Odyssey | Sea of Monsters & Slaughter of the Suitors

Odysseus, clinging to a fig tree above the whirlpool Charybdis “like a bat,” is the image that captures his lowest point: stripped of his crew, his ships, and any hope of a straightforward homecoming. This is the moment the Odyssey’s second half begins, and it only gets bloodier from there. Classicist and novelist Emily Hauser returns to The Ancients to guide listeners through the poem’s final twelve books, from the Sea of Monsters to the slaughter of the suitors, and to show how the grisly climax is inseparable from the real-world Bronze Age dynamics of power, slavery, and hostage-taking that underpin the myth.

The Last Voyage: Sirens, Scylla, and the Cattle of the Sun

After receiving his prophecy from the dead prophet Tiresias—that he will eventually return to Ithaca but must then embark on yet another journey—Odysseus leaves the underworld and returns to Circe’s island. She gives him the final directions he needs, and his last adventures as a captain begin. The first is the Sirens, bird-women whose song is not a generic lure but a specific one: they sing the hero’s own epic, calling Odysseus “the sacker of cities” and offering him the immortality of being remembered in song. It is the ultimate narcissistic temptation, and Odysseus insists on hearing it, ordering his men to plug their ears with wax and bind him to the mast.