I knew I had to see Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” alone. Had someone accompanied me, they would have been subjected to nonstop whispered details about the mythological figures and historical references appearing onscreen. While I have a university education in film history and theory, I also fancy myself an amateur classicist with a penchant for Greek mythology and Bronze Age civilizations (basically, I would kick ass on “Jeopardy!”). As such, I am happy to provide Next Best Picture readers with some insight into the characters, stories, and histories behind Homer’s epic poem, as well as the fascinating period from which it emerged.
THE HISTORICAL WORLD
HOMER
One of the great mysteries surrounding “The Odyssey” concerns not its heroes, but its supposed author. There is no tangible evidence that a man named Homer, said to have composed epic poems in the eighth century BCE, ever existed. Homer may not have been a single individual at all, but a group of people. The name itself may have referred to a title or profession rather than a specific person.
If Homer did exist, he would have lived more than 400 years after the supposed Trojan War, during a period now identified as the Greek Dark Ages. Crucially, Homer did not “write” anything in the way we understand authorship today. “The Odyssey” and its predecessor, “The Iliad,” arose from an oral storytelling tradition in a largely nonliterate society, and many of the myths within them would have predated Homer’s lifetime. We might think of Homer as something closer to an editor: someone who collected familiar stories and fashioned them into a compelling song that other performers could recite and share.
This Golden Age of Heroes would have been a heavily romanticized period to later Greeks, who, like Odysseus, were driven by an overwhelming sense of nostalgia, a word derived from nóstos, meaning “return,” and álgos, meaning “pain.” Meanwhile, a new period of Greek expansion and colonization across the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe may have brought home stories of faraway lands inhabited by unfamiliar people and awe-inspiring monsters. “The Odyssey,” then, is not a straightforward record of a single historical moment. It is a tapestry woven from cultural memory, centuries of oral tradition, and an evolving Greek understanding of the wider world.
TROY
The location and historical importance of Troy had been subjects of debate for centuries by the time English expatriate Frank Calvert identified the site at Hisarlik on the western coast of Turkey. German businessman and archaeology enthusiast Heinrich Schliemann later conducted excavations there in the 19th century. Located in Turkey’s Çanakkale province, Troy (or Ilion) was first settled around 3600 BCE, undergoing repeated destruction, abandonment, and reconstruction over the next several thousand years.
Crucial to the ancient city was its location near the Hellespont, a narrow strait separating the Aegean Sea from the Sea of Marmara and providing access toward the Black Sea. This made Troy a strategically vital site for military power, trade, and essential resources. It is easy to understand why Mycenaean Greeks might have wanted to control this region and why the Hittites, whose Bronze Age empire controlled much of Anatolia, would have been invested in defending it.
So, the $100,000 question is: Did the Trojan War ever happen? As with many stories from Bronze Age mythology and history, the answer is both “yes” and “no.” Archaeological evidence shows that around 1200 BCE, the period in which the mythical war is often said to have occurred, the city suffered destruction amid regional conflict and seismic activity. Mycenaean forces may have played some role in that history.
However, this would not have been the only conflict to take place at Troy, and there is no evidence that a single war lasted 10 years exactly as Homer describes it. Nor is there historical proof that figures such as Agamemnon, Menelaus, Helen, Odysseus, Achilles, Paris, or Priam existed in their legendary forms, though real people may have inspired them. There probably was not a wooden horse built from Greek ships and strategically offered as a means of infiltrating the city, either. Some scholars have proposed that the Trojan Horse may have represented a massive battering ram. Another theory I find compelling is that the horse represents the earthquake that helped destroy Troy: Poseidon was the god of both horses and earthquakes, which may have inspired the image of a horse breaching and devastating the city.
Nolan’s film therefore draws upon a story suspended between history and myth. Troy was real, and violent struggles almost certainly unfolded around it, but the version inherited by Odysseus, and by us, had already been transformed through generations of storytelling.
THE PEOPLE FROM THE SEA
In the 13th and 12th centuries BCE, something extraordinary happened across the eastern Mediterranean. Multiple major civilizations, including the Mycenaean Greeks, Hittites, and Minoans, collapsed or underwent profound changes, while powers such as Assyria and Egypt faced severe disruption. For years, the cause of this widespread destruction remained mysterious. In the 19th century, scholars began connecting it to Egyptian inscriptions describing invading groups arriving from the north and by sea. These groups were later collectively named the “Sea Peoples.”
For a long time, the Sea Peoples were treated as the primary cause of the Late Bronze Age Collapse, wreaking havoc upon civilizations that had existed for hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of years. It is a great story, so it is a shame that it probably is not true. Modern scholars increasingly view the Sea Peoples as a symptom of societal collapse rather than its sole cause. They may have been both invaders and refugees moving through a region already destabilized by drought, natural disasters, political upheaval, and failing trade networks.
Before the Late Bronze Age Collapse, the Mediterranean world was remarkably interconnected through trade, politics, and diplomacy. In the words of scholar Eric Cline, the crisis resembled a “Dust Bowl of the Ancient World”: a perfect storm of devastation in which global powers collapsed, and mass migrations accelerated, leaving the region more insular and fragmented.
This upheaval provides an important historical backdrop to “The Odyssey.” Odysseus travels through a world defined by displaced people, ruined kingdoms, dangerous coastlines, and the breakdown of once-reliable social bonds. The monsters belong to mythology, but the anxiety beneath them may have reflected the experience of communities living through the collapse of a connected world.
THE ORIGINS OF THE WAR
HELEN OF TROY
It is a familiar story: Zeus, king of the gods, pursues a mortal woman in disguise and produces semi-divine offspring. This time, disguised as a swan, he seduces, or assaults, depending on the source, and mates with Leda, queen of Sparta. According to some ancient accounts, this union produces two eggs, from which emerge the warrior twins Castor and Pollux, namesakes of the constellation Gemini, and the sisters Clytemnestra and Helen.
Once Helen reaches marrying age, her otherworldly beauty makes her the most desired woman in Greece. Princes from every kingdom come to ask for her hand in marriage, including Odysseus, king of Ithaca. Odysseus, however, has eyes for Helen’s cousin Penelope, so he offers the anxious king of Sparta a solution intended to prevent strife and bloodshed. Every suitor must swear to defend the marriage of Helen and her chosen husband, whoever he may be, even at the cost of his own life. The princes agree, and Helen marries the wealthy Menelaus. Her sister Clytemnestra marries Menelaus’s brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae.
This oath explains why a conflict involving one marriage draws rulers from across Greece into a catastrophic war. Whether Helen is an abducted victim, a willing participant, or something more complicated varies across ancient sources. Nolan inherits not one definitive Helen, but centuries of competing interpretations concerning her agency, culpability, and symbolic role.
THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS
Meanwhile, on Olympus, the gods celebrate another marriage: the union of Peleus, king of Phthia, and Thetis, a sea nymph and the future mother of Achilles. Conspicuously absent from the wedding is Eris, the goddess of strife and discord, who was not invited for obvious reasons. Not one to be made a fool of, Eris arrives with the sole intention of causing chaos and tosses a golden apple engraved with the words “to the fairest” into the banquet. Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena scramble for the flattering object, each arguing that she most deserves the title. Ultimately, they choose Paris, prince of Troy (and Anatolian himbo), to decide which of the three goddesses is the most beautiful.
None of the goddesses leaves the prince’s decision to chance. Hera offers him political power, Athena promises wisdom and victory in battle, and Aphrodite offers him the most beautiful woman in the world: Helen of Sparta. Paris accepts Aphrodite’s bribe and names her the winner. The goddess then brings Paris and Helen together during a Trojan diplomatic expedition to Sparta.
Whether Helen is abducted or leaves willingly with Paris and the Trojans has inspired debate since antiquity and continues to generate rigorous discussion among scholars and enthusiasts of the ancient world. In either version, the personal transgression triggers the oath sworn by Helen’s former suitors, giving Agamemnon the cause he needs to assemble the Greek forces and sail for Troy.
THE MORAL WORLD
THE LAW OF ZEUS
Throughout Nolan’s film, characters repeatedly, and somewhat heavy-handedly, refer to “Zeus’s law.” This is xenia, an ancient Greek social and religious code governing the relationship between guest and host. Hosts are expected to bathe and feed a guest before even asking their name, while guests must treat their hosts with gratitude and consideration and return the favor should the opportunity arise.
Beyond governing relationships between mortals, xenia carries particular importance because any stranger, regardless of appearance, could be a deity in disguise. Such encounters are common throughout mythology and tragedy. The theme recurs throughout “The Odyssey,” demonstrating how even the smallest acts of generosity, cruelty, loyalty, or disrespect are eventually rewarded or punished.
Seen in this light, the poem’s many episodes are not merely disconnected adventures. Each new island, palace, cave, or household becomes a moral test. Odysseus is continually judged by how he behaves as both guest and host, while the people he encounters reveal their character through the welcome or violence they offer him. Nolan’s repeated references to the law of Zeus make this code explicit for a modern audience, even when the film states a principle that Homer dramatizes through action.
THE AFTERMATH OF TROY
THE FATE OF AGAMEMNON
The life of Agamemnon, commander of the Greek army at Troy, is itself a story worthy of an epic poem. Like many Greek tragedies, it begins several generations in the past. His ancestor Tantalus is eternally punished in Hades for killing his son Pelops and serving the boy at a banquet for the unsuspecting Olympian gods, beginning a curse that follows his descendants. Agamemnon’s father, Atreus, becomes consumed by his own cycle of familial violence. Seeking revenge against his brother Thyestes, Atreus kills Thyestes’s sons and serves their flesh to their unsuspecting father at a banquet.
Just before sailing for Troy, Agamemnon commits another fatal offense that sets the stage for his own death. After he kills a deer in a sacred grove of Artemis, the goddess of the hunt refuses to send favorable winds, preventing the Greek fleet from departing. To appease her, Agamemnon resolves to sacrifice his eldest daughter, Iphigenia.
After the Greek victory at Troy, Agamemnon returns home, where his grieving wife Clytemnestra greets him with extravagant praise and a literal “red carpet”:
“But do not set to earth, my lord, the conquering foot
That trod down Troy. Servants, do as you have been bidden;
Make haste, carpet his way with crimson tapestries,
Spread silk before your master’s feet; Justice herself
Shall lead him to a home he never hoped to see.”
- Aeschylus, “Agamemnon,” translated by Philip Vellacott
But Clytemnestra has not forgotten what her husband did. She has been planning his death for years and kills him soon after his return. The crime and its fallout form Aeschylus’s “Oresteia” trilogy and provide part of the mythological foundation for Yorgos Lanthimos’s “The Killing of a Sacred Deer.”
Agamemnon’s fate hangs over Odysseus’s homecoming as a warning. Both men leave wives and kingdoms behind for 10 years of war, but only one understands that surviving Troy does not guarantee a safe return. The story intensifies Odysseus’s anxiety about what may await him in Ithaca and makes the loyalty of Penelope, and the predation of her suitors, central to his journey.
HADES
In ancient epics, it was common for heroes to journey into the Underworld, so common, in fact, that the descent has its own name: katabasis. Stories of figures such as Orpheus, Persephone, and Hermes descending into and emerging from the Underworld were often associated with the agricultural cycle, in which a seed is buried in the earth before emerging again. Deities connected with katabasis were therefore closely associated with agriculture and fertility, and their worship became an important part of Greek religious life, as seen in the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Odysseus crosses the veil to consult Tiresias, a legendary seer who appears in other well-known dramas, including “Oedipus Rex” and “The Bacchae.” Accounts of Tiresias’s blindness vary, but in one tradition Athena blinds him after he sees her bathing and then grants him the gift of prophecy.
While in the Underworld, Odysseus encounters mythical women such as Phaedra and Ariadne, as well as his mother, Anticlea, who tells him about his beloved Ithaca. One of his most important encounters is with Achilles, the hero whose fury drives the drama of “The Iliad.” Achilles has died between the events of Homer’s two epics, the famous vulnerability of his heel comes from a later tradition, leaving behind a son who brutalizes members of Troy’s royal family.
Odysseus praises Achilles for his legacy on earth and the reverence he commands among the dead. Achilles rebukes him, lamenting the brevity of his life and the cold suffocation of death:
“No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus!
By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man—
some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—
than rule down here over all the breathless dead.”
- Homer, “The Odyssey,” Book 11, translated by Robert Fagles
Achilles’s warning complicates the heroic values celebrated in “The Iliad.” Glory may preserve a warrior’s name, but it cannot restore the life he sacrificed to attain it. For Odysseus, the encounter reinforces the value of survival and gives added weight to the mortal homecoming he continues to pursue.
CALYPSO
Calypso plays a decidedly different role in Nolan’s film from the one she occupies in Homer’s poem, also absorbing elements of the Lotus Eaters, who entice Odysseus’s crew with a mysterious and potent narcotic flower. She was believed to be a daughter of Atlas, the Titan condemned to hold the heavens on his shoulders for eternity. Calypso is a nymph, a minor female deity associated with nature and often romantically entangled with gods or mortals.
Homer’s Calypso essentially imprisons a stranded Odysseus on her island of Ogygia, coercing him into a sexual relationship while he pines for Ithaca. Only after the intervention of Athena, Odysseus’s guardian goddess, does Zeus order Calypso to release him. The nymph responds by condemning the hypocrisy of male gods who regularly sleep with mortal women while goddesses are punished for relationships with mortal men.
Before Odysseus leaves, Calypso offers him one final incentive: remain with her and gain immortality. It is an attractive proposition, especially after Achilles’s warning about the misery of death. Still, Odysseus is unmoved. He remains determined to return home, even under threat of suffering and death:
“Nevertheless I long—I pine, all my days—
to travel home and see the dawn of my return.
And if a god will wreck me yet again on the wine-dark sea,
I can bear that too, with a spirit tempered to endure.”
- Homer, “The Odyssey,” Book 5, translated by Robert Fagles
This choice captures the heart of Odysseus’s story. Calypso offers him eternal life without change, responsibility, Penelope, or Ithaca. He instead chooses a finite human existence made meaningful by love, memory, suffering, and the possibility of return.
THE LONGING FOR HOME
This is ultimately what separates Odysseus from the gods, monsters, and fallen heroes surrounding him. He understands the suffering that may await him, but chooses a mortal life defined by home, family, and perseverance. “The Odyssey” emerged from centuries of cultural memory: the possible ruins of a real war, the collapse of an interconnected world, the moral expectations of Greek society, and stories reshaped by generations of singers. Nolan may condense characters, combine episodes, and reinterpret Homer’s mythology, but that painful longing for return remains the story’s enduring heart.
Have you seen “The Odyssey” yet? Have you read Homer’s “The Odyssey?” If so, how do you feel about Nolan’s adaptation Please let us know in the comments section below and on Next Best Picture’s X account.
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