ODYSSEUS: TO EPIRUS, ANTARCTICA AND BEYOND

 

Christopher Nolan's forthcoming adaptation of the Odyssey has already succeeded in directing the world's attention back towards Homer's immortal epic. Once again, audiences will accompany the king of Ithaca across the wine-dark sea, through the cave of Polyphemus, beyond the enchantments of Circe, the song of the Sirens and the terror of Scylla and Charybdis, before witnessing his long-awaited reunion with Penelope after twenty years of war and wandering. For most viewers, that homecoming will represent the conclusion of one of civilisation's greatest stories. It has done so for centuries. The return to Ithaca has become so deeply embedded within the Western imagination that it is almost impossible to conceive of Odysseus existing beyond the final lines of Homer.

It was never claimed however, that Homer had written the last chapter of Odysseus' life. The ancient Greeks themselves inherited a far richer tapestry of narratives than the two Homeric epics that fortune has preserved. Alongside the Iliad and the Odyssey stood a series of companion poems collectively known as the Epic Cycle, works that described the events preceding the Trojan War, its aftermath and the subsequent destinies of its surviving heroes. Almost all have disappeared, surviving only in fragments, summaries and quotations preserved by later authors.

The poem that continued the adventures of Odysseus bore the title Telegony. Ancient writers, however, occasionally referred to it by another name: the Thesprotis. Rather than directing attention towards Telegonus, the son of Odysseus and Circe, it directs the reader towards Thesprotia in Epirus, suggesting that the Epirote episodes occupied so central a place in the narrative that they came to define the poem itself.

The Telegony begins precisely where the Odyssey ends. The suitors have been buried, Penelope has accepted her husband and Telemachus has come into his inheritance and order appears to have been restored. Modern readers naturally interpret these events as the fulfilment of the entire narrative. Homer himself, however, had already planted the seed of another journey. During Odysseus' descent into Hades, the prophet Tiresias instructed him that, after returning home, he must once again shoulder an oar and travel inland until he reached a people so unfamiliar with the sea that they mistook the oar for a winnowing fan. Only after offering sacrifice to Poseidon in that distant place would the god's anger finally be appeased and Odysseus receive the peaceful death destined for him.

While Odyssey never records the fulfilment of that prophecy. The Telegony does. Having carried out Tiresias' command, Odysseus crosses from Ithaca to neighbouring Thesprotia, which Homer himself repeatedly presents as a familiar kingdom within the geography of his world. Indeed, while disguised as a beggar, Odysseus fabricates an elaborate tale in which he claims to have visited the Thesprotian king, who supposedly possesses knowledge of his whereabouts. Such references, which seem incidental within the Odyssey, acquire unexpected significance when read alongside the later epic. They suggest that traditions linking Odysseus with Epirus may already have circulated before the Telegony was composed.

The most remarkable aspect of the lost epic lies in what Odysseus chooses to do once he reaches Epirus. Instead of resuming his endless wandering, he remains. The queen of the Thesprotians, Callidice, becomes his wife and bears him a son, Polypoetes. Odysseus assumes the kingship of the Thesprotians and governs an Epirote kingdom, exchanging the uncertainty of the sea for the responsibilities of rule. His reign proves far from peaceful. War erupts between the Thesprotians and the neighbouring Brygoi, drawing the Olympian gods once more into mortal affairs. Athena, whose protection had accompanied Odysseus since Troy, again fights beside him. Ares champions the opposing army and Apollo intervenes before divine rivalry consumes the battlefield. Although the surviving summaries preserve only the outline of these events, they evoke an epic in which the mountains and valleys of Epirus replaced the plains of Troy as the theatre upon which gods and heroes contested the destiny of nations.

Callidice eventually dies, leaving Polypoetes to inherit the Epirote throne. Odysseus consequently returns to Ithaca, although fate has reserved one final irony for the ingenious man who escaped monsters, storms, hostile kings and the anger of the gods. During his prolonged stay with Circe, he had fathered another son, Telegonus, who, upon reaching adulthood, sets out in search of the father he has never known. A storm drives him unknowingly to Ithaca. Mistaking the island for foreign territory, he begins carrying away cattle. Enraged, Odysseus emerges to defend his kingdom and the two engage in combat without recognising one another. Telegonus kills his father with a spear tipped by the venomous spine of a stingray. Only afterwards does he discover whom he has slain. Tiresias' prophecy has been fulfilled with exquisite precision. Death has indeed come to Odysseus "from the sea," not through drowning, but through the poison of a creature taken from its depths.

The disappearance of the Telegony represents one of antiquity's great literary losses. Homer's poems survived because they became the foundation of Greek education, copied continuously by generations of scholars and scribes who regarded them as unsurpassable masterpieces. The companion epics gradually vanished, dismissed as supplementary works whose stories could be summarised rather than preserved in their entirety. The consequence for Epirus proved particularly unfortunate. An entire chapter of its mythological inheritance disappeared from popular consciousness, leaving visitors free to admire Dodona, the Acheron and the landscapes of Thesprotia without realising that ancient tradition once regarded them as the setting of Odysseus' last kingdom.

Yet Odysseus has always resisted confinement within a single ending. The restlessness that defines his character has repeatedly inspired writers to imagine further journeys, none more ambitious than the monumental sequel composed by Nikos Kazantzakis. Published in 1938 after years of painstaking revision, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel extends to 33,333 verses, making it one of the longest poems in modern European literature. If the anonymous author of the Telegony sought to continue Homer's narrative within the geographical world of Greek myth, Kazantzakis transformed Odysseus into the embodiment of humanity's unending spiritual quest.

Kazantzakis begins where Homer concludes, although his hero rapidly discovers that peace has become intolerable. The violence required to recover Ithaca has rendered ordinary domestic life impossible. Odysseus himself cannot endure stillness, while those around him struggle to live beside a man shaped by decades of conflict. He voluntarily abandons the home for which he once sacrificed everything and sets sail once more, compelled less by external necessity than by an insatiable hunger for experience and self-transcendence.

His subsequent journey bears little resemblance to anything found in ancient epic. He travels first to Sparta in an attempt to rescue Helen, whose beauty had once consumed the Greek world. From there he proceeds to Crete, where political conspiracy overturns the established order. Helen abandons him in favour of a blonde barbarian, symbolising the relentless displacement of old civilisations by new historical forces and the fact that blondes get all the fun. Egypt follows, convulsed by a workers' uprising, before Odysseus journeys ever deeper into Africa along the Nile to its legendary source. There he ascends a mountain seeking communion with God and descends convinced that he has discovered a new spiritual revelation. His companions establish a city founded upon the commandments of this faith, only for an earthquake almost immediately to reduce it to ruins. The catastrophe forces Odysseus to confront the inadequacy of every human attempt to impose permanence upon a transient world.

From this point onwards, Kazantzakis' hero increasingly abandons the role of conqueror in favour of that of seeker. As the journey becomes increasingly philosophical, Odysseus encounters allegorical incarnations of the Buddha, Don Quixote and Christ, allowing Kazantzakis to explore competing ideals of renunciation, idealism and sacrifice. Each encounter constitutes a philosophical dialogue rather than a conventional episode of adventure, allowing Kazantzakis to explore competing visions of faith, freedom, sacrifice and redemption through the figure of the most celebrated wanderer in Greek literature.

The poem eventually carries Odysseus as far as Antarctica, where he spends a year living among its inhabitants before an immense iceberg crushes him beneath its frozen mass. His death possesses none of the tragic finality associated with the Telegony. For Kazantzakis, existence acquires meaning through continual struggle rather than ultimate achievement. The value of the journey resides in striving itself. Death therefore becomes liberation, dissolving the individual into the universal life of creation and completing the endless search that has defined Odysseus from the moment he first departed for Troy.

The contrast between these two sequels could scarcely be greater. The Telegony anchors Odysseus firmly within the historical and mythological landscape of Epirus, presenting him as king, husband, father and founder of an Epirote dynasty. Kazantzakis strips away every political and domestic attachment, converting him into the archetypal pilgrim whose only true homeland lies beyond geography. Yet both works share a conviction absent from many modern retellings. Neither accepts that Ithaca constituted the end of Odysseus' story. Each insists that the hero's defining quality was perpetual movement, whether across the mountains of Epirus or towards the furthest limits of the human spirit.

Christopher Nolan's film has undoubtedly returned Homer's Odyssey to the centre of contemporary culture. Millions will once again follow the king of Ithaca until his ship at last reaches familiar shores. Those willing to look beyond Homer's closing verses, however, will discover another Odyssey waiting to be remembered. It begins across the narrow waters of the Ionian Sea, beneath the sacred oaks of Dodona and among the valleys of Thesprotia, where ancient tradition placed the last kingdom of Odysseus. From there, centuries later, Nikos Kazantzakis would send the same restless hero beyond every horizon imaginable, reminding us that some journeys possess no final destination because they reflect the inexhaustible restlessness of humanity itself.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 1 August 2026