Coming Home from War in Ancient Greece

Apple  | Audible |  Spotify  |  RSS  |  YouTube (captioned)
​

The Iliad and The Odyssey dramatize not only war, but how challenging it can be to return from war, and how war separates those who fight from their families and communities — even when there aren’t angry gods involved. Figuring out the history behind these beloved poems has a long and complicated history of its own. Scholars have used archaeology to find cities and palaces made famous by Homer. And historians debate the cultural meanings of war and trauma in cultures far removed from our own. The Return (2024) engages with many of these debates as it portrays Odysseus and Penelope’s familiar human story.

​Host: Lucy

Help keep Footnoting History going, click here to find out how

Further Reading
Karlyle Bistas, Ramneet Grewal, “The Intricacies of Survivor's Guilt: Exploring Its Phenomenon Across Contexts,” Cureus 15:9 (2023 Sep 21): e45703. doi: 10.7759/cureus.45703
 
Homer, trans. Emily Wilson, The Iliad and The Odyssey.
 
Peter Meineck and David Konstan, eds., Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks.
 
Joanne Murphy, “Living with the Dead: Tombs and Palaces in Bronze Age Pylos,” campus talk, College of Wooster, (2017).
 
Uberto Pasolini, dir., The Return.
 
Simone Weil, The Iliad: The Poem of Force.
 
Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, “The Return is Also a Reunion,” Mary Louise Kelly, NPR. 

Music: "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin Macleod (www.incompetech.com)