The Bard of Scheria - Homer's Odyssey - Ancient Greek Song (English Subtitles)

Odysseus washed up on Scheria naked, broken, and nameless, and a blind bard sang his own war back to him. After seven years as Calypso’s captive, Odysseus built a raft and set sail for Ithaca. For seventeen days he steered by the stars. On the eighteenth he saw the mountains of Scheria rising like a shield on the misty sea. Then Poseidon found him. The god smashed the raft, and Odysseus was saved only by the sea goddess Ino’s immortal veil. He drifted two days and two nights, was flayed against the cliffs, and crawled out of a river mouth on the third dawn. He buried himself in a drift of leaves beneath two olive bushes, like a man hiding a spark of fire under ashes. This is the landing. Athena sent the princess Nausicaa to the river, where he rose from the thicket crusted with salt and wrapped in a leafy branch. Cleaned and transformed by Athena, he followed her to the golden palace of King Alcinous, with its bronze walls, its gold and silver dogs, and its orchard where the fruit never fails. He knelt in the hearth ashes and clasped the knees of Queen Arete. He begged for passage home, and still he hid his name. At the feast, the blind bard Demodocus took his lyre and sang. First of the quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles. Then, to lighten the hall, of the lame god Hephaestus, who wove a net of invisible chains and trapped Ares and Aphrodite in their own bed. Then of the wooden horse and the fall of Troy. Odysseus pulled his purple cloak over his head and wept, like a woman mourning the husband who fell defending her city. Alcinous noticed. And the stranger finally spoke his name. A man with no name. A blind man’s song. A conqueror weeping at his own legend. I made the song entirely in attempted ancient Greek. This is part of the ongoing Odyssey series. TIMELINE: Book 5 - Odysseus sails seventeen days from Calypso’s island and sights Scheria Book 5 - Poseidon wrecks the raft: Ino’s veil: two days and nights adrift Book 5 - Landfall at the river mouth: sleeps beneath the two olive bushes Book 6 - Nausicaa at the river: Athena transforms him Book 7 - The palace of Alcinous: he supplicates Queen Arete and withholds his name Book 8 - The games; Euryalus’s insult and the discus throw Book 8 - Demodocus sings of Achilles, of Ares and Aphrodite, and of the Trojan Horse Book 8 - Odysseus weeps, and reveals his name Subscribe for the full series. #odyssey #theodyssey #demodocus #ancientgreece #greekmythology #odysseus #mythology #fantasymusic #ulysses #ancientgreek #mythologymusic #fantasy #storytelling