said it was the lotus tree and that the tree provided anything they could ever wish for a life of pleasant drowsiness of oblivion and bliss they offered flowers and fruits to odysseus companions who soon joined the lotus eaters in their state of stupa for generations lost ships had reached this island the island of the lotus tree the travelers had joined these people forgetting about their previous life and indulging into a state of permanent days where nobody and nothing else mattered where time was abolished and the past or the future we are no longer important odysseus understood the appeal and the danger of the lotus tree the memory of his island of penelope and of his son telemachus were precious enough to his heart to renounce the bliss of the lord's tree all his companions were now in an unconscious state and odysseus carried them one by one back to the ships when they woke up and asked for more flowers and more fruits from the largest tree he forced them to fast the warriors wept but soon enough they recovered their memories and remembered who they were odysseus asked them whether they would rather stay on the island with the lotus eaters and forget everything or return home as the effects of the drug were now vanishing they decided to leave and the expedition resumed its journey i told you in previous stories about the various functions of mythology of mythological tales in ancient greek society one stands out in this episode it is obviously a cautionary tale against addiction and beyond that an invitation to reflect on what it is to be a person if you decide to renounce your memory and abdicate all responsibility in the world what does remain of your humanity and yet the perspective to stop suffering and caring is always appealing the story of the lord's sitters highlights that one dimension of addiction or the wish for oblivion is a death wish disappearing as a conscious being is a form of death not a biological one but the erasure of what makes a singular individual be who he or she is is a way of disappearing and the high road of rejecting this wish is not easy or immediately gratifying it's hard it will be worth for odysseus in the end because this story has a happy hand but not before trials and suffering these concepts of self-control moderation and responsibility were highly praised and valued in classical greece they were some of the qualities that were expected from citizens to an extent they are universal because they are necessary to make any society work but greek literature is one of the first examples in the world of intellectual work that integrates them in stories that builds storytelling around moral precepts this is one of the innovations that came with it another innovation specific to the odyssey is the narrative structure it's a poem like the idiot the illud recounts a short period by the end of the trojan war and they both are very long poems the other sea has more than 000 lines it was probably intended to be heard rather than red but it looks a lot like a modern novel when you take a look at the structure the plot is non-linear there are flashbacks elements that complement the story of the trojan war for example the trojan horse it was not in the iriad and we learned about it in the odyssey when odysseus tells of it but the odyssey also has a way of keeping people on edge it doesn't begin as a linear storyline when olyssius leaves troy it begins in ethica ten years after the end of the trojan war and we discover the situation of the island with penelope the lamborghs the invasion of the palace by the suitors within our intervenes to help odysseus return home we learn later that he is kept prisoner by the nymph calypso on her island calipso has to free him because to sense the messenger of the gods hermes to order her to do so after athena has pleaded his ghost odysseus escapes i will tell you about that later and reaches another island where he is offered hospitality and tells the story of his peregrinations since he left troy so we learn about earlier episodes through his account and the bulk of the odyssey which is a series of adventures he lived on his attempt to return home unfolds as he tells the story years after it happened it is a story within the story and olisius is the narrator for our story tonight i am taking all the elements from the odyssey but not telling them in the exact order they appear in the poem otherwise you would have waited maybe half an hour before hearing about the actual adventures of his ears instead i am following the two main plot lines in parallel the one that happens in the present of the narration ten years after or this year's disappearance and the one that happens in the past the series of adventures he went through and here the two plot lines are joined when he returns to vithika to claim his throne so we left odysseus escaping the island of the lotus theatres now let's go to itika athena obtained the liberation of her favorite hero from the island of calypso but she also wanted him to recover his throne so after visiting zeus she went to itticker these guys has a chieftain from the islands of tapos the tapians were renowned sea travelers and sometimes pirates who knew a lot about what happened at sea she visited telemachus to urge him to leave the island and search for news of his father ignoring that he was talking to the mighty goddess the lamecha suffered her hospitality and that night she saw how the suitors imposed their presence and disrespected the lawful queen and prince of ethica in the absence of all his ears that night athena changed appearance again to look like telemachus and she found a ship and a crew for the true prince the next day she convinced telemachus to depart to the mainland to start searching for his father and once again she changed appearance she was now disguised as mentor a wise and old man who had been charged by odysseus to educate his son unaware that he was accompanied by athena herself and not the real mentor telemachus set sail to the greek mainland with the intention to visit the most venerable surviving greek warrior from the trojan war nestor nestor was already old when the trojan war had begun but he had bravely led the armies of his kingdom by laws and had helped greek warriors with his advice but nestor didn't know where odysseus was and unfortunately couldn't help after his visit to nestor telemachus travelled to sparta to talk to king menelaus and his wife helen who were now reconciled helen was not herself when she had followed paris to troy she had been the victim of a feat of lust brought on by aphrodite menelaus and helen told the laymakers that their voyage back from troy had also been long and difficult had gone to egypt on the way back to sparta and there on the island of pharaohs menelaus had encountered an old god of the sea proteus and proteins had told minerals that odysseus had gone through many hardships on his way back and was now a captive of the nymph calypso on her island telemachus was sorry to know about how hard it had been for his father but was overwhelmed with joy when he realized that he was still alive and that hope of seeing him again was justified as he listened to this reassuring news however the suitors in itica realized that he had escaped the island angry that they had let the son of olyssius escape they formulated a plan to ambush his ship when he would return telemachus and penelope's trials were real but odysseus and his men had gone through a true ordeal since their departure from troy ten years earlier they had narrowly escaped the vengeful inhabitants of his marrows and the trap of the lotus tree but it seemed that after those dangers their luck was returning they approached a new island that looked welcoming and would offer a perfect place to rest and find food what do you know is that this island belonged to the cyclops the cyclops were giants with a single eye they lived in the world of men but not among them the location of their land was unknown and many even doubted their existence but they were real and they lived like men did before they became civilized they were shepherds with herds of giant sheep but had no agriculture no wine and stayed in caves their father was poseidon to god of the seas who already followed what he seers with his anger the cyclops were savages they slaughtered and ate all who came to their land they lived solitary lives and had no interest in knowing anything about the world odysseus and his companions ignored all this and they didn't know they had landed close to the lair of one of these cyclops the terrifying giant named palophimasu in their search for provisions odysseus with a group of men found the entrance to his cave and in the cave more cheese and meat that they could ever have dreamed of but as they were celebrating their find the cyclops paraphimus returned with his flock he entered the cave and sealed its entrance with a great stone ignorant of the rules of hospitality and seeing a good occasion to eat something new he called two of the men and ate them he then fell asleep and odysseus and his surviving men spent the night hiding and trembling unable to escape the cave as the entrance was blocked by a rock that no man could move in the morning the giant killed and ate two more men and left the case to raise his sheep still unable to leave the cave addy's ears spent the day thinking of a possible escape but it seemed the situation was hopeless and the cyclops would kill and eat them all before long after by the femurs returned in the evening and ate two more of the men odysseus had an idea he offered the cyclops some strong and undiluted wine from the battle he had received as a gift earlier by the priest of apollo in his marrows cyclops didn't know wine and palaphimus was soon drunk and unwary he asked his ears his name and promised him a gift if he answered odysseus told him his name was nobody and as a reward paluphimus only promised to eat his nobody last of all and with that he fell into a drink and sleep but his ears was not one to wait for death meanwhile he had hardened a wooden stake in the fire and when the giant fell asleep he drove it into his one eye distraught and blinded the cyclops called for help and his brothers who lived in other caves on the island arrived when they asked what had happened he told them that nobody had hurt him and they thought palophimus was being afflicted by a feat of madness they could only recommend him to pray and rest in the morning the blind cyclops led the sheep out to graze but he certainly didn't want to let the man escape so he felt the sheep's back with his hands however odysseus and his men had tied themselves to the underside of the animals and so could get away without the giant noticing they ran to the ship and sailed off but as they were moving off odysseus who was too proud of his intelligence committed an act of hubris he revealed his real name the giant heard him and not only did he cast huge rocks towards the ship that odysseus barely escaped he also prayed to his father poseidon for revenge poseidon was already angry at his ears he would now be furious before we continue with the adventures of all these years let's take a look at the character himself to the greeks odysseus was maybe the most popular of all heroes and he is different from most of them all greek heroes are models but they are not all the same they have different personalities and they also have flows alongside some outstanding capabilities they may be extraordinary warriors who also have a whimsical or bad character like a kiddies as presented in the idiot they can be reckless or commit horrible crimes like heracles before he begins his labors that are initially a punishment he accepts to erase his sin of killing his wife and children in a feat of rage in the case of alicia's the quality that stands out is his intelligence in various definitions of the term he understands fast he anticipates he tricks others but this intelligence also has its limits he doesn't always anticipate the consequences of his actions like when he angers gods or when he reveals his real name to the cyclops he brags and like anyone who claims to be smart the claim itself reveals the limit of their intelligence there is a lack of understanding of how it is going to be taken perceived by others and the lack of self-awareness this pride that can lead to hubris that is to say an excess of self-confidence that for the greeks could lead to excessive pride or defiance towards the gods and bring disaster this is a serious flow he has other characteristics that make him human too he's not particularly brave he pretends to be mad to avoid war before the trojan war but he is also loyal he loves he loves his wife his son his land and in greek myth be it in the idiot or the odyssey or other stories in the same cycle he is on the right side the side of the greeks and the sides we are invited to root for the way he is presented makes him likeable in the greek tradition but later when the romans adopted many greek myths and adi their own they turned him into a villain insisting on the less honorable aspects of the character to the romans he was ulysses they romanized a lot of names the romans knew the odyssey they studied it and appreciated it but in their own tradition many of his actions the tricks and stratagems he employed his attempt to avoid his sacred oath to defend menelaus and helen and not join the trojan war all of this offended their notion of honor and duty it would have to be nuanced depending on the periods and depending on the authors but in general the romans were more rigid and strict about these values in comparison with the greeks who had a less manikin view of them and could appreciate a good trickster the roman rejection of odysseus of ulysses culminated in the enid which is a latin epic poem written in the first century bc on the model of the iliad and the odyssey i could tell you about it in another story because it is less universally famous than the odyssey but the story itself is really good and creative the inhib is a mystical retelling of the origins of rome it follows the travel of ineos one of the trojan heroes from the iliad but instead of dying when troy falls he escapes on a long journey to italy where he becomes the ancestor of the romans the inid makes the romance the descendants of the trojans which at the same time acknowledges their connection to greek civilization but also puts them on the other side of a divide it draws a line between the two as the main architect of the fall of troy with the trick that the trojan horse is odysseus appears as a villain in the indeed and he is constantly referred to as a cruel odysseus or deceitful or his ears so in the last centuries of ancient rome the enid was written by virgil a poet at the time of the fall of the republic when rome became an empire and was expanding faster than ever at the time educated people were probably well aware that the inhibit was not history and just a work of fiction made to cement a roman mythology but odysseus had the image of a villain and an antagonist it took centuries to restore his reputation as a character and return to the generally positive description we are used to nowadays now let's resume our story orisius had foolishly daunted and revealed his real name to the cyclops he could avoid the rocks the giant through but not the curse of poseidon the cyclops prayed to his father and asked him to curse odysseus to curse him to wander the sea for ten years during which he would lose all his crew following their escape from the land of the lotus eaters odysseus and his men had reached the middle of the mediterranean sea near the island of sicily this was where he had narrowly escaped death from the cyclops but they hadn't found the supplies they desperately needed and as soon as they saw another island where they could anchor they decided to make a stop island was on no map because it was a floating island and it belonged to king iowa's a powerful but benevolent man who had received from the gods the responsibility to keep the winds even though he wasn't a god the keeper of the winds had considerable power and wealth and his control over the winds could almost make him rival poseidon himself extending his power to what happened above the surface of the seas healers greeted odysseus and gave him and his crew hospitality for a month he appreciated his ears and decided to help him return home he told our hero that he would provide his ship with the exact wind it needed to take them back to ithika and he gave him a large leather bag that contained all the winds a gift that should ensure a quick and safe return home rested and optimistic the greeks returned to their ships after thanking healers and sailed to their island as promised by the keeper of the winds the journey was fast and even less and after a few days isika came into sight relieved but exhausted odysseus fell asleep dreaming of his coming reunion with penelope and his home but his men were intrigued by the leather bag and thought it contained a treasure given by the others if it was gold it was only fair that they received their share as odysseus was sleeping they opened the bag to see what it contained all of the winds immediately flew out and a violent storm drove the ship away from ethica after hours of storm when the ship could not be controlled they realized they had returned to the floating island of theolas hearless recognized that odysseus had drawn the ire of the gods upon himself and afraid to displease them he refused to help again odysseus had to leave the island empty-handed and still followed by the wrath of poseidon the men re-embarked and on their following stop they were once again faced with cannibalistic giants not the cyclops this time but a tribe of man-eating giants who had sprung from the son of poseidon lester again for this reason they were known as the lestrig onions as soon as odysseus arrived close enough to the coast of their island they attacked with rocks and the king of ittiker once again narrowly escaped death losing many of his companions he sailed on on a severely damaged ship and the ship almost granted on the beach of another island an island where a new danger awaited them the island belonged to cersei an ancient dress cersei was a daughter of the god of the sun idiots and she was renowned for her vast knowledge of potions herbs and terrifying magic powers she lived in a palace far from any human presence in the midst of a dense wood her palace was surrounded by lions and wolves and many other animals but all of them were surprisingly docile and peaceful cersei's island hid a terrible secret she attracted the travelers who landed on her island with her beautiful singing and inviting them to a feast but then she dragged them with potions that make the unfortunate visitors change shape and turn into animals the lions and wolves living around the palace where in reality former men who had had the misfortune to cross her paths but nobody knew her secret as no one had ever escaped the trap that her island was when odysseus and his crew landed on the island most of the men went to explore it and their leaders stayed on the ship the crew met cersei who invited them to a feast that the hungry sailors couldn't resist of course she had mixed one of her magical potions to the dishes and the potion turned all of them into swine the only man to escape the curse was odysseus second in command eurylockers who had remained cautious and not touched the food urilocus returned to the ship and wound odysseus who immediately went on a rescue mission and walked to the palace but before he reached it the messenger of gods hermes appeared sent by athena hermes revealed how cersei could be defeated he gave him an herb that would protect him from the effects of her potions and recommended that he drew his sword and forced her to swear that she would not take any further action against him odysseus followed these instructions and was able to force the enchantress to free his men they were changed into human beings again the crew was exhausted and needed to rest so did he see us and he couldn't help but notice that cersei was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen almost rivalling the legendary beauty of helen of sparta the stay on the island lasted days ten weeks as odysseus began to share cersei's bed and month and finally an entire year odysseus was still homesick and the charms of cersei had not erased the memory of penelope and one day he resolved to leave the ancient dress and resume his journey cersei was not surprised as she knew the heart of men and would also see glimpses of the future so she didn't oppose her this year's decision and instead instructing him that in order to return to ethica he would have to visit the underworld first the entrance to the underworld was in the west where the sun goes to die every evening before it reappears in the east every morning guided by cersei's instructions odysseus and his crew crossed the mediterranean sea far far to the west near the pillars of heracles that marked the end of the world and the beginning of an endless ocean they reached a harbor at the western edge of the world where odysseus sacrificed to the dead the darkness fell around him and suddenly odysseus found himself in an unknown wasteland where the ghosts of the deceased wandered aimlessly he first encountered the spirit of one of his crew men elpinor who had died on cersei's island he had fallen off a roof and his body had not been found he asked for his ears to find and bury his remains his ears promised he then summoned the spirit of tyrusius a prophet of apollo who had died long before and was famous for his clairvoyance he asked the spirit how to appease poseidon and the prophet told him that one day himself and his crew would reach an island where helios the sun god keeps his sacred livestock if they refrained from eating the animals then he may return home but a failure to do so would result in the loss of his ship and his entire crew next odysseus met the spirit of his dead mother she had died of grief during his long absence and from her he got his first news of his own household threatened by the greed and insolence of the suitors odysseus stayed and talked to the spirit of his fallen companions including agamemnon and the achilles until the fog around him began to dissipate a ray of sunshine pierced the darkness then two then three and he realized he had left the underworld and returned to the world of the living the entire crew returned to cersei's island as promised they searched for the remains of el pinol the fallen crewman buried him and said goodbye to cersei who offered them enough food to continue their journey leaving cersei's island to the east would force them to skirt the land of the sirens some of the most dangerous monsters in the entire world the sirens were not terrifying creatures with thieves and clouds their dangerosity resided in their singing they attracted nearby sailors with their enchanting music and singing voices they were half women half birds and their voices were so irresistible that no man could resist it any sheep would try to approach the rocky coasts of their island and be shipwrecked even though sailors knew that answering the song of the sirens was deadly odysseus had an idea of how to survive and avoid his ship to steer towards the rocks he ordered his crewmen to have their ears plugged with beeswax but he was also too curious and could not resist the temptation to hear this enchanting song of the sirens so he asked his man to tie him to the mast and not untie him under any pretext as the sheep approached the sirens island he heard their voices and his will was instantly annihilated the only thing he could think of was to jump to the sea and swim to the coast by chance his men respected his orders and couldn't hear his supplications to untie him so the ship successfully passed the island without losses but this region of the sea was full of dangers the sheep now had to pass a narrow channel of water where two dreadful threats awaited adventurous sailors on one side leave the sealer a six-headed monster ready to catch any ship passing by and cut it to pieces on the other side within an hour's range was a caribbean a powerful whirlpool that would sink any vessel approaching too close in order to avoid one of these dangers sailors had to pass too close to the other one and most ships attending to cross the channel ended destroyed on one side or the other only a difficult extremely narrow path was possible in between but olisius and his crew had no choice but to take a chance as they entered the channel the waters became agitated and cryptos constantly tried to attract them as a cedar's heads ventured dangerously close to the ship at one point silo was able to snatch up six men who died between its toes but the ships successfully crossed and they soon arrived to quieter waters soon the island of helios appeared on the horizon the island where the sun god kept his livestock that all his ears had been instructed to not eat at any cost odysseus wished to remain away from the island to avoid any risk but the crew was becoming more and more unruly after all these ordeals and they decided to override his orders the ship landed the island they had a lot of food given by cersei and promised odysseus that they would not even look at elio's livestock and that they would resume their journey very soon but the gods were watching the desperate attempts of this crew to return home and had grown angry at all his ears not only had he displeased poseidon at troy and then offended him by blinding his cyclops son he had defied them by receiving help from me on us the keeper of the winds and had a bit too much luck escaping so many dangers because gods are cruel and like to play with men do's caused a storm which prevented the crew from leaving the island and the storm seemed to never end days passed elysius spent his time praying to the gods hoping he could appease them this way the crew needed to eat and they depleted the food given to them by cersei the men became hungry after days spent fasting they ignored the orders of odysseus who was away praying and they hunted the sacred cattle of elios the sun god was infuriated and he asked jews to punish them zeus suspended the storm letting the men think that they could now live but as soon as they did the storm resumed the ship was uncontrollable and the storm drove it towards cryptus the monstrous whirlpool they suffered a shipwreck and as the ship was crumbling odysseus was the only one able to catch the branches of her fig tree that extended above cryptos he clung to the tree seeing all his companions drowning and their bodies drawn to the abyss with the remains of their ship odysseus was now alone all his men were dead and the ship was lost the prophecy about the cattle of helios was accomplished and our hero was now more alone and more desperate than ever barely willing to leave he let himself float on the sea waiting for death to take him as all hope had now vanished olyssius was too exhausted to cry and too broken to find a reason to live but it was written that death did not want him yet odysseus was washed ashore on another island where the nymph calipso lived the nymph took care of him and healed his body but not his heart as only ethical penelope and delimiters mattered to him days passed and his strength returned calypso made him her lover but he didn't feel anything for weeks past then month without a ship and not knowing where he was odysseus had no possibility to escape month turned two years and after the excitement of danger and action his life turned to boredom homesickness and desperation seven years passed odysseus had lost count of days months and years and didn't even realize that it had been almost 10 years since his departure from troy nor did he remember that poseidon's curse after he blinded the cyclops was nearing its end and that he still had an eye on mount olympus athena as we saw at the beginning at the time the lamakers had now turned into an adult he had received a visit from athena in disguise who guided him to the mainland to investigate about his father and athena also obtained from jews that the messenger of gods hermes be sent to cadipso's island to instruct her to release her prisoner calypso had no choice but to accept she gave him a small boat and let him go odysseus sailed a few days alone and reached an island where friendly foreigners gave him hospitality they recognized him as the king of ethica whose fame after the trojan war and mysterious disappearance ten years earlier was now established odysseus told them what had happened and from his mouth they learned all the episodes of his incredible journey he is a odyssey that we just traveled with him they resolved to help him and at night when he was asleep they defied poseidon's curse to swiftly transport him to the shore of his digger when odysseus woke up he opened his eyes alone on the beach and disoriented he didn't know where he was latina appeared to him and revealed that he was back to his land back to ithaca but he would have to fight to take it back from the suitors and traitors who had disrespected his house she disguised him as an elderly beggar so he would be able to see by himself how things stood in his household meanwhile telemachus was returning from his visit to sparta and the father and son were secretly reunited in the head of one of odysseus's old slaves who had remained loyal to his master still disguised as a beggar odysseus went to his palace and saw how the suitors lived there and humiliated his wife that he saw again for the first time in 20 years athena was still working behind the scenes the next day she inspired vanellope to announce the suitors that they would finally be able to compete for her hand there would be an archery competition using odysseus bow this bow was famously hard to string it required an uncommon strength that few men possessed penelope announced that the man who would be able to string the bow and shoot an arrow through a dozen aligned axe heads would win the competition began in the palace's hall with the suitors eager to show their talent and how they see us stealing these guys watching the scene one after the other the suitors failed to shoot the arrows through the axe heads until the sears moved and required to try and the suitor's laughs he took the bow and shot sending the arrow right through the twelve axe heads immediately he took another arrow and started shooting at the suitors killing them methodically inspired by athena telemachus and other servants joined him and ferocious fight ensued until no suitor was left finally he took out his vegas clothes and identified himself to penelope penelope was hesitant at first but she recognized him when he mentioned that he made their bed from an olive tree that was still rooted to the ground odysseus was finally reunited with his family his land and granted the happiness he had been longing for 20 long years since his departure all is well that ends well this is the end of tonight's story you may now let yourself drift to a restful sleep and i'll be back soon with a new one this time we will travel to china and explore the wonders of the forbidden city in the meantime sweet dreams over you

Channel: The French Whisperer ASMR

Views: 6,477,582

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Id: lyhqdvm0Ko8

Length: 213min 23sec (12803 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 23 2020