Episode 72A – The Odyssey Begins – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 72A Show Notes

Source: Greek Mythology

This week on MYTH, we’re heading back to the shores of defeated Troy for the first story in Odysseus’ epic story. You’ll see that no one hates you like family, that wrestling old men is hard, and that you can herd seals. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll learn the gruesome origins of…wine? This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 72A, “The Odyssey Begins”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
Where does the time go? Until an email from listener Al a little while ago, I hadn’t realized that it’s been two and half years since I started the Iliad and the Trojan War. I promised then that we would come back to the story of Odysseus and his adventures after the war, and now seems like as good a time as any. So buckle in, because this is a weird, wild ride.
The Iliad started with Episode 26A if you feel like going back and acquainting yourself with the intricacies of that epic story, but for everyone else, here’s the TL:DR version. Prior to the events of the actual Iliad itself, Zeus had decided that there were just too damn many people, and definitely too many demigod heroes. He was worried about a prophecy that said he would one day be overthrown by his son the way that he had overthrown his own father Cronus, and keeping his dick in his pants just wasn’t an option, so he decided to throw a war to thin the herd. Through a lot of shenanigans, the goddess of discord Eris set three major goddesses against one another in a beauty contest, and they turned to the mortal prince of Troy, Paris. All three offer bribes, and Paris takes Aphrodite’s offer: the love of the most beautiful woman alive, Helen of Sparta. There’s just one problem: she’s already married to the Spartan king.
Paris steals Helen away (with a little help from Aphrodite’s magic love compulsion) in blatant violation of guest-right, which was a Very Big Deal to the ancient world. In response, King Menelaus gathers an army of 1000 ships from all of the independent Greek city-states to go to Troy and get her back (thanks to a complicated oath the heroes had all taken). Odysseus had been one of the heroes to swear the oath (and had actually been the one to come up with the clever idea in the first place), but had been reluctant to actually sail away to Troy. He had visited the Oracle and learned that, if he ever went to Troy, he wouldn’t see his home again for 20 years. He pretends to be completely crazy to get out of going to war, so the messenger had threatened Odysseus’ son Telemachus with death, which had forced him to admit that he was faking and honor his oath.
After some problems and mishaps getting to Troy in the first place, the Greeks lay siege to the city for ten years. The Iliad picks up the story at the end of this decade and tells the story of the final days of the war. Agamemnon (brother of Menelaus) had taken the daughter of a priest as his slave and refused to give her up until Apollo sent a plague to the Greek camp for nine straight days. He finally agrees to give the woman up, but only if he gets to take Achilles’ favorite sex slave in her place. He agrees, but is so pissed off at the whole arrangement that he refuses to fight. This is a problem because Achilles is, by far, the best warrior there.
Without the help of Achilles and his men, the Trojans whip collective Greek ass, led by Hector, prince of Troy and brother to Paris. Achilles’ “special friend” (by which I definitely mean lover) Patroclus gets permission to put on Achilles’ very distinctive armor and ride out to battle to scare the ever-loving shit out of the Trojans. Hector, a brave and deadly warrior in his own right, fights the man he thinks is Achilles and kills him, taking the expensive armor as a trophy.
Achilles wheedles his mother into getting him a sick new suit of armor from Hephaestus, god of the forge and rides out to fight the entire army by himself. And wins. I told you he was a badass. He fights Hector for realsies and, being a much better fighter than Patroclus, kills Hector in single combat. Achilles is still thirsting for vengeance, so he proceeds to desecrate Hector’s corpse for days. After getting a firm talking to from the gods, Achilles agrees to let Hector’s father, King Priam, take the body back to Troy for a proper funeral. That’s where the Iliad ends.
The famous story of the Trojan horse actually comes from the Roman fanfiction poem The Aeneid, and tells of how clever Odysseus gets sick of the siege (especially after Paris manages to kill Achilles with a lucky bow shot). It’s also touched on briefly in The Odyssey. They learn that a magical statue is keeping the city safe, so Odysseus leads a daring night raid on the city to steal it (though he loses points for trying to murder his teammate out of jealousy and being driven back to the Greek camp bound and spanked on the ass). He then devises a clever scheme to build a wooden horse (the animal of Poseidon, patron of the city of Troy) and leave it as a gift for Athena for safe conduct home. Then, the Greek ships will pull back, looking for all the world like they’ve abandoned the war.
The building effort was led by a known coward, so the Trojans bought the ruse. Well, mostly. A small group was convinced that this was a clever trick, since everyone knew that the Greeks were sneaky bastards. They might have convinced everyone if a captured Greek soldier hadn’t been brought to the city right about then, wailing about having been betrayed by Odysseus and barely escaping being murdered. He confirms that the horse is a gift for Athena and says that the plan is to have the Trojans burn it, pissing off Athena and winning the war by divine smiting. Two sea serpents rising up to eat Laocoon for trying to warn everyone not to trust this story convinced everyone else that they should bring the wooden horse into the city.
Naturally, the horse was full of Greek soldiers, who pour out of it in the middle of the night, murder almost everyone, and set fire to the city. The war over, everyone sets out for their own ships to head home. Odysseus and his men have been gone ten years, but it looks like they managed to beat the odds and prove the Oracle wrong. Prophecy is tricky though, and things are about to get interesting. This is where our new story, the Odyssey, picks up. I’ll be using the translation by Robert Fagles unless noted otherwise.
Now, a word on what’s about to happen. The original epic poem is told in non-chronological order, which can be a bit confusing. Much like the Iliad, it assumes that the listener already knows the basic story and the players and dives right in with no context. For the sake of clarity, I’m going to tell the story without the wibbly-wobbly timey wimey aspect starting with the end of the war and going straight through. At the end, I’ll come back around to talk a little about the original structure and why it was ordered that way. Alright, enough context: on with the show!
Once the Greeks (referred to as the Achaeans in the original text) had finished sacking the once-proud city of Troy, brothers Menelaus and Agamemnon began to butt heads. They led most of the soldiers at this point (since many of the leaders of the smaller bands had died in the closing days of the siege), so this represented a major schism. Unable to come to a decision between themselves (since both were way too proud to back down), they called the army together at sunset. The soldiers had spent the day drinking, raping, murdering, burning, and pillaging, so they were in an…interesting mood. By which I mean they were shit-faced drunk, violent, and horny. It was not a terribly effective mix for a peaceful discussion, which was the point. Zeus had thrown this whole war to get rid of as many heroes as possible, and there were still too many hanging around for his liking. What’s more, Athena was spitting mad with the Greeks for desecrating her temple in Troy when they stole the Palladium from it during their daring night raid (with the exception of Odysseus himself, whom she was quite fond of for being such a clever SOB).
Menelaus wanted to load up the ships with slaves and loot and sail for home ASAP. Agamemnon, on the other hand, was worried that Athena might be holding a grudge against them for sacking her temple despite having been their patron throughout the war (correctly, as it turned out). He wanted to stay for a while longer to offer up sacrifices to Athena to try and appease her before starting the perilous journey back. Poseidon, god of the sea, had been the patron of Troy, so they were already likely to encounter problems from one angry god; it would be much, much worse without some divine muscle on their side to balance the scales.
The two brothers fought with the kind of vitriol you can only get from family, and everyone soon picked up the ugly mood. Before long, all of the soldiers were forming two distinct packs behind the two men, clashing their weapons against their armor in a prelude to open battle. These men had fought alongside each other for ten years, but they’d spent most of their lives warring amongst themselves. Only the common enemy of Troy had kept them bound together this long. Neither side slept that night for fear that the other side would slaughter them in the night if given half a chance.
At dawn, the half that had backed Menelaus dragged their ships off of the beach and into the sea, then loaded them with all of the plunder they could carry and many Trojan women as slaves. Odysseus sets out with Menelaus and his crew, and they watched as Agamemnon’s camp on the beach disappeared over the horizon behind them. They sailed first for Tenedos, the island nation they had stopped at on the way to Troy ten years ago (and then attacked and plundered in the night back in Episode 26C). Already, things were looking pretty dicey. Sacrifices to the gods were made on the island and everyone got ready to head back out, when dissension again reared its ugly head. The leaders of the various Greek bands couldn’t agree on the best way forward, prompting a contingent led by Odysseus to turn around and sail to Troy to join back up with Agamemnon. As he headed back the way he had come, he could see Menelaus, Diomedes, and Nestor heading their own ways.
We’ll circle back to follow after Odysseus, but first I want to follow Menelaus, Diomedes, and Nestor on their desperate run home so that they don’t end up getting lost in the shuffle. Nestor stood on the deck of his own ship as they piled on as much sail as they could, watching clever Odysseus and his wise counsel sail away. By now, a heavy storm was brewing on the open sea, making the sailing all the more dangerous. The rest of the warships were soon scattered in the plunging waves as Nestor escaped the fury of the storm and headed to the island of Lesbos. There, he, Diomedes, and Menelaus meet up, along with the surviving crews from the half of the army that had followed Menelaus out of Troy, including Achilles’ Myrmidons, led by Philoctetes and the Cretians, who miraculously arrive home without losing a single man to the deadly sea voyage (the only crew to do so).
They discuss the best way to get home, knowing now that it’s not going to be easy. It’s clear that Agamemnon had been right about Athena being pissed off, and they were more than a little nervous about what further mischief she might be about to unleash on them. They offer sacrifices and pray for a sign, receiving one from Poseidon of all beings, saying to take the straight shot down the middle passage to the city of Euboea (which was famous for its impressive temple to Poseidon). It was not the usual route, but the three wise leaders heeded the god of the sea and followed his advice. Despite heavy winds and high seas, they made it safely through to Geraestus Point on the island of Euboea, one of the Greek isles. In thanks for their safe passage, they stopped off at the aforementioned temple of Poseidon and offered a lot of bull parts to the god. All three went their separate ways from there. Nestor returned to his home in Pylos, where he was reunited with his son Peisistratus who, like the children of several of the Greek heroes, was a young boy when his father set sail but is a young man grown by the time he returns. Nestor probably has it the easiest of everyone as far as going home.
As for Menelaus, things got rough after he parted ways with Nestor. Zeus had a special bug up his ass about the Spartan king and sent a hurricane after his ship on the wine-dark sea. The waves grew higher and higher, until the whitecaps towered over the ships like mountains. The ships were driven apart by the awful storm: half drove past Crete only to be driven up onto the reefs along the shore of the mainland, with the crew barely managing to clamber out of the raging sea to stagger ashore to the land of the Cydonians; the other half were swept away to Egypt.
Menelaus’ ships came first to the island of Pharos off the Egyptian coast, the only port within a day’s sailing. The ships were beaten by the storm and and the men half-drowned from the raging sea, so the red-haired king decided to heave-to in the harbor there. The ships topped off their water tanks and got ready to head out again, but the gods had other ideas. See, to sail on the open ocean you kind of need wind, and there wasn’t a breath of it to be found for the next 20 days. They had water, thanks to the wells, but no one had expected the trip to take this long, and their rations were running out. Being seafaring people, they had lines and hooks, but they couldn’t seem to land nearly enough fish to feed the crew.
Menelaus went for a walk along the beach to try and clear his head. His men were going to starve soon, and he had no fucking idea what to do about it. There, on a remote spit of land, the Spartan king met a beautiful woman. You don’t get to be king of a warrior nation by collecting bottle caps, so this immediately made Menelaus suspicious. There was no fucking way that this woman was mortal. She stalked up to the red-headed king and poked him in the chest with a finger. “Are you a fool, stranger? Or are you just lazy? Maybe you like watching your men suffer? That must be why you’re wasting the days away on this little island.”
“Look, mysterious goddess whatever your secret identity is, I’m not the one in control of the winds. I clearly pissed off one of your deathless god friends up in the sky there, but I don’t know which one. I’m guessing you do, though. Care to clue me in?” Menelaus had guessed correctly: this was Eidothea, daughter of Proteus (a minor sea god in service to Poseidon and shepherd to his flock of seals). “My father Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, controls these waters. As you may know, he’s something of a prophet, so if you can catch him, wrestle him, and pin him, you can get him to tell you how to get home safely (and maybe even find out what’s going on in your palace).” “I knew you were no mortal. Show me the trick of trapping Proteus. It’s hard for a mortal to sneak up on a god, you know.”
Eidothea smiled in acknowledgement. “Proteus comes up from the waves at high noon, shrouded in a blanked of deep, dark swells, to go sleep in a deep cave on shore. His flock of seals bed down around him in a sea dogpile. The place reeks of old, sour salt and animals, to be honest. I’ll guide you there at daybreak tomorrow and bring you where you need to be. Take three of your best men with you – you’ll need all of you to pull this off. Proteus is a creature of habit, so he always counts his flock before lying down to sleep in the middle of them (just like any good shepherd). As soon as he lays down, jump him. He’s a wily old bastard, and he’s going to use every trick he knows to get you off his ass, and that includes shapeshifting, so be ready. If you can hang on, he’ll turn back into the shepherd and ask you questions. Then and only then can you let him go. Ask him flat out which god is working against you and how you can cross the sea and get home safely.”
Menelaus went back to his men, had dinner, and bedded down for the night. As the first rosy light of dawn was just beginning to lighten the sky, he woke and gathered up the three soldiers he trusted most for difficult missions. Eidothea rose again from the waves, carrying four strange shapes in her hands. As she reached the beach, Menelaus could see that they were seal skins, freshly flayed from their now-dead owners. She dug out four shallow trenches on the beach. Each of the men crouched down in the sand and was covered by a bloody skin. Then, they waited. The stench of the already-rotting skins was nearly overpowering, but Eidothea was prepared for that as well: she dabbed ambrosia under the nose of each man to ward off the pungent reek of dead sea creature.
The Egyptian sun was brutal, and hiding under the thick, hot skins was miserable, but they all persevered. At noon, Proteus emerged from the sea, surrounded by his flock of bouncing, barking seals. He counted the animals, starting with the four men hiding in the skins of his dead beasts (not realizing that they had been slaughtered behind his back). Satisfied, Proteus yawned hugely and lay down to sleep. Per their plan, all four leapt as one towards the unsuspecting god and seized him in wrestling locks.
Proteus reacted immediately. He struggled and twisted and roared his anger, but the four men clung fast. Then, beneath their grip, the god’s skin began to change. First, he became a great bearded lion, leaping and roaring; then a serpent, wriggling and lithe; then a panther, screaming and rolling; then a huge wild boar, snorting and stamping. Then he changed it up a little. His next shift was a raging waterspout, but the men held their ground and refused to back away from the semi-solid mass of water. After that, he tried being a towering tree with soaring branches, but the men clung fast, dangling far above the earth.
Proteus was wily, but he was also an old man, and shapeshifting took a lot of juice. He grew tired, and shifted back into human-ish form to pepper Menelaus with rapid-fire questions. “Who’re you working for, Menelaus? Which god conspired with you to ambush me like this? What do you want?” “You know who I am, old man, so you know what I want. Why pretend? I’ve been stuck on this insignificant little island for far too long with no way out. You tell me: which one of you immortals keeps me from my home? How do I cross the sea safely?”
Proteus sneered. “You did this to yourself, asshole! You should have offered Zeus and the other gods a great sacrifice before setting out if you wanted to get home quickly. It is not your destiny to see your home again until you sail back through Egyptian waters and make a truly spectacular sacrifice to the gods.”
That broke something inside Menelaus. It hurt to have to double back the way they’d come, but he didn’t really have any other choice. “I will do as you command, you old god, but tell me this: did all of the Achaeans that Nestor and I left behind reach home safely, or did some of them die?” “You sure you want to know? I’ve got a lot of bad fucking news for you if you press. Plenty have survived, but many have died as well, and some are still lost and wandering.”
Proteus then went through a litany of the fates of some of the great heroes. Ajax was driven by the storms of Poseidon up onto the cliffs of Gyrae, above the breakers, and made it to shore bedraggled but alive. Adrenaline surging through his blood, he shook his fist at the sea and screamed his defiance into the storm: “I escaped the awful abyss of the sea and pulled myself from the very teeth of the gods themselves!” As I’ve mentioned before, the Greek gods really hate it when you boast, and Poseidon took this one personal. He seized his great trident and struck the land under Ajax’s feet. It crumbled beneath him and he screamed as he tumbled down onto the jagged rocks rising out of the crashing sea and drowned.
Menelaus bids Proteus farewell and sets out to do as he was bid. The seas are rough, but now that he’s headed away from home, the winds have risen again. They make the appropriate sacrifices and are finally able to head home, reaching the shores of Sparta eight full years after initially leaving. We’ll come back to Menelaus towards the end of this tale, but we’re going to leave him there for now, which means it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s god is Dionysus.
Given the current state of the world, I figured it was appropriate to talk a little bit about Dionysus, god of madness and wine (and other booze by extension, so raise a glass). There’s a lot of ground to cover, so I’m not going to attempt to get into all of it right now. Today, we’re going to look specifically at one of the more batshit stories about the patron god of madness: his birth. Later depictions often focus on his being a god of drunkenness (which isn’t entirely inaccurate, just mostly), but the worship of Dionysus mostly centered around the moderate consumption of wine to ease suffering and usher in joy and inspiration.
The beginning of the story has been reconstructed from fragments by Diodorus, Plutarch, and Nonnus. As I’ve mentioned before, the Greeks were aware of the Egyptians and their mythology, including the tales of Osiris turning water into wine and, eventually, even having his blood become wine (with wine eventually becoming symbolic as the blood of the dead and risen god, which we covered in Episode 43). Zeus thought that the Egyptian wine grapes were pretty fucking sweet, so he decided that the Olympians needed their own wine god and decided to make one the only way he knew how: by raping some poor unsuspecting woman.
Given the whole death and resurrection thing that was synonymous with wine, Zeus set his sights on a death goddess: Persephone of the Underworld. However, as we discussed back in Episode 68, Persephone was already married to Zeus’ brother Hades (and was also his own daughter by Demeter for extra ick factor). Despite being married to the goddess of marriage, Zeus didn’t feel much of a need to keep his dick to himself, so he turned himself into a serpent or dragon, depending on the interpretation, and headed out.
According to Nonnus, Persephone was still a virgin despite being married to Hades. She only has to spend part of the year (either half or a third, depending on the version) in the underworld, and the rest of her time is spent up on the surface. From context, I’m pretty sure this story takes place during one of these periods, because her mother Demeter had her hidden away in a cave to protect her from all of the many gods who were in lust with her and unwilling to take no for an answer (which means pretty much all of them with a dick). This precaution was obviously inadequate, because sneaky snake Zeus found her and fucked her anyway, getting her immediately pregnant as is always the case.
Persephone gives birth to a horned god-baby named Zagreus. Somehow or other, he arrives on Mount Ida to be guarded by the Korybantes (a group of warrior-dancers), just as Zeus once was (according to some versions, anyway). Most likely, he was carried there but, given the exploits that newborn Hermes gets up to, anything is possible. The precocious infant proves this by climbing into the throne of Zeus and playing with his deadly lightning bolts, proving himself an heir to Zeus.
Hera, always on the lookout for the byblows of her cheating husband’s terrible appetite, sees this and immediately realizes what’s up. She alerts the Titans to the baby’s existence and schemes with them to rid themselves of the child (Hera because of her jealousy and the Titans because fuck Zeus for beating them in the titanomachy way back in Episode 1). They distract the divine baby with toys, especially a mirror and a thyrsus, or a stalk of fennel that was a mocking version of a king’s scepter. It’s said that they smeared their faces with chalk and ambushed the child while he was trying to figure out just who this asshole in the shiny glass was that kept imitating everything he did.
The Titans were brutal and merciless. They slit Zagreus’ throat and then hacked his tiny body to pieces. To his credit, the tiny child didn’t go down easy. He fought back, transforming as they murdered him: first into Zeus, then Kronos, a different baby, and a mad young man with the first peach fuzz of a beard on his chin. When those obviously didn’t work (hey, he’s a baby – I give him props for being able to do anything but lie there and die) he went with the Proteus gambit and began to shift into animals: a lion, a wild horse, a horned serpent, a tiger, and then a bull. By now, Hera was sick of the Titans bungling what was supposed to be a simple infanticide. She stepped in and literally shouts the bull to death, giving the Titans the opening to dismember him entirely. They gathered all of his bloody parts and boiled them in a cauldron to make sure he was super duper dead.
This group of Titans, who had managed up until now to stay on Zeus’ good side, were thrown into Tartarus with their fallen kin from the war (although it’s possible that, in this version, there was no titanomachy and this was the thing that got them thrown into Tartarus instead). Gaia, the earth incarnate and mother of the Titans, was also the physical location of Tartarus, and having her children cast back into her caused her incredible pain, resulting in fires, flood, and boiling seas, which is obviously a bad thing. Zeus sends cooling rains to flood the world in order to soothe her.
But wait, I can practically hear you asking: how in the hell does the violent death of baby Zagreus figure into Dionysus, who hasn’t even shown up yet? If you pipe down and let me finish, I’ll tell you. While Zeus was thus distracted, Demeter went and gathered up the pieces of her dead grandson (though some versions say that the Titans ate all of the pieces except his heart). These fragments, boiled into a bloody drink, were taken to Zeus, who knew just what to do with them. Spoiler alert, it involves his penis.
Zeus was already over his thing with Persephone and had moved on to Semele, the mortal princess of Thebes. He had already come to her in a dream in which Zeus destroyed a fruit tree with a thunderbolt but left the fruit unharmed before a bird brought him the fruit. She told her father Cadmus, founder of Thebes, of her dream, and he recognized it as prophecy. He told her to go and make sacrifices to Zeus post-haste to avoid any destruction at his hands. Zeus was madly in lust with her and, as part of his wooing process, gave her the strange liquid to drink (which is super fucked up because that’s dead god-baby juice). Not knowing any better, and being courted by a known rapey god, Semele drinks the concoction. To try and seal the deal, Zeus promises Semele to grant her one wish – anything her heart desires. He even swears it by the River Styx, the one unbreakable vow for the Olympians. They then have sweaty, passionate sex, leading Semele to become pregnant (because of course it does). Her bed is immediately overgrown with vines and flowers, and Zeus promises her that he will make her immortal, and that her child will bring joy to gods and men.
Hera soon finds out about the pregnancy (because of course she does) and decides to get her revenge, just like she always does. Also just like always, she can’t vent her fury on her cheating ass of a husband (who boasts in the Iliad that he could fight all of the other Olympians and win), so she takes it out on the poor mortal woman. Some stories also say that, given his promise to make Semele immortal, she fears he means to replace her as wife and queen. Hera comes to Semele in disguise as an old servant of the family. “Tsk tsk. Pregnant but no husband? How did that happen, dearie?” “Oh, you’ll never believe it! Zeus himself, the king of the gods, is my boyfriend! He told me he loved me and everything before we, well, you know,”
“You’re right; I don’t believe it. How do you know that he’s actually Zeus? Did he do anything particularly godlike? Offer you any proof?” “Well…no. I guess not, but, I mean, who would lie about that?” “Anyone who wanted to get in your pants, dearie.” “Oh. Well, he did promise to grant me one wish.” “Perfect! You should ask him to show himself to you in his full glory as a god, like he does with his wife. No mortal has ever seen that. That way, you can know for sure.”
Semele agrees to think about it, and the old woman leaves. The longer she sits, thinking about the baby in her belly, the more her doubts grow. The next time Zeus comes to her, she tells him that she knows what she wants: she wants to see his full divine glory. “Please don’t ask this of me, my love. I…” “Didn’t you promise me anything I wanted? On the River Styx? You swore!” “I…did. And I am honor-bound to grant your wish, but I beg you to reconsider.” “No, I need proof! I need to know that you’re really you!” With a heavy sigh, Zeus revealed his full glory, the fury and power of the thunderbolt. As Hera had known, no mortal could stand in the presence of this raw fury and live. With an agonized scream, Semele’s flesh was burned from her bones by the awful light.
Zeus had also known what was about to happen, though he had been powerless to stop it. As she died, Zeus snatched the unborn baby from her womb. It was not yet able to be born though, so he tore open the flesh of his own thigh, tucked the baby inside, and then cauterized the wound closed. Realistically, that’s not how this works; that’s not how any of this works. Zeus isn’t the king of the gods for nothing though, so he manages to grow a baby in his leg and, even more impressively, keep it hidden from Hera.
When the baby was old enough to be born for realsies, Zeus gave the baby to Hermes to keep safe. He took the infant to the Nysa Valley to be cared for by the nymphs there, a place no mortal has ever seen. Thus was the horned baby Dionysus born (named in part for the nymphs of Nysa). His whole story mirrors the creation of wine, with his body being ripped and torn to make a drink that inspires creation. There are some more shenanigans to get into with the raucous god, but that will have to wait until next time.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff, whom you can find on fiverr.com.
Next time, it’s part two of the Odyssey. You’ll see that Odysseus doesn’t like to chill with his homies, that hurricanes can really ruin your day, and that Zeus gets what Zeus wants. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you’ll see that you shouldn’t make the god of madness angry. You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.