All language subtitles for odysseus.returns.s01e01.1080p.web.h264-cbfm[EZTVx.to]_track3_[eng]

(choir chanting)

- The Homeric epics,
we think of them as myth,

but they're also history.

- The main question
with the Odyssey

has always been Ithaca.

Nothing was ever found in Ithaca.

(woman's voice on video)
- Hey, Ismini!

- I remember asking him,
could this be Odysseus's tomb?

(helicopter whirring)

(haunting greek music)

- It is an unbelievable kaleidoscope

that gets us down to
this one tiny image.

But in this image,
that is Odysseus!

It's a dog, grappling with a fawn.

- If that's real,
that would be unique.

- There are objects in this world,

but history ignores them.

- People started to threaten us.

"Homeric Ithaca is where it is,
in Ithaca.

Don't start to change this!"

- But it is there!
How can you ignore it?

(dramatic greek music)

(tense, haunting music)

(boat timbers creaking)

(waves crashing)

(haunting music)

NARRATOR: "Great Odysseus has
not yet left this earth.

He won't be gone for long
from his beloved native land."

- Don't worry, I'm a Hilly-Billy.

Oof!

CAMERA MAN: It's very slippery
there, be very careful please.

- Oh! (he chuckles)

(uplifting music)

(he chuckles) You know?

- "The Odyssey" is
the great sequel to Homer's "Iliad",

and it's the aftermath
of the Trojan War.

It tells the story
of the homecoming,

the terrible, difficult,
disastrous journey of Odysseus,

the King of Ithaca,
one of the leading Greek heroes

who devised the wooden horse and was
responsible for the sack of Troy.

- Odysseus is the eternal Greek.

Creative, bold,

adventurous, never giving up,

persisting.
He loves his country,

his island is the
sweetest place on earth

that he can think of.
He loves it.

He's the epitome
of the Greek soul.

And of the Kefalonian.

(man singing in greek)

(performs traditional greek song)

(traditional song continues)

(audience applauding)

NARRATOR:
"Sing to me, Muse...

..about the wily man
who wandered far and wide...

..after he sacked
the holy city of Troy.

How his heart suffered
on the open sea...

..fighting to save his own life
and bring his comrades home.

(haunting music)

- 10 years after the fall of Troy,

Odysseus eventually is back
in his beloved Ithaca.

And when he wakes up
in the morning...

..he sees mist all around him

and he's doubtful
whether he's really...

..on his homeland
or he's somewhere else.

Goddess Athena is scolding him
and said,

"Don't be silly.
Of course you are in Ithaca!

Don't you see the mountain,
your mountain,

mount Neriton?

Don't you see this beautiful cave
with the nymphs very near?

As Homer describes it,

it was "a miracle to see",

such is the beauty of the cave.

(dynamic, haunting music)

YANGOS METAXAS: Now
we're entering the harbour of Vathi.

Vathi is the capital of the island
we call today Ithaca.

Ithaki, in Greek.

And this is what most people think
is the homeland of Odysseus.

In the Homeric text,

there are two landmarks

that anybody from Ithaca
should recognize.

The cave of the nymphs
and mount Neriton.

(Makis Metaxas speaking)

YANGOS METAXAS:
Close to the sea?

YANGOS: Unfortunately...

YANGOS: I'm not impressed.

Definitely not a miracle to behold.

Here is a mountain

This is, uh, Mount Neriton.

And Homer describes it as
fully forested,

majestic and windswept.

It's not a mountain
that you would remember.

It's not a mountain
that it's impressive.

- Homer's poems are stuffed full
with geographical information.

But actually by the time that
Homer was composing these poems,

the Trojan War itself
was already distant history,

and almost becoming myth.

YANGOS: The consensus is
that Homer was a poet

and, being a poet,
he's not a very reliable source.

But the Homeric text
gives us plenty of information.

Every time somebody studies Homer,
discover something new.

In 1870,

the German archaeologist
Heinrich Schliemann

went looking for Troy.
And he found it.

A few years later,
he found the city of Mycenae,

the capital of
the Mycenaean empire,

and the home of King Agamemnon.

(dynamic music)

And then, in the 1930s,

archaeologists uncovered the Palace
of King Nestor, at Pylos.

All the locations that Homer
describes in the Aegean, they check.

How come, all these years,
we haven't found where Ithaca is?

NARRATOR: "Odysseus was the leader
of the great-hearted Kephallenians,

who inhabited Ithaca

and Mount Neriton,
covered with waving forests.

MAKIS METAXAS:

- I went to Greece in 1977.

(aeroplane landing)

(funky 70s music)

My programme was
seeing as much antiquities

and go to Ithaca.

In Patras I went to ticket office
and I said,

"I want to go to Ithaca immediately,
tomorrow morning."

And he said "There's no boat.
You can only go to Kefalonia"

And so I took the boat to Kefalonia.

And that's how I arrived in Poros.

And then I would have coffee
here in the restaurant.

It was the village cafe, Neion.

And that was next to Makis' house.

So he was back from the army

and helping his father out

to make new shelves
for their general store.

And Maki was making
these new shelves

with a machine
that cuts aluminium.

Now, I don't know if you
ever heard these machines,

but they make this terrible noise.

And it went, waah, waah. I thought,
"Oh my God, what's this man doing?

He's very... (laughs) disturbing."

And then about every half hour,
every 20 minutes,

he would stop and
he would play with the cat.

He had the cat,
and he would put cat on his foot...

..and then he would
throw it in the air with his foot

and it would land on his shoulder.

And then he would do it again.

And then he would do it again.

And I saw that, I thought,

that's a nice boy. (chuckles)

You know,
when you can play with your cat.

And, uh, yeah, well,
we started to talk

and we got to know each other,

yeah, and that was it.

And we got married in 1980.

But, while we were here,
our first son was born,

and then Makis
suddenly became mayor.

MAKIS METAXAS:

HETTIE: Local mayor, small area.

And he was the youngest in Greece.

- And then afterwards
you can't leave anymore.

I mean you can't
become a mayor and say,

"I don't like it here anymore,
I'm leaving." So that was it!

This whole journey into
the Odyssey and Homer's epic

started because we always
went for holidays to Holland.

We went there
for Christmas in 1990.

And, at a certain point,

my mother called us and she said,

there is a programme
about Kefalonia on the television.

And I thought, what is Kefalonia
doing on Dutch television?

It was not well known island at all!

It was a documentary film

that was made about
the voyage of Mr Goekoop,

Cees Goekoop,
who was in search of Homeric Ithaca.

(gentle music)

(announcer speaking dutch)

HETTIE: In the 1920s,
there was Adrian Goekoop

financing excavations
in Kefalonia, near Argostoli,

because it was his idea that

the centre of Homeric Ithaca
should be there.

He had worked together with
Schliemann in Ithaca,

but since they didn't find anything,
he went to Kefalonia.

And, um, his grandson
continued this search,

which he did by
sailing around the island

and, um, coming
to the conclusion that

the centre of Homeric Ithaca
was indeed on Kefalonia,

in his opinion, near Fiskardo.

That's the very northern
top of Kefalonia.

(speaking in dutch)

And we thought,
no, that's not right.

(dutch speaker interrupted)

And then Maki started to
recognize local names

that he was referring to,
as coming from Homer's story.

And he said,
"But these names exist in our area."

We live in Poros
and Maki is born in that area.

So you know every stone,
especially Makis,

and he could recognize words
and, uh...

..landscapes and areas

in the description in Homer.

NARRATOR:
"My ship lies over there,

by those fields away from the city,

in the harbour of Rheithron."

- So when Homer talks about
the Reithron harbour,

he describes it exactly like
the river that we have in Poros.

And Reithron. The word "Reithron" is
from the verb "reo" in Greek,

which means stream.

MAKIS METAXAS:

(inspiring music)

MAKIS METAXAS:

- When Athena is describing
Odysseus's homeland to him

and gradually taking the mist away

so that he can recognize
his own kingdom,

she says,
what you've now got to do,

now that you realise you're home,
is go to Raven's Crag,

and there you'll find
a swineherd Eumaus.

And there you must talk with him

and devise your plan
for entering back into your palace.

Now, Ravens Crag
is never mentioned again.

It was never mentioned before.

It seemingly doesn't matter.

And yet Athena is so specific.

It's a marker.

MAKIS METAXAS:

(music plays softly on radio)

(goat bleating)

NARRATOR: "You must go straight to
the one who looks after your pigs.

You'll find him sitting by his swine

while they graze
near the Raven's Rock...

..and the spring of Arethusa,

eating acorns
to their hearts' content."

MAKIS METAXAS:

(birds cawing)

NARRATOR:
"I am Odysseus, son of Laertes,

known to the world
for my craftiness.

My fame reaches the heavens.

I dwell in clearly-visible Ithaca...

..with its majestic mountain,
Neriton,

covered with waving forests."

- When Odysseus is
telling his story to the Phaecians

who will eventually
help him get home,

he is not just telling them
the grand facts about his home.

He's not just saying
there's a mountain, Mount Neriton.

He's saying it's conspicuous
for all to see.

He's saying they ought to
have heard of his hometown

not just because it's him,

but because of this mountain.

MAKIS METAXAS:

(goat bells clanging)

(uplifting music)

NARRATOR: "I'll show you
the landmarks of Ithaca.

Over there is Mount Neriton,
covered in forests!"

HETTIE:
Mount Neriton was a beacon in sea,

because the seamen and the seafarers
would always pass it

and know exactly where they were.

And everybody
actually knew about this.

So this was a very exciting,
uh, thing for us

because we had
the mountain, Neriton,

which is obviously called, now,
Mount Ainos,

we had the Ravens Rock...

..and the Reithron harbour.

NARRATOR:
"Here at the harbour's head

stands a long-leafed olive tree,

and nearby is the beautiful,
shaded cave.

This is the spacious,
vaulted grotto

where you offered many
solemn sacrifices

to the nymphs.

- Homer says there is a cave of
nymphs sacred to the gods...

..where bees go
and store their honey.

There are two entrances
into this cave.

One that the mortals can know
and one that the immortals can know.

And Homer uses the phrase,
"it was a wonder to see."

MAKIS METAXAS:

(inspiring music)

HETTIE:
Yes. He actually saw it.

MAKIS: Yes, I wake up.
He was suddenly jumping up...

..and he said "I found it!"
That's what he said.

NARRATOR:
"The cave has two ways in.

The one that faces north
is the way down for mortals.

The other, facing south,

belongs only to the gods.

The cave is home to bees
and their hives.

There are long
looms of stone as well,

where the nymphs weave
their fabric of sea-purple...

..a wonder to behold."

(inspiring music continues)

HETTIE:
We had been thinking about it,

where it could be,
we had been looking for it

and Melissani fit exactly.

YANGOS METAXAS:
It's spiritual, it's sacred.

You can imagine how
the people of the Mycenaean times...

must have been impressed.

The sheer beauty of it.

The mist itself
lingering over the water.

In Homer's imagination,
and he describes it,

it seems like a waving pattern
on the rocks.

The very word "Melissa"
in Greek means bee, honeybee.

And the bees were
considered to be souls.

MAKIS METAXAS:

HETTIE: Odysseus,
when he understands where he is

and that he's at home,

he starts to walk from Melissani
to the Ravens rock,

where Evmeus, his trusted
sheepkeeper and friend stays.

And that is a distance of
about 30 kilometres

and that's about
seven to eight hours walking.

It's exactly as it is described
in Homer's tale.

MAKIS METAXAS:

(he laughs)

- And Makis was very much...

..a lot of energy and a lot of,

um, how would you call it?
Yes, energy inside him

because of this.
And he bought new shoes

and we were walking in Athens
like this.

And I would get
an electrical shock all the time.

And I said, "What's happening here?
What's happening?

You wear new shoes. Is there
something wrong with the shoes?"

(laughing)

I said, "No, nothing wrong
with the shoes, just common shoes."

And I would get every two minutes
or three minutes,

a small electrical shock from him.

He understood the magnitude
of what happened here.

(dynamic, inspiring music)

MAKIS METAXAS:

(tense music)

MAKIS METAXAS:

HETTIE: There was
this photograph of the tomb,

the entrance
when it was found by Makis,

which was between the trees,
he saw the stone of the entrance.

MAKIS METAXAS:

(inspiring music)

MAKIS METAXAS:

- Because you have this theory,

you actually find a tholos tomb,

which is a tomb
from the Mycenaean period

where kings were buried in.

It's a beehive shape, built tomb.

It was kind of wonderful
that you find this tomb after that,

which really says you are right.

- They started to cut trees
on top of the hill

and to clean everything.

And they went also
in through the entrance.

The entrance was blocked

because the whole tholos tomb
had fallen in at a certain point.

So they had to clean it,

get out all the, the blocks,
all the stones.

WOMAN: (video audio)
Toward evening, we're in the Brusia.

And they have started to dig.

They think that this has
something to do with Ulysses.

This is, apparently,
that's the door.

And they are digging in there.

There's already people watching.

Oh, they are coming
from all over town!

That's our president of the town.

Here is the interested family.

Stina? Stina, Yanna, Ismini...

Hey, Ismini! Ismini!
(video clicks)

- My father and my family
are from here.

I used to spend my summers here,

and we heard that they were
starting to excavate this area.

It so happened that
it was on my family's land.

So it was really exciting.

And my mom was just sort of
videotaping around in general.

I think we had probably just had
a video camera for a little while,

and she's just filming everything.

ISMINI'S MUM: (on video)
Here we are inside.

You can see
there's a circle, the stones.

Well, of course I'm gonna talk!

- I was about, I guess 14
or I guess 15, probably.

ISMINI'S MUM: And that's the head
archaeologist right there.

- I was always really excited
and interested in archaeology.

And so I would come and
watch what they did every day

and it was something
that was really important to me.

- When the excavation started,
of course I went a lot,

but I had three small children
to take care of, and the shop,

and we rented rooms.

So I was running around
the whole day anyway,

so I didn't have so much opportunity
to go so often.

But I went there regularly.

Makis was there almost every day.

MAKIS METAXAS:

- To be there, you know,
when they're digging up

these thousands-of-year-old bones
and, you know,

pieces of pottery
and other things, like,

it's a different experience.

WOMAN: They found pottery shards,
Ismini says.

ISMINI'S MUM: Huh?
- It looks like pottery shards.

- Where?
- In that box.

- That looks like bones.

- When they arrived at
the floor of the tholos tomb

and they cleaned
the whole tholos tomb

and they were on this level,

there was nothing,
absolutely nothing.

So that was a kind of
"What's happening here?"

I mean, that was so strange.

And then if you would...

..stamp on the floor with your foot,

you could hear that
it was hollow underneath.

And then they discover that
the floor was not a floor,

and there were ancient burials
under the floor.

ISMINI'S MUM:
OK, today we are July 11.

It is early morning
and here we are at the dig.

And this is what
they have done so far.

ISMINI'S MUM:
There's Mr Kolonas ,

he's the main archaeologist

and he's looking the other way!
(she chuckles)

And our president of the town.

MAKIS METAXAS:

ISMINI'S MUM:
This is what they found, a jar.

ISMINI'S MUM:
I'm standing at the door...

(workmen chattering in greek)

And there are bones.

There's something under here.

MAKIS METAXAS:

- And of course,
that was really exciting,

and so my mom asked Dr Kolonas
if he would talk to me.

And, um, so she had me actually
ask him some questions

and she filmed it.
ISMINI'S MUM: Alright.

Here we are with Mr Kolonas
he's the main archaeologist

and he's a very well known person
in Europe and all over.

- I remember asking him,
you know, like,

because there was already
sort of this talk of, like,

could this be Odysseus's Tomb?

(kolonas speaking greek)

- Um, it's a little early to say
whether this could be the tomb of,

like, Odysseus.
ISMINI'S MUM: Odysseus.

And there is a...

..skull and bones.

MAKIS METAXAS:

HETTIE:
This tomb had been robbed

after the Mycenaean world collapsed

because everybody knew
there was gold inside those graves.

MAKIS METAXAS:

- The bones of the last king
that was buried there.

were still there.

And they had never lifted,
uh, these bones.

But under these bones
they found some important findings.

HETTIE: Bullhorns.
And the little double axe.

When you find these symbols that
were used by Mycenaean Kings,

that's, yeah,
you can only hope for that,

but you don't really think
that will ever happen.

But there it was!

(mysterious music)

MAKIS METAXAS:

(mysterious music)

(mysterious music)

- Odysseus,
when he arrives home,

he cannot reveal his identity.

After 10 years of travelling
and 20 years away,

he has to enter, not as a king,
but as a beggar.

- Queen Penelope asked him

what was Odysseus wearing
the last time he saw him.

And Odysseus says that, uh,

he had a brooch on his clothes

that was displaying
a dog grabbing a deer,

which was desperately
trying to escape.

NARRATOR:
"I can picture him now.

Great Odysseus wore
a purple woollen cloak,

with double folds,

and on it was a golden brooch
with a double clasp.

On the front was a curious design.

A hound held a dappled fawn
in its front paws,

biting it as it writhed,
trying to flee.

All marvelled to see it."

MAKIS METAXAS:

- It was so strange and exciting.

It was all very...
more like a blur for me.

That seal was the seal
that is described

in the Odyssey, by Homer.

Exactly as we found it.

MAKIS METAXAS:

HETTIE: A deer that was grabbed
by a lion, a wild animal.

MAKIS METAXAS:

HETTIE: To find such a thing as
a Mycenaean tholos tomb,

the Mycenaean
beehive-shaped tomb,

which was only for kings;

after you did research

and concluded
it should be about there

and then that you actually found it,

that is not something you expect.

It's, It's unbelievable. Definitely.

EMMA: On this brooch,
there was a dog...

..and in the dog's forepaws,
there was a fawn.

And the dog had been
hunting the fawn.

And the brooch shows the dog
gazing at the fawn

in the moment
just before he goes in for the kill.

Now, if we think about the
zoomed-in nature of that moment,

we have the Trojan War...

..Odysseus' homecoming...

..Odysseus's disguise
as a beggar,

Odysseus's conversation
with his wife...

..Odysseus' cloak,
Odysseus' brooch...

It is an unbelievable set
of Russian dolls,

an unbelievable kaleidoscope

that gets us down
to this one tiny moment.

But in this moment
and in this image...

..that is Odysseus!

MAKIS METAXAS:

- When Odysseus is
describing it to Penelope,

he's very clear
that it says it's a dog,

"kuon" in Greek,

grappling with,
writhing with a dappled fawn.

And yeah, it's always struck people
as a strange image.

This is a character who knows
an awful lot about hunting.

It's implausible,
because dogs can't do that.

Dogs can't hold something up,

something as big as a fawn,
in just two of its four paws.

There's also,
there's lots of other animals

that would better fit
the hunting scene

that Odysseus is describing.

And, incidentally,

would also fit the metre
of the Homeric line.

Le-on, the Greek word for lion,

which is the exact same metrical
quantity as the word ku-on,

the Greek word for dog.

Now a lion grasping a fawn

and looking at it as it writhes.
That's what we're talking about.

Then we're in
real hunting territory.

(inspiring music)

- Seals are made according to

the type of stone
that they're made from.

And there are
two major types of stone,

hard stones and soft stones.

So the soft stones,
we'd call them steatite,

uh, soap stone.

You can scratch these stones
with a pen knife. Very easy.

The more aristocratic stones,

you need abrasion.

You can't carve these.

The Mycenaeans had
nothing harder than bronze.

You have to use sand
as an abrasion tool.

We actually have depictions of this
on Roman tombstones,

and it's a bow.

And the stick is basically
sharpened at one end.

You're gonna rotate the drill.

There we go.

We're making some abrasion
on the sherd.

So, after many hours,

you actually have got
the etched lines...

..engraved into the stone
and then you polish it.

So you get a nice smooth surface.

Then comes the hard part.

Drilling a string hole through it.

Name's John Younger.
I'm a, um...

..professor at the
University of Kansas.

I did my PhD dissertation
on seal stones,

when I went to graduate school,
then I...

..I specialized in
pre-historic Greece.

And I compiled a list
of 1,200 of these.

"Corpus of Minoan and
Mycenean Seal Stones."

This is, uh, volume five,

supplement three, fascicle one.

This is very common.
A standing bull

with branches
in front and below.

That is like a dime a dozen.

Uh, this is a, a nice,
uh, agate piece

with a bull and
some kind of palm.

And the more exotic the seal,

the more colourful the seal,

indicates your status
in this society.

And they are jewels.
You wear them as jewels.

The seal stone is like a signature.
You, you...

In exactly the same way,

when you sign your tax returns.

DIRECTOR:

It's found in Kefalonia
by the excavator Kolonas.

And it's, it gives a description

with the dimensions
and what the material is.

And so it says, uh,
a light greenish rock crystal.

It's got a lion
who's attacking some kind of deer.

And...

Pose is pose type 49 B.

And, uh, at some point it says
that it's kind of rectangular.

That's unique.

Seals are never,
never... rectangular.

Uh... if that's real...

..that would be unique.

(inspiring theme music)

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