The Odysseus Homer wrote

After watching Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this week, I was left surprised by one thing above all else- that Odysseus never truly felt clever. The sharp-minded protagonist I had come to know through reading the epic, never quite appeared on screen.

In Homer’s Iliad and The Odyssey, epithets are woven seamlessly throughout the poem. These are repetitive descriptive phrases attached to characters, used to remind the audience of their defining traits. Their importance becomes even clearer when we remember that the epics were traditionally oral. The Odyssey itself would have been sung by a bard/bards over approximately five evenings at banquets or festivals. As the audience were hearing thousands of lines rather than reading them, epithets served as constant reminders of who each character was and what they represented.

Achilles’ epithets in the Iliad spotlight his excellence in combat. He is described as ‘Podarkēs (‘swift-footed’/’of swift feet’) and Theois epieikelos (‘Godlike’/’equal to the Gods’). Homer was keen to remind us of his speed, military strength and superiority in battle. However, Odysseus, is rarely defined by his physical prowess.

Instead, Homer repeatedly describes him as Polytropos (‘a man of many twists and turns’) and Polymētis (‘a man of many devices’). Polytropos is far more intentional than simply ‘clever’. It suggests he is someone endlessly adaptable, capable of navigating changing circumstances, shifting perspectives and even turning other people’s minds through deception and persuasion. Homer defines this hero, not with his sword, but with his mind.

If an audience leaves the story remembering Odysseus primarily as a weary traveller or a capable warrior, then something essential has been lost. Homer spends the entire poem insisting that his hero is something else entirely, a man whose victories are won with wit, deception and intelligence not physical strength or perseverance.

Perhaps the greatest trick of Odysseus’ intelligence is one that is easy to disappear simply through translation. In the epic, Polyphemus asks for Odysseus’ name, to which he replies he is ‘mē tis’. – translating to ‘no one or ‘not any man’. The practical effect of the lie is clear, when the blinded cyclops cries for help, shouting that ‘no one’ is killing him, the other cyclopes assume no one is attacking him and leave.

However, when ‘mē tis’ is put together to form the word ‘mêtis’ – this means cunning intelligence or cleverness. When Odysseus says his name is 'no one', he appears to deny his own identity, but the irony is that he is acting with pure mêtis at that moment. The cyclops cannot even perceive the intelligence that is defeating him. If we want to add even more humour to the party, for the contemporary audience, mêtis’ was not merely an abstract quality – it was a Titaness. Metis was the personification of wisdom, craft and intelligence. In Hesiod’s ‘Theogony’, Zeus swallowed Metis worried her wisdom will outsmart him in the future. Her wisdom became part of him before Athena was later born from his head. This carries over in the epic, as Athena becomes Odysseus’ greatest divine ally, guiding the hero back to the shores of Ithaca against all odds. Their relationship is built on a shared appreciation for mêtis.

Prior to their escape, Odysseus offers the giant creature strong wine until he collapses into a drunken sleep, before blinding him with a hardened olive stake, and then escapes by tying his men underneath the sheep so they pass unnoticed beneath his fingertips. Every stage of the escape was dependent not on strength, but on anticipation and deception.

Ironically, Odysseus’ genuinely foolish decision comes immediately afterwards when pride gets the better of our hero. Unable to resist claiming victory, he shouts his real name back to Polyphemus, allowing the Cyclops to call upon his father Poseidon for revenge, delaying his journey back home to Ithaca by a decade. Even Homer’s cleverest hero is susceptible to hubris, and it is clear his intelligence is not static.

Ulysses and the Sirens, John William Waterhouse (1891)

Odysseus is contemplative and more complex than any other archetypical hero but remains capable of explosive violence. It is easy to see why some critics like to call him the first ‘modern man’ in literature.

Films often equate intelligence with exposition; a character is deemed brilliant because other characters say they are. However, Homer lets the audience discover his hero’s intelligence by watching his plans unfold. Every deception, lie and disguise reveals another layer of the brilliant character's mind. Nolan's Odysseus seemed to be defined less by brilliance and more by psychological burden - a soldier who was haunted by war, grief and guilt. It is an interesting interpretation, but it changes the core architecture of the character. On the one hand, Homer is desperately asking us to marvel at the genius of Odysseus' mind, whereas Nolan is making us sympathise with his suffering. In my eyes, they are two separate heros. This is why I left Nolan’s film feeling that something was missing. His courage, resilience or determination were never doubted. But I never found myself in awe of his mind the way I was reading it. And for a hero who is never introduced as ‘lion-hearted’, but rather the man of many turns, this felt like a great omission

sham