This episode explores what happens to Odysseus after the Odyssey ends, using four major Western “sequels” — the Telegony, Dante’s Inferno, Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” and Plato’s Republic — to investigate whether a lifelong wanderer can ever truly settle down, and what the costs of wandering are to oneself and others.
The framing question: the wanderer’s dilemma
The speaker identifies as a perpetual wanderer — romantically unsettled, religiously seeking, geographically rootless — and uses Odysseus as an archetype to ask: is wandering good, and if not, how does one stop?
Conventional wisdom says quit cold turkey, but the speaker wonders if indulgence until satiety (as Odysseus did with Calypso and Circe) might actually cure the appetite, or if external consequences of past wandering make settling down impossible regardless of inner state.
The Telegony: external consequences come home to roost
The Telegony (6th century BCE, part of the Epic Cycle, now lost but summarized) shows Odysseus leaving Ithaca again, marrying a Thesprotian queen, fathering a son, and eventually being killed unknowingly by his own son Telegonus (born of Circe) in an Oedipal twist.
Afterward, Telegonus brings Telemachus and Penelope to Circe’s island; Circe marries Telemachus, Penelope marries Telegonus.
The speaker argues the Telegony reveals that Odysseus’s wandering in Homer is not centrifugal (internally driven) but centripetal — he is made to wander by external forces: Poseidon’s wrath, political fallout from killing two generations of aristocrats (the suitors and the Trojan War dead), and offspring from divine liaisons.
Key insight: wandering isn’t just a psychological habit; the external consequences of past actions (illegitimate children, offended powers, political enemies) can forcibly prevent return.
The speaker corrects the famous first line of the Odyssey: polytropos / planchthenta means “he who was made to wander,” not “he who wandered greatly” — Odysseus is pushed, not pulled.
Dante’s Inferno: intellectual arrogance and the seductive false counselor
In Inferno Canto 26, Ulysses is in the eighth circle (false counselors), trapped in a tongue-shaped flame with Diomedes; Virgil condemns him for the Trojan Horse, stealing the Palladium, and making Deidamia a widow.
Dante (who never read Homer) is drawn to Ulysses (“my desire bends toward him”) and lets him speak: Ulysses abandons Ithaca after Circe, sails past the Pillars of Hercules (the boundary of the known world), urging his crew: “You were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.”
They reach Mount Purgatory but are swallowed by the sea — intellectual and geographical arrogance mirrored.
Dante transforms Homer’s centripetal Odysseus into a centrifugal Ulysses driven by knowledge for its own sake, making him a seductive model of transgression that Dante both admires and condemns.
Dante’s own journey is more transgressive (he traverses Hell, Purgatory, Heaven), but it has a telos (God) and is linear, not circular; Aeneas, not Odysseus, is the better model because he serves a providential purpose (founding Rome).
Lesson for wanderers: place limits on wandering by binding it to a project greater than yourself — paradoxically, this may accelerate rather than slow the journey.
Tennyson’s “Ulysses”: intensity raised to a religion
Tennyson’s dramatic monologue (1833, after his friend Hallam’s death) depicts an aged Ulysses back in Ithaca, bored and contemptuous of domestic life (“this still hearth,” “aged wife,” “savage race” of subjects who “hoard and sleep and feed”).
“I cannot rest from travel: I will drink life to the lees” — wandering becomes an undiscriminating appetite for intensity itself: knowledge, battle, experience piled on experience, “life piled on life.”
Unlike Homer (restraint) or Dante (discriminating knowledge), Tennyson’s Ulysses wants everything — even death in the attempt (“It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles and see the great Achilles”).
This is an Odinist, not Christian, ethos: glory in striving, death in combat as validation; the enemy is stasis/boredom (“to rust unburnished, not to shine in use”).
Speaker admits attraction to this model — his best moments are full immersion in a project regardless of direction — but notes the cost: radical neglect of bonds (Penelope, Telemachus, subjects), psychological inability to downshift after high-stimulation life (veterans, womanizers, early-success types).
Three offerings: (1) striving may be noble in itself; (2) the more you strive centrifugally, the less you can settle, and the more you hurt those close to you; (3) if you are Ulysses not Telemachus, perhaps don’t return to Ithaca at all — don’t create bonds you’ll betray by leaving.
Plato’s Republic (Myth of Er): true belief vs. philosophical wisdom
In the Myth of Er (Republic Book 10), souls choose their next life after 1,000 years of reward/punishment; most choose poorly, reactively repeating past patterns (Ajax → lion, Agamemnon → eagle from misanthropy).
A soul from heaven grabs a glittering tyranny without reading the fine print (will eat his own children) — he got lucky in his prior life: moderate circumstances inculcated virtue without the means of vice (impotence mistaken for restraint).
Odysseus draws the last lot but chooses deliberately: from memory of his toils, he searches for and gladly picks the life of a private citizen minding his own business — “even if I had drawn first, I would have chosen this.”
Plato’s verdict: Odysseus picks the best available life in a non-ideal city, but for the wrong reasons — he chooses from “memory of former toils” (a database of true beliefs from varied suffering), not from philosophical knowledge of the Good.
His cunning (metis) is not wisdom; he is the ultimate “heavenly man” — so many data points it looks like understanding, but it’s still reactive, not deliberative. If circumstances change (e.g., he gains power/wealth in the next life), his ungrounded habits may fail.
Three Platonic lessons for wanderers: (1) external consequences are real (Telegony) — sometimes you get lucky indulging, sometimes you don’t; (2) without philosophy, you only get true beliefs, which collapse when circumstances shift; (3) you don’t need to learn every lesson by burning your own hand — philosophy lets you learn from others’ lives, cheaper and faster.
Synthesis: philosophy as the wanderer’s protector
The four sequels present incommensurable value systems: Telegony (consequences), Dante (limits via higher purpose), Tennyson (intensity as sacred), Plato (philosophy over experience).
The speaker, though not under Athena’s aegis or divine providence, finds that philosophy can be his protector — mapping the consequences of each choice lets him rest easier while still wandering.
