Professor Edith Hall

speaker

337 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 13 Jul

Professor Edith Hall’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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Dan Snow's History Hit · The Real History Behind The Odyssey · 13 Jul 2026 podcast

So yes, of course, in ethical terms, you could say killing over 100 people

when they haven't even managed to kill Telemachus, is over the top.

Of course it is.

But in terms of the emotional satisfaction we get, especially after several books of them taunting him, of them throwing stools at him, of them making him do show fights with a beggar, we go through all that humiliation with him.

So you can either look at it ethically, in which case it's deplorable, or you can look at it as if you're watching a Clint Eastwood movie with a formula where all the pleasure comes with the final shootout.

I love your admiration for the Tennyson poem.

It captures that one last heave, you know, one last over into the sunset, come on, comrades.

Yes, I think that there is a tragic undertow to the Odyssey.

I mean, it's much lighter and more humorous and frivolous in some ways than the Iliad.

But there is a tragic undertow that restlessness, restlessness in men, really very difficult social problem to solve.

And Homo sapiens had to be restless.

We had to carry on going out and conquering new mountains and finding new places.

We wouldn't be sapiens if we didn't have that drive.

But it has a desperately tragic undertow, which meant that a very great deal of ancient Greeks died away from their homes and their wives, never to be seen again.

The never to be seen again, I think, is very important because these days it's much easier to trace where people died and possibly get their remains back.

The number of men who just went off and never came back, and that's Penelope's problem.

She doesn't know if he's dead or not.

She has no idea.

I think it's in law seven years rule that if someone's not heard of for seven years, you can get married.

You can assume they're dead.

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