Dr. David Butterfield
speaker
616 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 22 Jul
Dr. David Butterfield’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Well, one of the things you are meant to do as a good host and as a good guest is to give your name, to give your identity.
That's the most important thing about you.
And for whatever reason, doubtless cunning, Odysseus does not give that name.
He gives a name that sounds similar, namely Oudes, not Odysseus, but Oudes.
But that means nobody, no man.
So what happens when Polyphemus learns of this and then is attacked is he cries aloud, no one is harming me.
No one is trying to kill me.
And the rest of the Cyclopes think, okay, thanks for sharing.
We'll be on our way then.
The flip side to that is that in a sense, Odysseus in that moment was acting like a nobody.
By not following the code of hospitality and standing up as the man he's meant to be, he was actually losing the real identity of the hero.
But hubris in Greek tragedy will always take you down.
That arrogance that makes you feel you're a little better than even the gods, perhaps, does become the downfall of Odysseus and kills a great number of his men.
Why?
Because once they've got off the island, they're sailing away.
Odysseus calls back to the enraged Polyphemus on land.
Now I'll tell you it's Odysseus who did this.
Odysseus, son of Laertes from Ithaca, I'm the guy, and sort of raises two fingers at him.
Well, as you said, Polyphemus is the son of Poseidon, and Poseidon controls the sea.
So Polyphemus now has the one thing he needed to make a curse, the actual name of Odysseus.
Showing 241–260 of 616 · page 13 of 31
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