Good day! I hope this finds you well.
I wanted to update you about what to expect in the future. These are the topics I will go over:
My final essay on the Odyssey
My book on the Odyssey
The next author on my list
Personal goals
Without further ado!
Final Essay on the Odyssey
Sunday, February 5, my final essay on the Odyssey will drop. It’s over 13,500 words long or 21 pages in a word document! I didn’t mean for it to be that long, but I guess I just had a lot to say about the Odyssey.
This also means you may not be able to read the whole essay in your email. You might have to read it on my Substack.
The essay has a full summary of the Odyssey and my final thoughts on it.
The topics I explore: Odysseus and his family and the trials they overcome, the god Poseidon, a look into Agamemnon’s tragic story, and a comparison between Odysseus’ revenge and Achilles’ revenge.
My Book on the Odyssey
You can now pre-order my new book! 1001 Nights of the Soul: My Journey Through the Odyssey.
As of now, only the Kindle version is available—I’m going to get a paperback version out as soon as I get a chance.
Just like my book on the Iliad, I compiled all my blog posts on the Odyssey together and further edited them. Changes included:
Additional corrections for spelling and grammar
Formatted all my posts to be more like a book
Took out and added sections (I did a bit more of this compared to my book on the Iliad)
Turned in-text citations into footnotes
Added additional information as footnotes
The Next Author
The next author I will be covering is Aeschylus.
Aeschylus is considered the father of Greek tragedy. He is also the first of the “Big Three” Greek tragedians (the other two being Sophocles and Euripides). He composed over seventy plays, but only seven of them survive mostly or fully intact.
Aeschylus is most known for the Oresteia, a series of three plays and the only Greek trilogy to survive intact.1 These three plays—Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides—will tell a story you are familiar with if you read the Odyssey or have been walking along with me on my journey through it. It’s the tale of Agamemnon’s murder at the hands of his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, his son Orestes getting revenge for his murder, and the aftermath.
However, the story is expanded upon and there are additional twists. Did Aeschylus draw on a different, perhaps later, tradition? Did he simply embellish the traditional account? Or, did Homer tell a watered down version of the story in the Odyssey? I don’t know.
Anyway, the other four surviving plays of Aeschylus are:
The Persians—a play that takes place during the Persian War (which we’ll learn more about when we get to Herodotus). It’s the only historical play of the seven.
Prometheus Bound—the first play in a trilogy about Prometheus. Yes, that Prometheus.
The Suppliants—the first play in another trilogy about Danaus and his 50 daughters. That’s not a typo.
Seven Against Thebes—the third play in yet another trilogy about the siege of Thebes. If you’ve read the Iliad, or was with me on my journey through it, you’ll recognize one of the characters: Tydeus, the father of Diomedes. The events of Seven Against Thebes tie in to the events in Sophocles’ play Antigone.
My first post, about the play Agamemnon, will be published on Sunday, February 12.
I will be handling Aeschylus differently compared to Homer since the works in question are plays. Basically, I will have one blog post for one play. That means I will be going through Aeschylus rather quickly compared to Homer. Also, it may mean longer posts. I have 13 pages of notes for just Agamemnon (compared to the 2-4 pages of notes on average I wrote down for each book of the Iliad and Odyssey)!
This will also affect my final essay (if there will be one). Rather than writing on one work, my final essay will touch on all seven plays. Beyond that, I don’t know how it will look. I might give my final impressions on each of the plays after having read and written about them all. I might try to find common themes or patterns between as many of the plays as possible. It’s also possible I may not have enough new things to write about to warrant a final essay. We’ll see.
Personal Goals
I still want to write content for paid subscribers only. I was working on a post for Hesiod’s Theogony, but that was stalled due to life reasons. I’m going to finish that post in the near future and move on to Hesiod’s other works. My ultimate goal is to write paid subscriber content on:
Authors and works which are classics, but are not on my books list.
Spurious works attributed to authors that are on my books list.
For example: the Homeric Hymns, which were attributed to Homer in antiquity, but today we’re pretty sure he didn’t write any of them.
May your days be filled with grace.
-Andronikos
Sophocles’ Theban plays—Antigone, Oedipus Rex, and Oedipus at Colonus—are not a true trilogy. Sophocles composed and performed those plays on separate occasions. The order I put the plays in is the order they were composed. However, they are not chronological. For example, the events of Antigone take place after the other plays. The plays of the Oresteia, on the other hand, were all performed on the same day and are in chronological order.