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 over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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TRIGGERnometry · What The Odyssey Is Actually About · 22 Jul 2026 podcast

That takes us to the point where the narrative begins.

Year seven, Athena says, come on, let's get him off there.

And he builds a raft and heads to another land.

And this is the really interesting episode.

Less fantastic, but it's the really important one.

He lands on an island where a people called the Phaeacians live, and they are perfect.

They have a king and a queen who run a very Greek-like, idyllic, utopian landscape.

Everything is peaceful.

They have the most beautiful daughter, Nausicaa, who's ready for marriage, and she just wants to marry someone with kingly bearing.

Well, here's Odysseus turning up, who, despite his long-suffering wanderings,

is a king and he would be a perfectly suitable husband everyone on the island is willing this to happen it would be perfect odysseus rejects it he says even though you are more beautiful than anyone i could encounter including my own wife he said the same to calypso by the way he wanted to marry him

I am destined to be returned and restored to my homeland.

There is no other option for me."

So again, it's got a real moral weight to it, this idea that even if circumstances, be they wealth,

or be they a particular change in your circumstances, seem to, on paper, give you everything you need, it's not worth the weight of anything if you cut your ties to the people and the places that give you your real identity, not just in the Greek world, but in our world.

From there, well, so he tells his tales to the Phaeacians, who are probably the Phoenicians in disguise, a very interesting people who introduced the alphabet to the Greeks, among other things.

He tells his tales of how he's got to that point.

But fundamentally, they accept his refusal of marriage.

And they, the best seamen in the world, take him back to Ithaca.

And that's where the second half of the poem begins.

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