In the final portion of the epic Greek poem “The Odyssey,” the king of Ithaca, who has been away fighting the Trojan War, finally makes it back home 20 years later, only to find that interlopers have invaded his court, raiding his riches and eager to marry his wife and assume the throne.
The violence that ensues forms the basis of The Trial of Odysseus, a mock trial produced by the National Hellenic Museum on March 12 at the Harris Theater. Chicago-area attorneys representing the defense and prosecution of Odysseus will argue before the court, with the audience casting the final vote: Was Odysseus’ slaughter of the suitors justified, or were his actions criminal?
Ahead of filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of “The Odyssey,” which stars Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway among many others and opens in theaters this July, the museum decided the story would be an ideal fit for its annual mock trial series.
Katherine Kelaidis is the director of research and content for the National Hellenic Museum. She spoke to the Tribune about how the two-and-a-half-hour event works and the issues that will be debated during The Trial of Odysseus. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: What are some of the trials the National Hellenic Museum has done before?
A: We started with the Trial of Socrates, a real trial from 399 B.C., where he was accused of undermining Athens’ democracy. At the time, Athens had just emerged from a period of dictatorship and some of his students had been among the tyrants who sought to take down Athens’ democracy.
We’ve done trials of mythic figures. And we’ve also done trials concerning contemporary events, such as the Parthenon Marbles, which are parts of the Acropolis that were taken by Lord Elgin and placed in the British Museum in the early 19th century, where they remain. So there is a dispute over who should be the caretaker of these sculptures. Greece argues they were obtained illegally; the museum argues otherwise. Part of the struggle of doing this every year is finding a topic from Greek history or myth that feels relevant and engaging to a contemporary audience. But this year, Christopher Nolan gave us a gift.
Q: Tell me more about “The Odyssey,” which many of us read in high school but may not remember well.
A: It’s a myth that survives to us in the form of an epic poem, but the story is much older than the poem. And there’s no trial in the poem. We’re introducing that.
“The Odyssey” is the story of Odysseus’ journey home from the Trojan war, where the Greeks have gone to fight because Helen had run away with the Trojan prince, Paris. They’ve won, and now Odysseus has to get home, and what should be, in ancient times, a journey of a few weeks turns into a journey of 10 years. And he’s already been gone fighting in Troy for 10 years. So he’s been gone for a total of 20 years.
In the meantime, a group of warlords have moved into his palace and are trying to get Penelope, his wife, to marry one of them so that they can be king of Ithaca. This is an ancient practice that continues into the Middle Ages called usurpation. You have to remember, this was an era when people would go away and just not come back. And when these powerful men did this, there was this idea that it wasn’t necessarily controversial to move into their place and take their property, their title, their wife. Queen of Ithaca is a job, and that job is being married to the king of Ithaca, so if you’re married to the queen of Ithaca, you’re the king of Ithaca by default.
So the suitors have camped in Odysseus’s palace and they are consuming his wealth and terrorizing the local people. Odysseus’s son, Telemachus, is now a man; he was either an infant or not yet born when Odysseus left and he’s supposed to be the one to inherit the throne.
Q: And the trial picks up when Odysseus returns?
A: He comes back in disguise. And he’s been disguised by the goddess Athena because she likes him and it’s safer for him not to be recognized on sight as the returning king. But there are a few people who recognize him. His dog Argos recognizes him! This is a recurring trope in mythology, that dogs and horses recognize their masters when people do not. He reveals his identity to Telemachus, and they plan to take back over the kingdom.
So disguised as a beggar, Odysseus shows up at his palace, and he is not treated very nicely by the suitors who have camped out in his house. And Penelope, who has been faithfully fending off the suitors, finally says, “OK, I’m done putting you off. Whoever can string Odysseus’ bow and shoot an arrow onto the target, the winner of this contest I will marry.” The idea is that Odysseus’s bow is very hard to string and only he can do it.
The suitors try and they fail. And then this beggar that no one recognizes strings the bow, hits the bullseye and everyone is amazed and he reveals himself as the great Odysseus. And then, a melee occurs. It’s Odysseus and Telemachus versus the suitors. They do battle and Odysseus ends up killing all of the suitors, as well as some of the members of his household who are seen as collaborators with the suitors.
Q: So that’s what the trial is about: Were his actions justified or criminal?
A: Yes. A lot of people think the poem ends there, but it’s actually the second-to-last chapter. What happens next is, the families of these men who have been killed show up because they want vengeance and a civil war almost erupts. And just as this happens, Athena arrives from on high and she says, “Maybe Odysseus was right, maybe he was wrong, but I really like him, so you know what? We’re going to let him go. And everyone else should go home, too.” And that’s how peace is restored in Ithaca.
Q: So Athena acts as a mediator who puts an end to the fighting?
A: Yes. And even in 500 B.C., people were very troubled by this idea at the end of the story, because now they had courts and deliberative bodies, and the idea that the goddess would just sort of show up and determine that he’s my favorite, so he doesn’t have to stand trial for the slaughter of the suitors, was very troubling to them.
Q: In modern times, a primacy of property ownership often exists in laws. Some might say, of course what Odysseus did was justified — they were stealing from him. Whereas you’re saying in ancient Greece, it wasn’t considered theft because customs were different; people left and maybe died and no one knew, but life back home had to go on. So was Odysseus’s response considered irrational and over-the-top to ancient Greeks?
A: That debate you just framed? I think this tension existed even in the ancient world. There was no consensus. And also, if you think the suitors should have just left when Odysseus reveals himself, how would they know it was really him? If a guy dressed as a beggar shows up and says, “I’m JB Pritzker, I’m the governor of Illinois,” and he had been gone for 20 years and he doesn’t even look like Pritzker, would we let him be governor? So this episode was interesting to ancient people in the same way it’s interesting to us.
I had a professor in college who said that every problem in “The Odyssey” could be solved with DNA testing.
The questions we’re asking in this trial are: Was he justified? Or were the suitors behaving within the bounds of what was acceptable? There’s a conflict built into the poem when Athena says I’m not going to decide who’s right and who’s wrong and it’s because it’s not clear who’s right and who’s wrong. What I love about the trial series is that it points out the extent to which the questions that animated ancient debates about democracy and justice and self-governance and proper conduct and leadership are the same questions that animate us today.
When you look at something like “The Odyssey,” the core story is probably 10,000 years old, which takes you back to the origins of settled agriculture. As long as people have been living together in communities bigger than our immediate families of four or five hunter-gatherers, we have been telling these stories and asking these questions. And we’re still asking these basic questions about how do we want to live? And how do we live together as a community?
If you go
“The Trial of Odysseus” by the National Hellenic Museum is 7 p.m. March 12 at the Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph St. at Millennium Park; nationalhellenicmuseum.org
