What do an awkward 22-year-old kid from Queens with a nasty spider bite and a 3,000-year-old Greek war hero have in common?
They’re slaying it at the international movie box office this summer.
Peter Parker is off the wall in “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” but the odd hero out for the movie industry is a grizzled Greek hero trying to make his way back from the Trojan War, as told by Christoper Nolan, of “Batman” fame.
Last week, Spider-Man teamed with “The Odyssey” for a record-breaking $400 million in box office receipts. In the four weeks since its release, “The Odyssey” has topped a billon dollars, which is not too shabby for a story that’s three millennia old.
But how does a sandal-shod, sword-wielding Greek with the spell-check champion name of Odysseus compete with a web-tossing college kid or a billionaire in a bat suit? UVA Today asked the University of Virginia’s Jacqueline Arthur-Montagne, assistant professor of classics and the John L. Nau III Assistant Professor of the History and Principles of Democracy, for some insight.
Jacqueline Arthur-Montagne is an assistant professor of classics and the John L. Nau III Assistant Professor of the History and Principles of Democracy. (Contributed photo)
Q. What is it about Homer’s “The Odyssey” that makes it resonate with people some 3,000 years after it was written?
A. Well, part of the appeal is that “The Odyssey” is a rollicking adventure tale full of monsters, magic and romance!
On a deeper level, “The Odyssey” captures two complementary impulses of the human experience. The first is the desire to discover and distinguish ourselves by venturing into the unknown. The second is the longing to return home to what is intimately familiar and beloved. We fully inhabit the Homeric imagination, while also reflecting on the times that we, too, have had to face the unfamiliar or decide whether to trust someone we have just met.
Equally powerful is the poem’s recognition that going home is not simple. Odysseus exemplifies how difficult that process can be: the act of leaving changes you. Time also changes those you left behind.
Q. A statue of Homer sits on the Lawn. What role has the classical tradition played in educating citizens and in civic life?
A. Homer’s poetry was central to education from as early a period as we have written evidence of schooling. Children in elite households learned to read and write by copying famous lines of the epics. At the same time, adult men debated the meaning of key passages at drinking parties and in philosophical circles.
Homer was consulted on every topic under the sun, from models of political leadership to proper reverence for the gods, and even about the natural sciences.
Q. How has Homer influenced our own culture?
A. After antiquity, “knowing your Homer” remained an important criterion for shaping the leadership class of Europe and the Americas. Several founding figures of the United States were trained to read Homer in the original Greek; UVA professor emeritus Jon Mikalson is writing a fascinating book about Thomas Jefferson’s command of Greek philology.
