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Perhaps one of the most suggestive parts of Nolan’s Odyssey for me, is his depiction of the witch Circe. Nolan’s Circe lives alone in a hut, with only her wild animals for company. She is easily spooked and immediately assumes the worst of Odysseus’ men, all too quickly (and grotesquely) transforming them into pigs. Chaste and somewhat skittish, she is a far cry from the goddess of Homer’s tale (Emily Wilson, in her now famous review of Nolan’s movie, calls her “Baba Yaga in a Hansel and Gretel cottage”).

In Book 10 of the Odyssey, Odysseus’ men are first drawn to Circe’s abode by her “lovely singing” and find her weaving on a loom. Circe feeds them a potion of barley, cheese, honey, wine, and magical drugs then touches them with her wand to transform them into pigs (Od. 10.225–241). Odysseus arrives in search of his men and sleeps with the goddess, who is described at various points throughout the narrative as “of beautiful hair,”  “revered/august,” and “dread.” Circe then transforms the pigs back into men, rendering them taller and more youthful than they were prior to their transformation, and hosts Odysseus and his men for an entire year (Od. 10.388–470). In Homer’s version, therefore, Circe is a lovely goddess and powerful witch, a complex figure whose unnatural and extraordinary abilities do not immediately make her undesirable or evil.

Samantha Morton’s captivating portrayal of Circe is a far cry from this glistening hostess goddess. Nolan has created a uniquely off-putting Circe. The transformation scene in particular achieves this effect, although the tension builds as the men scarf down stew in the moments leading up to their metamorphoses. While an impressive piece of visual effects, the cinematic transformation is much more physically involved than the one described in Homer’s text. Morton forcefully shapes the faces of the men into pigs, all while unsettling squealing rings in the background. Nolan therefore enhances a sense of abjection latent in the original text with this very visually stunning (and stomach-churning) scene. The graphic nature of the transformation adds to the other tidbits of characterization the audience has already seen: Circe shows immediate distrust of the men and runs from them when she first encounters them; she likewise makes assumptions about their character, telling them to “return to their disguises” when she transforms them back. The movie ultimately presents a defensive and reactive Circe, man-hating and alone with her animals, whose power is not just uncanny but deeply disturbing.

So Nolan’s Circe is quite different from Homer’s Circe. I am convinced, however, that Nolan’s portrayal of the witch is true to ancient culture. The way Nolan presents this witch, truly the only woman in his movie with clear power and individual agency, aligns with how witches (and the powerful women they represent) have historically been presented, not just in the texts of Ancient Greece and Rome but throughout history. The stereotype of the witch as a transgressive, solitary woman who inhabits the margins of society begins to appear as early as the  fifth century BCE. Kimberly Stratton, writing about the connection between women and witches, has noted that the stereotype of the witch is really reflective of women who refused to conform to societal expectations, specifically expectations of submission and subjection. Witches within the creative imagination are manifestations of societal fears and anxieties about the (perceived) overextension of women’s power and agency. The stereotype of the witch was thus highly politicized.

It is notable, therefore, that Nolan’s Circe, the one female character in the entire movie who clearly possesses power and whose sole purpose for existing is not tied to Odysseus, conforms more closely to the misogynistic stereotype of a witch than her portrayal in the  epic. It is hard to read this depiction of Circe the witch as neutral or divorced from its larger cultural contexts, especially considering contemporary discourses on the role of women, informed by the rise of red-pill content and tradwives. In his depiction of Circe, rendering her off-putting and her power frightening, Nolan continues in the tradition of many great Classical authors who came before him. He also propagates the power and prevalence of the stereotype of the witch, a stereotype built on the fear of people and power that challenges the status quo. Nolan’s Circe accurately reflects ancient culture and that in and of itself is a problem.

Further reading:
Stratton, K. B. and D. S. Kalleres (eds.), Daughters of Hecate: Women and Magic in the Ancient World (Oxford and New York, 2014).

• Esp.: Stratton, “Interrogating the Magic-Gender Connection,” pp. 1–40.
• Spaeth, “From Goddess to Hag: The Greek and Roman Witch,” pp. 41–70.
• Stratton, “Magic, Abjection, and Gender in Roman Literature,” pp. 152–81.

Transformed sailor, Odysseus and Circe. Detail from a mixing bowl attributed to the Persephone Painter in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (ca. 440 BCE).

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It’s easy to take for granted that we know what the Odyssey is about, at least on the most straightforward, narrative level: a man leaves his fatherland for a long time, and faces many challenges that prevent him from returning, but he toils and strives and finds his way back home, where he is reunited with his family and reestablishes his household. And yet the distance between these last two steps is oddly protracted. To this day I find myself surprised to remember that the storm-tossed Odysseus sets foot on the island of Ithaca in Book 13 of the 24-book epic. It takes him 10 more books to fully reveal himself to the people of Ithaca, and one more book to prove his identity to his wife’s satisfaction. And then we reach the final book, the strangeness of which has been difficult to integrate into the popular conception of the poem. A second catalog of ghosts from the underworld, a near-battle with the relatives of the suitors, thwarted by Athena’s intervention. And after all this, Odysseus doesn’t stay home for long: in the underworld Tiresias has told him that after he reaches Ithaca he has to undertake another, overland journey. He tells Penelope “we have not yet come to the end of all of our trials, but from here on out will be measureless toil, long and hard …” (Od. 23, 248-250). Viewers of Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey may have been surprised to see the hero immediately moving on from Ithaca, but this captures something of the restlessness of the poem – though in the movie, he brings Penelope along, who keeps him tethered to his real identity.

I think that the Odyssey’s inability to really end is tied up with Odysseus’s inability to really go home, and that all of this has to do with Odysseus’ pathological inability to be who he is – to return not only to Ithaca but to himself. Odysseus projects and inhabits new identities in the form of his incessant storytelling and his propensity for taking up disguises. The proverbial man of many ways refracts his subjectivity all over the Mediterranean, in the guise of aristocrat and a vagabond, an anonymous man from Crete and an adventurer among fantastical monsters, or a long-lost hero on the brink of returning home from a layover with the Thesprotians. Even before we meet him directly, we hear Helen’s story of his disguised incursion into the Trojan camp, an early rehearsal of the role of the beggar that he will play upon his return to Ithaca.  Odysseus can be both everyman – the anonymous foreigner that he plays to the Phaeacians for several books before revealing himself – and “No-man,” as he ingeniously identifies himself to the Cyclops. Once home, he juggles three identities at once: the “real” Odysseus, whom the audience knows is hidden under the beggar’s rags; the beggar himself, for whom Odysseus invents a series of elaborate Cretan lineages and backstories; and, third, in an impressive display of dissociation, the imaginary version of Odysseus who Odysseus-as-beggar claims will be returning imminently. The most shocking instance occurs in that strange final book: Odysseus goes out into the countryside to find his father, who, crushed by grief for his long-lost son, has withdrawn from the city and is living like a poor farmer in a modest hut. Odysseus comes across the piteous sight of Laertes digging in the field, dirty, garbed in goatskins and ox hide. Odysseus debates in his mind whether the better course is to approach his father and embrace him, or “to test him first with mocking words” (Od. 24, 240), and, inexplicably to most, chooses the latter. Here he invents yet another new identity with its own elaborate backstory, totally distinct from the variations on the Cretan theme he has developed and embroidered in earlier lying tales.

It takes a strange, forgotten epic, a sequel to the Odyssey, to finally fix the hero to his identity, with recourse to some Oedipal logic. The Telegony (whose text is lost but of which we have an ancient summary and various ancient scholarly references) seems to pick up

immediately following the events of the Odyssey, ruminates on the lingering instability of Odysseus’s identity and its effect on stories told about him. Among other adventures, Odysseus enjoys an extended sojourn in Thesprotia (living out a lie he tells while in disguise in Ithaca), in which he takes another wife, sires another child, and fights as a favorite of Athena in yet another war. But in this story, Odysseus has also had a child by the witch Circe (Telegonus, literally ‘born far away’), who goes seeking his father when he comes of age. In a tragic twist, he kills Odysseus before realizing who he is while undertaking some mundane pillaging. Of course, killing Odysseus off in any way would effectively put an end to his wanderings and proliferations. But to do so by patricide is to emphatically and irrevocably circumscribe him into one role.  Patricide differs from mere homicide in that the horror of the crime, and the pollution attendant upon it, depends entirely upon the singular and reciprocal identities of the victim and the perpetrator. Readers of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King will remember that Oedipus’ murder of the old man at the crossroads seemed hardly worth recalling until he realized that the man he killed was Laius, and, ultimately, that Laius was his father.  Death by patricide posthumously confines Odysseus within the boundaries of his identity. Like Menelaus dauntlessly wrestling the shapeshifter Proteus until he succumbs to the inhabitation of his true identity, the old man of the sea, Telegonus’ unwitting murder of Odysseus cements him once and for all into his true shape.

Terracotta plaque from Melos showing Odysseus returning to Penelope as his father, Laertes, his son, Telemachos, and the swineherd Eumaios look on. ca. 460–450 BCE. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.]

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Professor Haselswerdt joined the department in 2020 and currently serves as the Co-Director of Graduate Studies. She teaches classes in Greek language and Greek culture and has published widely on tragedy, archaic Greek poetry, and queer studies. Her book, Thinking with Tragic Chorality: Lyricism, Affect, and Anachrony in Greek Tragedy, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press in February 2027.

Congratulations Ella!

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How do I say this without sounding like a grouch? I didn’t like Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey all that much, but not for any of the reasons I expected. All those early complaints about fidelity to the text (which text?), the period (what period?), the ethnic mix (only making its statues white was truly anachronistic) proved to be silly and beside the point. These stories beg to be retold and revalued, and as Kathryn Morgan reminds us, the process of revaluation has a very long history. Athenian tragedians had a field day exploring the price paid at Troy by victors and vanquished alike. Vergil’s Aeneid, written with Roman culture’s quite different ideas of heroism and leadership in mind, turned Homeric values upside down. Two great operas, Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’ Ulisse in patria (1639) and Fauré’s Pénélope (1913), focus specifically and movingly on the tension and pathos as Odysseus, much the worse for his experiences, seeks reunion with a Penelope reluctant to abandon the doubt, the tenacity, and the loneliness that have for so long defined her existence.

So why fret over yet another retelling, this one with the power to draw new audiences to a fuller Odyssey by fusing Homeric material with Vergil—Nolan’s falling towers at Troy come straight from Aeneid 2—and a new ending stitched together from Tennyson and the Epic Cycle? Roman poets did that sort of thing all the time. (We Latinists call it contaminatio.) Change is in itself no problem. It’s the result that disappoints. The many reworkings of this story from Vergil to Joyce to Walcott and beyond all have some moral core, developing Homer’s familiar elements in new ways designed to tax our sensibilities and challenge our values. Nolan’s Odyssey substitutes cliché for complexity, reducing “the law of Zeus” to a catch phrase, lotus-eating to a plot device, the “sea-people” to off-screen bogeymen. That said, some great Homeric moments do produce great cinematic moments. I loved the truly terrifying Laestrygonians, the sudden swoop of Scylla, the basin overturned as Eurycleia touches the beggar’s scar, but all too many of my favorite moments are AWOL. Where is Athena listening straight-faced as Odysseus, on Ithaca at last, spins a yarn about a Cretan exile or Telemachus about to string his father’s bow? Other, truly difficult moments are also missing. Odysseus does not sack the Cicones’ city or taunt the Cyclops. Behavior alien to modern sensibilities has been softened or erased, as if hints of PTSD can explain (or explain away) the inner contradictions that make Odysseus so problematic a figure. This cinematic Odysseus, neither complicated (whatever that means) nor particularly cunning, is easier to understand but not nearly as interesting as the Homeric version.

And yet, arguing over this Odyssey—deciding what to praise, what to regret, what succeeds, what fails—remains richly rewarding. Homer’s reentry into popular culture, bringing with it a tacit invitation to set his talent as a story-teller against Christopher Nolan’s, offers talking-points galore: how disjointed the story becomes without gods to integrate its disparate elements; how difficult the story is to end, a satisfactory resolution being a source of discomfort and debate since at least the time of Aristarchus; the many ways Penelope is, might be, or should be her husband’s equal in cunning and strength of character; what is gained and what is lost by making any of these figures “relatable” and, by giving them familiar faces, joining them in popular discourse with Jason Bourne and Peter Parker. All this is fun to think about. What I miss is an awareness of difference, an acknowledgment of the many ways ancient Greeks (and Romans) were not like us and how alien their world would seem if we were suddenly plunged into it. As students of Greco-Roman antiquity, we are confronted every day with the strange as well as the familiar, with glimpses of other ways humans have behaved and other values they have held. The process of comparison and contrast is enlightening, humbling, and endlessly fascinating. This Odyssey, with its contradictory, potentially alienating elements removed, becomes rather less so. That said, the box office numbers cannot be denied: Homer’s story remains irrepressibly engaging. As Tennyson knew very well, “tho’ much is taken, much abides.”

Further reading:

Sander M. Goldberg, “From Homer’s Banquet to Fauchois’ Feast: The Odyssey’s Odyssey,” in Carlo Caballero and Stephen Rumph, eds. Fauré Studies (Cambridge 2021) 134-51.

Edith Hall, The Return of Ulysses: A Cultural History of Homer’s Odyssey (Baltimore, 2008).

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Watching the reaction to and discussion of Christopher Nolan’s film version of the Odyssey has been fascinating. As someone who teaches classical mythology on a regular basis, I am sympathetic to the need to change an ancient myth to tell the story one wants to tell and make the points one wants to make. After all, this was the fate of the myth of Odysseus throughout the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. Greek tragedy could turn Odysseus into a cynical and manipulative demagogue (as in Euripides’ Hecuba), or into a deceiver and a corrupter of young people (Sophocles’ Philoctetes).  Intellectuals of the late fifth century played upon his status as a skilled orator.  Homer’ Odyssey, as well as lost poems in the same tradition, was a lasting inspiration and challenge to those who came after, and Homer’s successors did not hesitate to change aspects of the story whenever they felt like it.

One particular aspect of the film that has been suggestive for me is the portrayal of Odysseus as someone suffering from PTSD.  One might think that this was the last thing any ancient author would have seen in the Odyssey.  But this characterization finds a surprising echo in the writing of an author from the early fourth century BCE who is one of my research interests: the philosopher Plato.  Like many educated Athenians, Plato (as well as his teacher, Socrates, who is the major character in many of his philosophical dialogues) could and did quote Homer in support of points they made in every day conversation. It’s no surprise, then, that Plato can portray Socrates quoting Odysseus approvingly, as when he says in the Republic that Odysseus’ self-admonition “Endure my heart!  You have suffered things more shameless than this! (Od. 20.18), is a good model of self-control (Rep. 3.390d). Plato was also interested in Odysseus as a skilled speaker and thus as a model for an orator, and also as a test case for the ethics of deception.  But the passage that interests me most at the moment comes from the end of Republic, when Socrates tells a myth of the afterlife in which souls are punished or rewarded for their good or bad deeds during life and then undergo process of reincarnation.  The myth illustrates the importance of self-knowledge and thoughtfulness, since when the soul is about to be reincarnated it has some choice over the kind of life it will live. Choosing that life well is crucial for future happiness.  The myth illustrates this process by recounting the choices of some famous figures from mythology (Rep. 10.620).  Agamemnon chooses to be an eagle in his next incarnation “because of his sufferings, thorough hatred of the human race” (remember that he is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra as soon as he returns from Troy). The hero Ajax opts to become a lion, unwilling to be a human again because of his resentment at not being chosen to receive the arms of Achilles after Achilles’ death (Odysseus was awarded them instead, and Ajax ends up committing suicide).  Odysseus chooses last, and “because he remembered his previous toils he gave up on ambition and sought the life of a private citizen who minded his own business.”  He chooses this life joyfully, and says that this is the life he would have picked even if he had chosen first.

This entire scene in the Republic is haunted by the trauma of these Trojan War heroes.  The experiences of Ajax and Agamemnon have caused them to reject humanity altogether and choose future lives as animals—perhaps a comment on the psychological injury caused by the Trojan War and its aftermath, the relentless drive to win and to be the best coupled with the suffering (one’s own and that of others) that results.  Odysseus is a more interesting case because he is a broader thinker and a more thoughtful one.  Neither Agamemnon or Ajax has learned anything. Odysseus, on the other hand, realizes that the problem is in the system, the ambition that causes one to live life without careful consideration of the consequences.  He wants a life of relative obscurity because this is the life that will give him the best chance of making it through his next existence morally unscathed, and perhaps even (from Plato’s point of view) with the thoughtful self-awareness that is the beginning of philosophy.  In Nolan’s Odyssey, Odysseus goes into exile at the end (with Penelope—a very un-Platonic touch!) because of his slaughter of the suitors.  He doesn’t mind this, and it is clear that the structures of conquest, deception, and domination in which he has participated now seem to him dangerous and problematic.  He wants a quiet life.  There is something in common with Plato here.  Plato does not give us an Odysseus with PTSD as such, but he does give us one who questions and rejects the cultural structures within which he has operated.  The Republic has a lot to say about the corrosive effects of power and ambition on the individual soul as well as about the way these characteristics connect with greed and the desire for money.  This is the trajectory that leads to the horrendous figure of the tyrant in the dialogue, the ruler who holds nothing sacred and who will reject no immoral act if it leads to his own victory.  These moral dangers were as present in antiquity as they are today, and it is thought-provoking to see Nolan and Plato (in their different ways) feature a hero whose suffering and endurance (Homer’s Odysseus is “much-enduring,” and we have seen how Plato picks up on the importance of endurance) enable him to rethink the way he interacts with the world.

Further reading: Sylvia Montiglio, From Villain to Hero: Odysseus in Ancient Thought (Ann Arbor, 2011).

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Professor Spielberg joined the department in 2018 and currently serves as the Director of our Postbaccalaureate Program. She teaches classes in Latin language and Roman culture and has published widely on Roman historiography and rhetoric. Her book, The Words of Others in Roman Historiography, is forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press. Congratulations Lydia!

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A life-long scholar, Bryan entered Montessori school in San Diego CA and read at age 3. He first studied Latin during middle school in Arlington VA, and subsequently focused on language studies at St. Alban’s School in Washington, DC where he graduated as valedictorian in 1992. He walked the full length of Hadrian’s Wall the summer before enrolling at University of Chicago as a Dolin Fellow. After earning a BA in Classics in 1996, he came to UCLA, where he received a Luckman Distinguished Teaching Award. Bryan received the Lord Scholarship for a 2001 summer session at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, and later recorded videos

demonstrating Roman oratory (“Performing Cicero”) still to be found on the UCLA department website (see left). Professor Sander Goldberg, who supervised this project, remembers that “working with Bryan recording those performances was a real thrill—one of my great teaching experiences.”

After leaving UCLA, he established a new Latin department at Fort Worth Country Day School in Texas (2005), where he also directed annual student theatre productions including a modern translation of Oedipus Tyrannus. In 2009 he began teaching Latin at a public high school in Fort Worth, until the school replaced this language option with Chinese. After an amicable divorce from his wife, a fellow UCLA graduate, Bryan moved to Virginia and taught at Belle Meade School in Sperryville, where he taught not only Latin but also chemistry, supervised some gardening activities, and drove the school van. Ill health required relocation to Texas in 2014. After a diagnosis of MS, he joined his parents in San Marcos, TX and began treatment, but moved to New Haven Assisted Living in 2018. Survivors include his mother, Margaret Sharon (Atkins) Lockett, of San Marcos, TX, and older brother Joseph “Chepe” Lockett (and wife Jennifer Drummond) of Bellaire, TX.

Colleagues and teachers who shared Bryan’s time at UCLA will remember him as a superb linguist and talented critic. His main interests lay in ancient drama and performance, but extended also to ancient religion and society. Outside Classics, he was an avid reader of science fiction and a Beatles fan. His students adored him; he was approachable, concerned, dynamic, and, above all, kind. One final anecdote, told at a memorial gathering in his honor, can stand for many. After attempts to contact a staff member of the assisted living facility where he spent his final years failed, she was located in Bryan’s room, where he was tutoring her on schoolwork. He never retired from teaching. We are proud to have known him.

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