Just didn't want to go back home with wife and went partying/looting with friends but then someone rewrote the story to make it look better, add some gods and monsters and you have a best seller made of the stuff legends are made of.
It is probable that the Odyssey is some kind of navigational diary. In ancient times, ships could only sail the Mediterranean clockwise, alas westward. So it might've made sense he traveled westward.
Ah I'm sorry, i got it a bit wrong. Currents and winds in the Mediterranean are mostly counter-clockwise.
Ancient seafaring was difficult and mostly bound to land. I mean, that they had to travel along the Coast for most of the time and usually tried to avoid high waters. It WAS possible to cross from one side to the other in certain places, e.g. from Sicily to Tunisia, as it is less than 300km apart, but it was generally avoided elsewhere.
Also, sea travel was depended a lot on weather and season. Greeks and Romans were usually advised NOT to travel during winter as winds were rough and unsteady. Even short distance travels took unusually long and were dangerous. The most famous example is of St. Paul who was shipwrecked in Malta at one point. And counter-intuitive at all: The Greeks were actually not very good at seatravel. They always were jealous of the Phoenicians for doing better sea-trade than they.
The Odyssey falls broadly in the category of Periplus. I forgot what a lot of people interpreted into Homer's story, but i guess he just wanted to say "Follow the rules, don't try to sail against the currents or bad things will happen!"
This is why maybe he sailed westward in the story and not straight back...
I find it a bit difficult to believe that he was actually "lost". For example, after hitting "8" why didn't he just party with Achilles and all his friends from the Iliad?
I find it a bit difficult to believe that he was actually "lost". For example, after hitting "5" why didn't he just tell his crew that the bag didn't have gold in it and head back home safely?
I find it a bit difficult to believe that he was actually "lost". For example, after hitting "2" why didn't he just leave the lazy crew members behind?
I find it a bit difficult to believe that he was actually "lost". For example, after hitting "9" why didn't he just sail around the other side of Sicily and avoid Scylla and Charybdis?
I find it a bit difficult to believe that he was actually "lost". For example, using the same data, tensorflow has not learned the concept of being lost yet.
The above comment was sarcasm. There is so much to the story that is unknown. People have already commented on just a sample of known unknowns. There are infinite paths to uncovering the unknown unknowns. Is it possible that the whole story is fiction for the purpose of teaching a lesson?
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 43.4 ms ] threadA more believable story would be that he was just an adventurous guy roaming around the Mediterranean and looting seaside villages.
It is probable that the Odyssey is some kind of navigational diary. In ancient times, ships could only sail the Mediterranean clockwise, alas westward. So it might've made sense he traveled westward.
Ancient seafaring was difficult and mostly bound to land. I mean, that they had to travel along the Coast for most of the time and usually tried to avoid high waters. It WAS possible to cross from one side to the other in certain places, e.g. from Sicily to Tunisia, as it is less than 300km apart, but it was generally avoided elsewhere.
Also, sea travel was depended a lot on weather and season. Greeks and Romans were usually advised NOT to travel during winter as winds were rough and unsteady. Even short distance travels took unusually long and were dangerous. The most famous example is of St. Paul who was shipwrecked in Malta at one point. And counter-intuitive at all: The Greeks were actually not very good at seatravel. They always were jealous of the Phoenicians for doing better sea-trade than they.
The Odyssey falls broadly in the category of Periplus. I forgot what a lot of people interpreted into Homer's story, but i guess he just wanted to say "Follow the rules, don't try to sail against the currents or bad things will happen!"
This is why maybe he sailed westward in the story and not straight back...
For a little more detail see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_maritime_history#The_M...