So, I know I've said this before, but we are back. To say it's been a minute would be more than an understatement. It's actually been over a year since the last episode of the Odyssey Odyssey, and what a year it's been. I was invited to teach a class on the creative process at the University of Hartford here in Hartford, Connecticut. And I absolutely loved it, but it took just about every one of my waking minutes and quite a few of my sleeping minutes for the past year to really figure out how to teach creativity to 19- and 20-year-olds in 2025. So, I've been away from the studio, but to those of you who found the podcast in that time, I want to give a huge thank you. Every week I had 35 to 75 people finding and downloading episodes, and I just, I love that feeling, whoever you are out there. And if you're one of the people who has made a financial contribution to the program, needless to say, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. So, I'm Tom Lee, and this is The Odyssey Odyssey, the podcast that tells the story of The Odyssey, and all of the stories that lead up to and away from and surround and reflect the magnificent epic of The Odyssey. And speaking of the University of Hartford, I'm going to be teaching a short class, three sessions, as part of the President's College series there. And if you're in the Hartford area, this would be a great opportunity to read through The Odyssey with a group of peers and to have discussions and debates and to do some deep dives into some of the artwork and poetry and other works that I often mention on this podcast. So, I'll put some information about that President's College class at the University of Hartford on my website, www. Tomleestoryteller.net. We're going to dive right back into the poem where we left off at the very beginning of Book Nine. And this section is known as the Apologoi. This is the story within the story. Apologos is the Greek word for story. And this really is the section of the poem that most people are thinking of when they're thinking of the Odyssey. Books Nine through Twelve have all of the magic, all of the monsters, the demons, the giants, All of those sort of fairy tale, folk tale type stories that are embedded in this long epic, they're contained in Books Nine through Twelve. My goal for the summer is to get through this section in several weeks. We'll see how I do. And one of the great things about the Apologoi is that Odysseus himself takes over the story. Up until now, the poem has been narrated by this omniscient, unknown narrator who's telling us the story. But Odysseus has been entertained by King Alcinoos. And now he's going to tell all the Phaeacians on the island of Scoria his whole story from the moment he left Troy until the moment he washed up naked and alone on the shore of this very island. So the narrative arc of the story at this point executes the equivalent of a double gainer triple somersault in pike position from a high board dive. The story is going to completely flip back on itself to the very beginning of Odysseus' adventures. Now, when we met Odysseus for the first time, he was on an island. He was being held captive by the nymph Calypso. And he was completely alone. He was one man with no ship. Which means he has a great deal of explaining to do. When Odysseus started out 20 years ago, when he started on his voyage to Troy, he had 600 men in 12 ships. We know this from the Iliad, that long section of the Iliad that we've talked about, the catalog of the ships. It names all of the kings, all of the leaders, how many ships they had and how many men they had with them. And we're told that Odysseus had 12 ships. And we know there were 50 oars, 50 men in each ship. So that's 600 men, and now he is completely alone. What the hell happened? Well, we're going to find out, we're going to find out how we whittle that number down from 600 to 1. In the part of the story that we've heard so far, Odysseus has escaped from Calypso's island. Zeus decided, with Athena's urging, it was time for him to finally be set free. And she was forced to give him an axe so he could build himself a raft. And he sailed off, but came afoul of Poseidon. And we're told at the very beginning of the poem that Poseidon is angry with Odysseus because he has blinded his son. Odysseus has blinded Poseidon's son. But that's all we're told so far. And once Poseidon discovers that Odysseus is on his way home, he is determined to stop him. He sends that magnificent storm, smashes the raft to pieces. Odysseus is rescued by Eidothia, and he washes up onto the shore of the island of Scuria. And one thing I love about this Apologoi section is it reminds me of so many other stories. It reminds me quite a bit of The Little Prince, Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Odysseus is going to have ten separate adventures in ten different locations, just like the little hymns who flies from planet to planet. He has these very short encounters with all these different characters. He reminds me a little bit of Odysseus. There's also a magnificent Irish story called The Voyage of St. Brendan. And I hope we'll have an episode on this entirely strange dreamlike story. It's sometimes called a vision quest narrative, where this boat full of monks go traveling around from island to island to island and they have all these strange experiences. I'm pretty convinced that that Irish story is inspired more or less directly by the Odyssey, let alone any number of American road trip movies. They're all Odysseus. "So let me tell you," Odysseus says, "let me tell you all the sorrows that Zeus has lain upon me." Really? At the very beginning of the poem, Zeus is complaining that humans blame everything on the gods. No matter how much their own actions have led to their predicaments, they're always blaming the gods, says Zeus. And as we go through these adventures of Odysseus, we might want to keep in the back of our heads, whose fault is it? Whose fault is it that he has lost 600 men and 12 ships? Is it Zeus's fault? Is it his soldiers' fault? Is it the gods' fault? 

So have you heard? The war is over. The Greeks, the Achaeans, have defeated the Trojans. They have burned Troy to the ground. The ploy of the Trojan horse, Odysseus's idea, has been wildly successful. And it's time to head home. It's time for the nostos, the return. And as we know for most of the leaders of the Greek army of the Achaeans, the trip home has been pretty smooth sailing. And at this point in the story, there's no reason for Odysseus to think it will be anything other than that for him. An uneventful week or two at sea, and he'll be home. But, of course, we know that his trip is going to take him 10 years. And the first stop is the island of the Cicones. And that is spelled C-I-C-O-N-E-S, not C-I-C-C-O-N-E-S. I entered that misspelling into the British Museum's website, and they kindly informed me that that is the last name of Madonna. Madonna Louise Cicone was her name at birth. Nothing else is stated about Madonna on the British Museum's website, but that was good to know. And when Odysseus and his men arrive on the island of the Cicones, they get right down to business as usual, which is killing and plundering. Odysseus tells in a very cold-blooded way that they arrived on the island, and they immediately began killing as many of the inhabitants as they could. They captured the women for slaves, and they took as much of their gold and jewels as they could. As much treasure and loot as they could find. And this is business as usual. We think of the Trojan War as being the effort of the Achaeans to bring back Helen of Troy and to save Menelaus' honor. But let's not forget, they were also looking for a piece of the action, as Tony Soprano says. Odysseus and his men, like all the other Greeks, were fully intending to bring home as much Trojan loot as they could get their hands on. King Priam had storehouses of gold, he had tripods, he had jewels, the women of Troy had beautiful fabrics, and all of this was going to be coming home with the Greeks. 

And they even steal their food. They steal a huge quantity of roast meat and wine and the Cicones that haven't been killed have turned tail and fled. And Odysseus says to the men, let's get going. We've done what we came to do. We have treasure, we have slaves. Let's get going. But the men, discipline seems to be breaking down fairly early in this journey because the men say that no, they want to stay there and have a feast. They want to drink this wine. They want to eat this meat that they've stolen. And they do that all through the night. And then, as Rosy Fingered Dawn returns, we learn that there are more Cicones. Anyway, there are many, many, many more Cicones. And the few who escaped alive have gone back to the city and they have rallied all of the men to come and fight against Odysseus and his men. They come like the leaves and the flowers that blossom in the spring. You have this image of this vast horde of Cicones pouring over the hill to the astonished Achaeans. And at first, even as outnumbered as they are, Odysseus and his men hold up their end. These are pro-fighters from the Trojan War, and they are going to fight spear for spear and sword for sword. But we're told that the tide has changed a little bit because these Cicones are riding in chariots. They're skilled at warfare in chariots. And it's interesting because there's chariots all through the Iliad. We constantly hear about the Greeks going to the battlefield, riding in their chariots. Patroclus, of course, drives Achilles' chariot for him. But actually, they didn't fight from the chariots. The chariots were sort of, sometimes they're referred to as war taxis. They would, the soldiers would get into the chariots and they would drive out to the battlefield and then they would jump off and then they would fight hand to hand and spear to spear. They didn't actually fight from the chariots, but the Cicones were very skilled at this. And because of that, they were able to kill 72 of Odysseus' men. They killed six men from every one of the ships. So, if you're following along at home, that's six times 12 is 72 men killed. So, there's only 528 left and counting. I love this detail about the chariots. It always reminds me of one of my favorite weird little episodes in the Bible. In the book of Judges, in the middle of one of the many battles that takes place in that book, it says: The Lord was with the men of Judah, and they took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had chariots fitted with iron. So, God is on your side as long as the enemy doesn't have chariots fitted with iron, because then you are on your own. And the crew, Odysseus' crew, of course, is now willing to leave ASAP. They call three times on each of the men who has died, and off they sail. It's kind of a moving little detail of these men shouting out the names of the dead before they sail away. And that's it. That's the whole episode of the Cicones. And I've always wondered about this. What's the point of this? Why tell this story other than the fact that we're beginning to whittle that number down? How does this advance the narrative of the Odyssey? And thinking about it for the podcast, it suddenly occurred to me that these are actually the last human enemies that Odysseus and his men are going to encounter. This is the end of the real world. They've been fighting a very real battle in Troy for ten years. They're heading home and this is one last clash with human opponents because now storms ensue. There's quite a number of storms at sea in the Odyssey and it can be a little easy to lose track of them. But the next storms I think are really important. The first storm lasts for two days and there are some very violent winds that rip the sails of the ship and the men have to sort of pull into this little island where they wait out the weather and repair the sails for two days. And then they set sail again and they 

round the coast of Cape Malia and this is a real place. It's mentioned several times in the Odyssey. It's an important nautical landmark, but it's a real place in Greece. It's the second southernmost point on the Peloponnese and it's notorious as a place of shipwrecks and a place of storms and bad weather. In fact, there's a story, a very romantic, poignant story from the New York Times from 1901 about a young captain, a sea captain, who just got his license, whatever you got in 1901, to become a sea captain. And on his first voyage off to Europe, he took his new bride. They were newlyweds and he was able to convince the owners of the ship that he should take his bride with him. And they saw Constantinople and they saw all of these wonders of the Eastern world. Great was the stuff that he had brought in 1901. Great was the glee of the girl wife, the New York Times reports. But his ship was run into by a blundering Greek steamer, as they put it, at Cape Malia. And all hands were lost except for the captain, who took up residence on that rocky point. He never learned to speak Greek, but he had help from peasants and he built himself a little shack and he spent his days staring out to sea, at the point where he had lost all of his happiness. The New York Times published this story when they discovered that the hermit of Cape Malia had died. They published his tragic tale. Anyway, that's Cape Malia, but I was quite thrilled when I opened our old atlas and there it was, in this very same place. People are always trying to find the geographic locations of some of these points of the Odyssey, which is mostly ridiculous, but there it is. It's the real place and it's had the same name for thousands of years. And at this point, there's the sense that this is the last leg of the journey around Cape Malia and straight home till morning. But of course, if that were the case, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast. 

I think it's the last leg of the story. I think it's the last leg of the story. I think it's the last leg of the story. I think it's the last leg of the story. I think it's the last leg of the story. I think it's the last leg of the story. I think it's the last leg of the story. I think it's the last leg of the story. I think it's the last leg of the story. I think it's the last leg of the story. I think it's the last leg of the story. I think it's the last leg of the story. I think it's the last leg of the story. And this lasts for nine days. Which is a long time compared to any of the other voyages that he makes, except for the voyage from Calypso's Island to Skiriya. Nine days is a very long time to be blown wildly about in every direction by savage winds, and it takes him into this realm where every encounter he's going to have is with a super natural force. Here are monsters, here are witches, giants, you name it. It's not quite as clear cut as Dorothy going up into the cyclone and being carried off to Oz. It's not quite as sharp as the Pevensey children going through the back of the wardrobe, or Alice going down the rabbit hole, or even, and this memory sort of dredged up for me when I was thinking about this, H. R. Puff and Stuff, the opening sequence of the children's series in the '70s, H. R. Puff and Stuff, which I just loved. The boy Jimmy goes off on this beautiful magic boat, and then a witchy-poo sends a wild storm. ...he's washed ashore. ...not unlike Odysseus, I think if someone wants a nice little PhD thesis, they could compare the Odyssey and H. R. Puff and Stuff. You get it all here on the Odyssey Odyssey. 

And the first stop in this new, somewhat magical realm is the land of the lotus eaters who eat flowery food. And this is a really iconic image, I think, this idea of the peaceful lotus eaters. We're told right away they have no ill intention. They're not going to try to kill the Greeks. They're just sitting on their island eating the food of the lotus. 

And it's very much a botanical dead end to try to identify exactly what this plant is. People have been debating it literally for thousands of years. It's definitely not the lotus that you might get in a flower arrangement. It's not the lotus that the Buddha is sitting on. It's a mystical plant. And the quality of this plant is that it simply makes you forget all your cares. You simply sit and eat, and all your worries, all your cares, fade away. And it is such an iconic scene, it's a little surprising when you realize that in the poem the whole episode is only 22 lines long. There's a very specific formula: they arrive at the island, they stop for water, and they decide to explore to see what sort of people live here. Odysseus always sends out two men to explore and one man to act as herald, that is to sort of come running back. If there's any news or any emergency. And we're told that these three men mingled with the lotus eaters. In A. T. Murray's translation, Odysseus says: "Nor did the lotus eaters think of killing my comrades, but gave them lotus to eat. And whoever of them ate the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus no longer wished to bring back word or return home. But there they wished to remain among the lotus eaters, feeding on the lotus and to forget their homecoming." But Odysseus literally drags these men away. He finds them, drags them back to the ship. They're weeping. They're begging to remain there. He actually ties them onto the benches of the ships where they're rowing. And off they sail. They sail. And I think this is a really interesting first threat. The threat of forgetting. Specifically forgetting the desire to return home. They are going to face some really existential life or death threats. There are going to be a lot of creatures that are going to try to eat these men alive and many of them are going to succeed. But this is a very insidious sort of danger. The danger that they'll just stop caring. They'll stop striving. They won't bother to return They'll just stay there and eat lotus until they die, presumably, in peaceful old age. We don't really know if the lotus eaters are mortal or immortal. But Odysseus' men certainly would die. 

And since this whole poem is about this desperate effort to return home, the very worst thing that could happen and the first danger that they face is that they won't feel like it, they won't care, they'll 

lose all interest in heading home, eat the fruit and forget. Where have we heard that before? It's not quite Adam and Eve, but it is Demeter and Persephone, 

eat the fruit, eat the fruit and forget. Where have we heard that before? It's not quite Adam and Eve who are forbidden to eat the fruit. It's a little bit like Demeter and Persephone, Persephone of course goes down to Hades and and because she eats the pomegranate she loses half of her time on Earth. She has to spend half half of her time in the Underworld as Queen of the Dead. 

The other story that surfaced, the other story that bubbled up for me when I was thinking about this was Goblin Market. The magnificent poem by Christina Rossetti where the two children hear the goblins in the garden, at the bottom of the garden. And so that they're selling fruit, they're selling the most beautiful, delicious 

plums, and oranges, and cantaloupes, and grapes, absolutely gorgeous, exquisite fruit. And they say, come and buy, come and buy our fruits. And the two children hear this, and of course being good little Victorian children, they resist at first. But Laura and Lizzie, it's Laura that finally succumbs to the goblins' temptations, and she gives them her silver coin, and she eats some of their fruit, and then immediately she begins to pine away. And we sense that if she, and if she can't get more of this fruit, then and if she can't get more of this fruit, it's pretty clear that she's going to waste away and die. But she can no longer hear the goblins cry, only her sister Lizzie can hear it. And Lizzie rescues her sister. But if you haven't read the poem, "I don't want to spoil it for you, because it's wild and really just a fantastic treat." "Treat yourself to the Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti."