“Tell me, O Muse, of the man of many wiles, who wandered far and
wide after destroying sacred Troy, and saw many cities and came to
know the thoughts of many men.”
Let me introduce myself: I am Odysseus—you may also call me
Ulysses—king of Ithaca and destroyer of Troy, and I want to speak
to you, for once, honestly.
At this point, I’d like to tell you—if that’s even possible—about the nine
years—almost ten—of a pointless war. After the initial enthusiasm fuelled by
the fact that we were brothers-in-arms attacking a common enemy, we realized
that war was not what we had dreamed it would be: war was not glory—or at
least, it was not just glory. It was blood, boredom, betrayal; it was killing people
you didn’t know; it was bringing grief to those trapped within those
monumental walls who were proudly defending their families. Disagreements,
malice, foolish stances, and even theft began to arise among us as well. We were
ruled by a despotic king, and each of us carried our own hubris, arrogance, and
pride, exercising them in ways that reflected our individual traits. Achilles was
the strongest but not the smartest; Diomedes was the most reckless, often
displaying boundless courage—with many consequences. He would realize this
upon his return—the same goes for Achilles, who didn’t even make it home.
He was killed because that was his fate. I, needless to say, was the craftiest of
them all, so you tell me what’s heroic about all this and why we went down in
history—which was, after all, what we wanted, since Greek culture held that
this was what warriors were meant for: glory, and nothing else mattered. And
so we’ve gone down in history, which has taken it upon itself to single us out
one by one and to tell, in its own way, a fable —that has remained immortal
through time. But I’m here with you today due to a strange turn of events, and
I can truly tell you how it all went down.
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