
The Geography of the Odyssey - Thevet
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/geography-odyssey
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gumby
A staple of my teen (late 70s/early 80s) years. We used to argue about the
geography and challenges of Odysseus’s trip vs the travels of the Fellowship
of the Ring.

One of my friends tried to DM a game set in Homer’s universe. Really didn’t
work well at all but was a fun idea.

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veddox
> Really didn’t work well at all

Why not? I've never tried it, but I'd imagine a D&D party set in mythological
Greece would be not much different from one in medieval fantasy Europe.

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gumby
Well really we should have just made up a whole game. Different campaigns for
each episode of the odyssey, for example, and different kinds of characters
rather than simply injecting a paladin and a wizard into Troy.

Or you could say it was the 14 yo kid problem: we didn’t really know what we
wanted to accomplish. It did lead to many hours of fun discussion/argument
though!

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caiobegotti
Quite nice read but if you are wondering why in hell would anyone spend that
much time drifting around in the Mediterranean it's because you should not
mess with god of the seas, specially if you do so arrogantly (Odysseus not
only killed one of Poseidon's sons but he was a big full-of-hubris asshole
that had to pay for it in due time). The Odyssey is one of those rare sequels
that are better than the first story :-)

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bhaak
The Odyssey is more like a spin-off than a sequel and that is one of the
reasons why it's better.

Odysseus wasn't the leading actor in the Iliad, he was only among the main
cast (I'm not even sure if there is any person in the Iliad besides Odysseus
that is in the Odyssey).

The pacing is different, the Iliad tells a story of a few weeks, the Odyssey
takes 10 years.

Most importantly though is that the themes are completely different in the two
poems.

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billfruit
Nestor, Menelaus and Helen appear in Odyssey. I think even Achilles makes a
brief cameo when Ullyses traverses the Underworld. Also the fate of Agamemnon
is also described at some place.

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veddox
I've always enjoyed and been intrigued by Greek mythology. Started with Roger
Lancelyn Green's "Tales of the Greek Heroes" as a kid, continued with Rick
Riordan's "Percy Jackson" series as a teen, until I finally read the original
Homeric epics (in the Fagles translation) last year. Great stuff - still
fascinating after two-and-a-half millenia!

