(CNN) — “The Odyssey” is an ancient Greek epic poem that tells the story of Odysseus, the king of Ithaca who spent 10 years fighting the Trojan War only to spend another 10 years trying to return home.
That it takes him a decade to travel the roughly 560 nautical miles from Troy to Ithaca is not because of primitive seafaring technology (voyage records in ancient literature indicate that such a trip would have taken about a week, possibly up to two weeks under unfavorable winds). Throughout Homer’s tale, Odysseus is repeatedly thwarted by divine wrath, nature and human fallibility.
For those rusty on the classics, a brief refresher: On the journey to Ithaca, Odysseus’ crew eats fruit that makes them forget their goal of returning home. They get trapped in a cave with a one-eyed, man-eating Cyclops. When they come tantalizingly close to home, they are blown off course again. They encounter more man-eating monsters. Odysseus’ men get turned into pigs. Odysseus travels to the underworld and has to perform a blood sacrifice. Then there are the Sirens and the sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis. All of Odysseus’ men are killed by the end, and as if he hasn’t suffered enough, he’s kept for years by Calypso as a sex slave.
Yet, the word “odyssey” as it’s used today doesn’t quite capture the grueling, miserable slog that Odysseus and his compatriots endured. The term instead invokes a journey marked by swashbuckling adventure, romantic wanderlust and wide-eyed curiosity. Take some examples from modern-day culture, such as NASA’s Mars Odyssey and the school-age creative problem-solving competition, Odyssey of the Mind. The Honda Odyssey, which debuted in the ‘90s, was marketed as “the minivan for people who deep down inside aren’t minivan people.” Silicon Valley executive John Sculley used “Odyssey” in the title of his 1987 memoir, which detailed his trajectory as CEO of PepsiCo to CEO of Apple.
While Odysseus’s eponymous journey is famously full of twists and turns, the evolution of “odyssey” in English is decidedly straightforward, says John Kelly, a former dictionary editor and author of the etymology blog Mashed Radish. “Odyssey,” from the Latin “Odyssea,” derives from the poem’s ancient Greek title “Odusseia,” which translates to “the story of Odusseus.”
When it comes to the name “Odysseus” itself, Kelly notes that while the true origin of the name is unclear, the poem itself offers a folk etymology: “hated by gods and men.” In “The Odyssey,” Odysseus recounts that his grandfather so named him because he was destined to suffer and make others suffer, too.
As “The Odyssey” became ingrained in the Western literary canon, the word passed into English as direct references to Homer’s epic poem. The Oxford English Dictionary notes that it first appeared in the 11th century monk Byrhtferth’s spiritual manual “Enchiridion,” rendered in Old English as “Odissia.” Its next recorded use came in the 16th century, when the English poet Edmund Spenser wrote in a letter to Sir Walter Raleigh that his own epic “The Faerie Queen” took inspiration from “The Odyssey.”
It wasn’t until the late 19th century that “odyssey” came to denote a long, wandering adventure in the general sense, says Kelly. Scottish adventure novelist Robert Louis Stevenson invoked the word in his 1886 book “Kidnapped.” When the main character David details his treacherous journey across the Scottish Highlands to a lawyer, the man replies, “this is a great epic, a great Odyssey of yours.” Within a few years, “odyssey” had evolved from a proper noun into a lowercase word that applied to literal and figurative journeys alike.
Whether it’s describing an exciting adventure or a series of painful trials, the various uses of “odyssey” share a long, wandering quality, says David Elmer, a professor of Greek literature at Harvard University. “The semantic core says less about the subjective experience of the traveler and more about the characteristics of the journey,” he says. To Alexander Forte, an assistant professor of classics at New York University, an enduring quality of an “odyssey” is a journey worth telling someone about: It might be characterized by unexpected happenings or lengthy detours, but the undertaker lived to tell the tale.
How did Homer and other ancient poets view the travels of Odysseus? Forte points to the ancient Greek word “nostos,” which means “homecoming” and was used to refer to epic poems about a hero’s return. “It has a lot of the complex associations that the English word ‘return’ has,” he says. “It can be a happy return, but you can also have a really arduous or sad return.”
A tale as expansive as “The Odyssey” is bound to inspire a range of readings. And while this author might be hung up on the obstacles Odysseus encounters, his travels are not without pleasure and thrill. The dominant narrative in “The Odyssey” is about Odysseus’ desire to go home, but there are hints that he’s enjoying the ride, notes Sheila Murnaghan, a professor of Greek at the University of Pennsylvania. When Odysseus and his men discover a cave on the island of the Cyclopes filled with livestock and cheese, his crew wants to take the provisions and run. Odysseus’ curiosity, meanwhile, compels him to stay and learn of the cave’s inhabitant. And after Odysseus spends a year luxuriating on Circe’s island, it’s his men who urge him to head home.
“People who’ve read Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ have repeatedly felt that Odysseus just desperately wanting to get home is not the whole story, and that there’s also in Odysseus someone who has a thirst for adventure and travel,” she adds, while pointing to Dante’s “Inferno” and Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem, “Ulysses,” which depict Odysseus (or Ulysses as he’s known in Latin) as a restless figure who craves adventure.
How people today understand the word “odyssey” might have to do with how modern audiences experience the source material. When most students first encounter “The Odyssey” in class, or when viewers watch a cinematic adaptation such as Christopher Nolan’s, Kelly says they’re likely enamored by the fantastical adventures and mythical creatures on the page or on screen. “I have to wonder if we approach the story of ‘The Odyssey’ very differently than maybe the ancients did,” he says. “Perhaps the ancient Greek listener of the poem, or the ancient Roman reader of the epic, would be focusing on Odysseus’ character more: What can I learn about virtue? What can I learn about what it means to be a man? What can I learn about what it means to be a warrior, a hero, a husband, a father?”
“Yes, plenty of us do derive lessons of what happens when we’re too cunning or too hubristic,” Kelly adds. “But I think a lot of us just want to see the Cyclops already.”
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