The Golden Thread is pleased to publish its very first guest post, by Anya Leonard of Classical Wisdom, a newsletter devoted to the ancient world and its relevance for us today. In the past few months, the folks at Classical Wisdom have been delving deep into the meaning of Greek myths and the nature of ancient heroes. Today, the release of Christopher Nolan’s new film adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey is the occasion for another such reflection. We hope you enjoy it, and we certainly hope you will take the time to explore Classical Wisdom.
You could be forgiven for thinking the Odyssey is simply the story of a man trying to get home.
After all, home is the force that drives the entire epic. It is the hope that keeps Odysseus rowing through storms, resisting temptation, and enduring shipwreck after shipwreck. It is what gives purpose to every monster he outwits, every island he leaves behind, and every mile of sea he crosses. If asked to summarize the Odyssey in a single sentence, many would probably say exactly that: it is the story of a hero returning home after the Trojan War.
Homer, however, had something far more profound in mind.
Indeed, if the Odyssey were merely about reaching Ithaka, the poem would end the moment Odysseus stepped onto its shores. Instead, he arrives ‘home’ almost exactly halfway through the epic, with twelve books still remaining. For Homer, arriving home is only another beginning; the greater challenge is discovering what it truly means to return.
The ancient Greeks had a word for that: nostos. Often translated simply as “homecoming,” nostos was much more than the journey back to one’s homeland. It carried with it the restoration of a life interrupted, the recovery of family, identity, kingship, memory, and one’s place within the world. Not every hero of Troy achieved a nostos, mind you, and for those who did, returning home was rarely as simple as opening the front door.
And that was certainly the case for Odysseus.
His greatest difficulty was not simply going home. It was leaving the dead behind, reclaiming the life he left twenty years earlier, and becoming a man capable of belonging there once more.
Everyone remembers the monsters...the Cyclops...the Sirens...Scylla and Charybdis.
They have become so synonymous with the Odyssey that it is easy to imagine they are the true obstacles standing between Odysseus and Ithaka. Yet, once more, Homer tells a very different story. Long before Odysseus catches sight of his homeland and is reunited with Penelope or even sets foot on Ithakan soil, he must make one final journey...not across the sea, but into the realm of the dead.
It is one of the epic’s most unexpected turns. Just as Odysseus seems to be making progress toward home, the enchantress Circe gives him a startling command, that only after speaking with the dead will he be shown the way home:
“You must first complete another journey, and reach the house of Hades and dread Persephone, there to consult the spirit of the Theban Teiresias...”
— Odyssey 10.490–495, trans. A. T. Murray (Loeb Classical Library, 1919)
At first glance, the Nekyia, the chapter in which Odysseus descends into the Underworld, can feel like an interruption, another strange episode in an already extraordinary voyage. But it lies at the very heart of the poem, and perhaps for good reason... Because Homer suggests that before we can return to the world of the living, we must first come to terms with death.
In Hades, Odysseus encounters not only the prophet Teiresias, but the ghosts of those who have shaped his life. Most heartbreaking of all is his mother, Anticleia, whom he had left alive when he sailed for Troy. She died while he was away, never seeing her son return. Three times he reaches out to embrace her and heart-breakingly cannot succeed:
“Thrice I sprang toward her, and my heart longed to clasp her; and thrice she fluttered from my hands like a shadow or even as a dream.”
— Odyssey 11.206–208, trans. A. T. Murray
After twenty years of longing for home, Odysseus discovers that home itself has already been diminished because one of the people for whom he longed to return is gone forever.
He also speaks with Achilles, whose words overturn everything the heroes had once believed about glory. The greatest warrior of the Trojan War, whose name would be remembered for all time, now confesses that fame is a poor consolation for death:
“Do not seek to comfort me concerning death, glorious Odysseus. Rather would I live on earth as the hireling of another, with a landless man whose livelihood was small, than bear sway among all the dead that have perished.”
— Odyssey 11.488–491, trans. A. T. Murray
No speech better marks the distance between the Iliad and the Odyssey. The poem shifts its attention from the glory won in war to the life that follows it.
Classical scholar Joel Christensen has observed that this episode reveals something profound about the Greek idea of nostos. Homecoming is not merely a return to a place, but a return to the world of the living itself. Before Odysseus can reclaim his kingdom and embrace the life ahead, he must first leave the dead behind, to make peace with those who have given up the ghost as well as with the horrors of war.
In this way, the Nekyia is not the beginning nor end of the journey, but a turning point. It marks the moment when Odysseus stops looking backward and begins, at last, to move toward home.
But if leaving the dead behind is the first step, it raises another question...What, exactly, does it mean to come home?
The answer may seem obvious. Home is a place or a familiar landscape. Perhaps it’s the house where one grew up, the country whose language one speaks...or the streets one knows without needing a map.
But that is not quite home in the Odyssey. Homer offers a very different version.
When Odysseus finally reaches Ithaka, his journey is far from over. At first, he does not even recognize the island before him. Athena has wrapped the land in mist, and Odysseus believes he has been abandoned on yet another foreign shore. Only when the goddess reveals the landscape does he know he has finally reached the place for which he has longed for twenty years.
But recognizing Ithaka is only the beginning, because the island must also recognize him.
Athena disguises Odysseus as an old beggar, and Homer delays each reunion with exquisite patience. One by one, the people who define Odysseus’ life must discover who stands before them.
First comes Eumaeus, whose unwavering hospitality reveals that loyalty has endured despite his master’s absence. Then Telemachus, no longer the child Odysseus left behind, but a man who must learn to know his father. Penelope proves the most difficult of all. After all that time, she refuses to trust appearances or easy answers, testing the stranger with the secret of the marriage bed that only the two of them share. Finally comes Laertes, worn down by grief and age, scarcely able to believe that the son he mourned has truly returned.
These reunions are not repetitions, as each restores something different. Odysseus must be acknowledged as a father... a husband... a son... and finally a king.
Christensen once observed that Odysseus does not truly become himself again until he has been reunited with “his son, his wife, his father... and his people.” Piece by piece, Odysseus recovers not simply his household, but himself. By the time the final recognitions are complete, Homer leaves us with a striking impression: who we are cannot easily be separated from those who know us.
Nearly three thousand years separate us from Homer, and yet the Odyssey continues to find new readers in every generation, which alone gives us pause for thought. Why does a poem about a Bronze Age king returning from the Trojan War still feel so deeply familiar?
Perhaps because, although our journeys look different, the question remains the same: What does it mean to come home?
Today, more people than ever live far from the places where they were born. Families are scattered across countries and continents. Some leave home by choice, others by necessity. Even those who never move often discover that where they are is no longer quite the place they remember, because in true Heraclitean fashion, time has changed it... and them.
The Odyssey suggests that this should not surprise us. Home was never just a destination on a map, as is evident by the fact that Odysseus does not return to his life the moment he steps ashore on Ithaka. He recovers it gradually, through the patient work of rebuilding trust, renewing relationships, and taking his place once more within a community that has continued without him.
Likewise, Odysseus does not simply declare who he is when he reaches Ithaka. He must be recognized by his wife, his son, his father, his servants, and finally his people... and only then is his homecoming complete.
That is a radically different understanding of identity than our own. Modern culture often encourages us to think of identity as something deeply personal, something fashioned from within.
But to the ancient Greeks, identity cannot be separated from the people who know us, the responsibilities we accept, and the communities in which we live. Identity is not only discovered within ourselves; it is also shaped through memory, obligation, love, and belonging. It is something much more profound than the place where we happened to be born and perhaps far more demanding because it asks not only where we belong, but how we belong.
We may no longer spend ten years sailing the Mediterranean after a war, but many of us know what it is to leave one life behind and struggle to find our place in another. We all carry losses that must be acknowledged before we can move forward. We all long for places that have been changed by time.
Perhaps this is why the Greeks gave the experience its own name. Nostos was never simply a return. It was the difficult work of recovering a life.... It is where memory, relationships, and belonging come together – where, after all our wandering, we are recognized, and recognize ourselves.
Homer never tells us that coming home is easy. Instead, he invites every generation to ask anew what it really means. Perhaps that is why, after nearly three thousand years, we continue to find ourselves returning to the Odyssey... and discovering that it still has something new to tell us.
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