Literature and history

come. Hello and welcome to literature and history. Episode 14, the Autumn Leaves.

This is the third of three episodes on Homer's Odyssey.

The first two covered the first 16 books of the epic,

and this third episode will cover the final eight.

If you're just joining in and want to hear the Odyssey from the beginning, head back to

episode 12. Otherwise, let's get back up to speed.

The Trojan War ended about nine years ago. And ever since it ended, our hero Odysseus has

been trying to get home. The first couple of years of his journey were exhausting and

traumatic and again and again he became lost or

marooned being forced to watch the slow diminution of his crew. Odysseus and his men

were preyed on by the Cyclops, by giant cannibals called the Listergonians.

They were endangered by the witch, Sircy, and then nearly all perished when journeying between the vast whirlpool called Coribdis

and the six-headed monster called Scylla.

They almost starved on an island populated with sacred cattle, and after they ate these cattle, Odysseus

washed up on an island only to be held captive by a nymph for seven years, sad years in which he only dreamt of home.

He escaped the Nymph Calypso, however, with help from Athena, and managed to reach the civilized

land of the Phaeacians. This seafaring people, after a bit of feasting

and tail-telling, brought the hero back to his homeland of Ithaca after a nearly 20 year absence.

Back on Ithaca, Odysseus's wife Penelope, ever loyal, had for a number of years been

courted by over a hundred men who wanted to marry her, men whom Homer calls the suitors.

As if their advances on a married woman weren't objectionable enough,

...