Homer in an Age of Revisionism

In an age of ideologically driven distortion, defending our classical tradition is inseparable from defending our future. Homer’s Odyssey is the foundational epic of Western literature, an absolute literary masterpiece of immense richness, intellectual depth, and aesthetic beauty whose influence and importance echo through the centuries. German polymath Goethe described Homer’s epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, as the two most important books in the world, since they have shaped the Western cultural psyche. 

The Western canon of literature begins with these two foundational epics of ancient Greece by poet Homer (8th century BC). The Iliad recounts the siege and fall of Troy by the alliance of Mycenaean Greeks featuring such emblematic figures as Achilles, Odysseus, Agamemnon, and Hector. The Odyssey describes the return of its hero, Odysseus, to his homeland after many adventures on the seas and among different civilizations. Homer’s Odyssey is a major work of art that has established the poetic prototype for the hero wandering the world and facing dangers in his quest to return home to his family and fatherland. The Odyssey is a story about the love of fatherland and the power of νόστος—nostos, the return home. The term ‘nostalgia’—from the beautiful Greek word νοσταλγία, ‘pain over the wish to return home’—derives from ‘nostos.’ Returning from Troy, Odysseus “saw the cities of many men and learned their mind,” in the words of the ancient poet. Odysseus wanders the ancient world, navigating between unknown societies, modes of political order, and cultural customs. His journey ends with his return to the familiar landscape of his fatherland and the cultural milieu of his nation. The Odyssey thus becomes a hymn to one’s beloved fatherland and family. Similarly, in the other Homeric epic, The Iliad, Hector, defending his native city Troy, is faced with foreboding omens of defeat by a soothsayer. His reply still echoes through the centuries as a testament to moral responsibility and political duty: “There is only one good omen/to fight for your fatherland.”

Homer’s Odyssey remains as important as ever today for Western civilizational self-understanding and cultural identity. In this context, recent Hollywood attempts to rewrite and reinterpret this foundational epic in accordance with contemporary ideological trends ultimately distort a cultural legacy that has endured for centuries and undermine the shared heritage of Greece and the Western world. The distortion of ancient Greek historical tradition, of which Christopher Nolan’s latest film, The Odyssey (2026), is but the newest example, is not an accident of cinematic peculiarities or a manifestation of naïve artistic expression that has lost its fidelity in depiction of historical tradition. It is in essence much more: a symptom of a declining civilization that trades historical truth for political correctness and of the ideological decadence of the modern West that refuses to acknowledge its own historical roots and the very people that have created the remarkable civilization that the West created over the centuries. Indeed, the very notion that this civilization was invented by everyone—not by the Western nations themselves—as a pseudo-historic reflection of modern migration-transformed Western societies is not only historically wrong but politically dangerous as well. 

Nolan’s Odyssey is a clear case of historical revisionism that amounts to falsification, cultural appropriation, and scientific fallacy. The film is an explicit attempt to rewrite Western culture as part of a greater woke movement that often ‘blackwashes’ European history, mythology, and tradition, distorting the historical aspects of European and Western culture and identity. Interestingly enough, this happens only when it comes to European and Western historical traditions, not in the case of African, Asian, or Pacific civilizations. Nolan’s film draws on Emily Wilson’s translation of the ancient Greek text by Emily Wilson—a problematic translation that attempts to reinterpret the text for a current feminist and woke-minded audience, including such factual mistakes as rendering the ancient Greek term πολύτροπος [polýtropos; often translated as ‘resourceful,’ ed. note] as ‘complicated.’ Contextualization of ancient literature can be interesting as an intellectual pursuit, but not at the expense of accuracy and cultural fidelity to the original and the cultural milieu of its creation.

The Odyssey is not simply mythology, as often inaccurately claimed by various commentators who rushed to defend the many inaccuracies found in Nolan’s Hollywood film by appealing to artistic freedom or mythological content. Ancient Greeks viewed Homer’s epics, such as The Iliad, as history, the basis of their national identity, and as a living past that they had to emulate. Homer’s epics inspired countless generations of poets, painters, sculptors, politicians, and military heroes of the Greek world for thousands of years. These were the national epics of the Greek nation and the bedrock of its self-perception and system of values for centuries; Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), the great military ruler who spread Hellenic civilization to Asia, is said to have slept with a copy of The Iliad under his pillow. The copy had been specially prepared for him by his teacher, the philosopher Aristotle. Alexander consciously tried to emulate famous hero Achilles during his military campaign in Asia. Therefore, the story of the Trojan War was not perceived as meaningless mythology by the ancient Greeks, but as the heroic past of their ancestors.

We should reject the erroneous belief that revisionist interpretations of our cultural heritage must continually be accommodated and that we must make peace with the radical woke distortion that plagues many Western universities and its entertainment industry. We have to emphasize the need for faithful representations of our unique cultural heritage that has fundamentally shaped Western history. In an era marked by casual historical revisionism, shallow cultural relativism, and unwarranted attacks on established facts—about antiquity as much as about the modern era—it is essential to safeguard the proper historical dimension and cultural meaning of the classical world. The classical tradition developed around the eternal values of love for the fatherland, dynamism, social harmony, historical self-knowledge, and cultural continuity. Ancient Greek, Roman, and other Western thinkers aimed to stabilize the political order and safeguard the cultural heritage, not to undermine or distort it as modern reinterpretations often do. The uneven decay of classical studies in parts of the West has, unfortunately, facilitated historical distortion and weakened the ties binding societies to their collective cultural past. Reviving the serious study of classics remains an intellectual and civic priority, and international cooperation between societies based on respect of historicity and tradition can greatly promote this goal.

The West has once again to find its civilizational roots, i.e., ancient Greece, Rome, and Christianity, as eternal wellsprings of identity and cohesion and fight back against cultural relativism and self-destruction promoted by specific elite-driven ideologies. A quotation often attributed to George Orwell states that in a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act—a quote that has never rung truer than today in the age of woke distortion of our historical tradition.