[Music playing] ♪ [Waves crashing] ♪ [Creaking] [Loud creaking] ♪ Voice of Homer: Great Odysseus has not yet left this Earth.

He won't be gone for long from his beloved native land.

[Dog barking in distance] Man: Whoo!

Second man: It's very slippery there.

I'd be very careful, please.

[Man laughing] ♪ ♪ ♪ Ha ha!

You know?

Woman: The "Odyssey" is the great sequel to Homer's "Iliad," and it's the aftermath of the Trojan War.

It tells the story of the homecoming, the terrible, difficult, disastrous journey of Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, one of the leading Greek heroes who devised the wooden horse and was responsible for the sack of Troy.

Man: Odysseus is the eternal Greek-- creative, bold, adventurous, never giving up, persisting.

He loves his country.

His island is the sweetest place on Earth that I can think of.

He loves it.

He's the epitome of the Greek soul and of the Kefalonian.

[Man singing in Greek] ♪ [Chorus singing in Greek] ♪ [Music ends, applause] Voice of Homer: Sing to me, muse, about the wily man who wandered far and wide after he sacked the holy city of Troy.

How his heart suffered on the open sea, fighting to save his own life and bring his comrades home.

[Flames crackling] Yangos Metaxas: 10 years after the fall of Troy, Odysseus eventually is back in his beloved Ithaca.

And when he wakes up in the morning, he sees mist all around him.

And he is doubtful whether he is really on his homeland or he's somewhere else.

Goddess Athena is scolding him and said, "Don't be silly.

"Of course you are in Ithaca.

"Don't you see the mountain, your mountain, Mount Neriton?

Don't you see this beautiful cave with the nymphs very near?"

As Homer describes it, it was a miracle to see.

Such is the beauty of the cave.

♪ Now we're entering the harbor of Vathi.

Vathi is the capital of the island we call today Ithaca-- Ithaki in Greek.

And this is what most people think is the homeland of Odysseus.

On the Homeric text, there are two landmarks that anybody from Ithaca should recognize.

The Cave of the Nymphs and Mount Neriton.

Yangos Metaxas: I'm not impressed.

Definitely not a miracle to behold.

Here is a mountain.

This is Mount Neriton.

And Homer describes it as fully forested, majestic, and windswept.

It's not a mountain that you would remember.

It's not a mountain that is impressive.

Greensmith: Homer's poems are stuffed full with geographical information.

But actually, by the time that Homer was composing these poems, the Trojan War itself was already distant history and almost becoming myth.

Yangos Metaxas: The consensus is that Homer was a poet.

And being a poet, he's not a very reliable source.

But the Homeric text gives us plenty of information.

Every time somebody studies Homer, discovers something new.

In 1870, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann went looking for Troy... and he found it.

A few years later, he found the city of Mycenae, the capital of the Mycenaean Empire and the home of King Agamemnon.

And then in the 1930s, archaeologists uncovered the palace of King Nestor at Pylos.

All the locations that Homer describes in the Aegean, they check.

How come all these years we haven't found where Ithaca is?

♪ Voice of Homer: Odysseus was the leader of the great-hearted Kephallenians, who inhabited Ithaca and Mount Neriton, covered with waving forests.

Woman, voice-over: I went to Greece in 1977, hmm.

[Meow] [Funky music playing] ♪ Singer: ♪ Oh, no... ♪ Woman: My program was seeing as much antiquities and go to Ithaca.

In Patras, I went to the ticket office and I said, "I want to go to Ithaca immediately tomorrow morning."

And they said, "There's no boat," that "You can only go to Kefalonia."

And so I took the boat to Kefalonia.

And that's how I arrived in Poros.

And then I would have coffee here in the restaurant.

It was the village cafe, Neion.

And that was next to Makis' house.

So he was back from the army and helping his father out to make new shelves for their general store.

And Makis was making these new shelves with a machine that cuts aluminium.

Now, I don't know if you ever heard these machines, but they make this terrible noise.

And it went "Wharr!

Wharr!"

I thought, "Oh, my God, what's this man doing?

He's very-- ha ha!--disturbing!"

And then about every half-hour, every 20 minutes, he would stop.

And he would play with cats.

He had a cat, and he would put the cat on his foot.

And then he would throw it in the air with his foot, and it would land on his shoulder.

And then he would do it again, and then he would do it again.

And I saw that.

I thought, "That's a nice boy, you know, when you can play with your cats."

And, yeah, well, we started to talk and we got to know each other.

Yeah, and that was it.

And we got married in 1980.

♪ But while we were here, our first son was born.

And then Makis suddenly became mayor.

Local mayor, small area, and he was the youngest in Greece.

And then afterwards, you can't leave anymore.

I mean, you can't become a mayor and say, "I don't like it here anymore.

I'm leaving."

So that was it.

This whole journey into "The Odyssey" and in Homer's epics started because we always went for holidays to Holland.

We went there for Christmas in 1990.

And at a certain point, my mother called us and she said, there is a program about Kefalonia on the television.

And I thought, "What is Kefalonia doing on Dutch television?"

It was not well-known island at all.

It was a documentary film that was made about the voyage of Mr. Goekoop, Cees Goekoop, who was in search of Homeric Ithaca.

[Click] ♪ [Woman speaking in Dutch] Cramer: In the 1920s, there was Adriaan Goekoop, financing excavations in Kefalonia near Argostoli, because it was his idea that the center of Homeric Ithaca should be there.

He had worked together with Schliemann in Ithaca.

But since they didn't find anything, he went to Kefalonia.

And his grandson continued his search, which he did by sailing around the island and coming to the conclusion that the center of Homeric Ithaca was indeed on Kefalonia, in his opinion, near Fiskardo.

That's the very northern top of Kefalonia.

[Goekoop speaking Dutch] And we thought, "No, that's not right."

[Click] And then Makis started to recognize local names that he was referring to as coming from Homer's story.

And he said, these names exist in our area.

♪ We live in Poros, and Makis is born in that area.

So, you know every stone, especially Makis.

And he could recognize words and... ...landscapes and areas in the description in Homer.

Voice of Homer: My ship lies over there, by those fields away from the city in the harbor of Reithron.

Cramer: So, when Homer talks about the Reithron harbor, he describes it's exactly like the river that we have in Poros.

And Reithron, the word "reithron" is from the verb "reo" in Greek, which means stream.

♪ Greensmith: When Athena is describing Odysseus' homeland to him and gradually taking the mist away so that he can recognize his own kingdom, she says, "What you've now "got to do, now that you realize you're home, "is go to Raven's Crag.

"And there, you will find a swineherd, Eumaeus.

"And there, you must talk with him and devise your plan for entering back into your palace."

Now, Raven's Crag is never mentioned again.

It was never mentioned before.

It seemingly doesn't matter.

And yet, Athena is so specific.

It's a marker.

[Music playing on radio] Singer: ♪ I wanna be ♪ ♪ What you want me to be ♪ ♪ I wanna be... ♪ ♪ Voice of Homer: You must go straight to the one who looks after your pigs.

You'll find him sitting by his swine while they graze near the Raven's Rock and the spring of Arethusa, eating acorns to their hearts' content.

♪ ♪ ♪ I am Odysseus, son of Laertes, known to the world for my craftiness.

My fame reaches the heavens.

I dwell in clearly visible Ithaca, with its majestic mountain, Neriton, covered with waving forests.

Greensmith: When Odysseus is telling his story to the Phaeacians, who will eventually help him get home, he's not just telling them the grand facts about his home.

He's not just saying, "There's a mountain, Mount Neriton."

He's saying it's conspicuous for all to see.

He's saying they ought to have heard of his hometown, not just because it's him, but because of this mountain.

[Bells clanging] [Bells clanging] ♪ ♪ Voice of Homer: I'll show you the landmarks of Ithaca.

Over there is Mount Neriton, covered in forests.

Cramer: Mount Neriton was a beacon in sea because seamen and seafarers would always pass it and know exactly where they were.

And everybody actually knew about this.

So this was a very exciting thing for us, because we had the Mountain Neriton, which obviously called now Mount Ainos.

We had the Raven's Rock and the Reithron Harbor.

Voice of Homer: Here at the harbor's head stands a long-leafed olive tree.

And nearby is the beautiful shaded cave.

This is the spacious vaulted grotto where you offered many solemn sacrifices to the nymphs.

Greensmith: Homer says there is a Cave of Nymphs sacred to the gods where bees go and store their honey.

There are two entrances into this cave-- one that the mortals can know, and one that the immortals can know.

And Homer uses the phrase "It was a wonder to see."

[Water splashing] ♪ ♪ Cramer: Yes, he actually saw it.

He was suddenly jumping up.

And he said, "I found it!"

That's what he said.

Voice of Homer: The cave has two ways in.

The one that faces north is the way down for mortals.

The other, facing south, belongs only to the gods.

The cave is home to bees and their hives.

There are long looms of stone as well, where the nymphs weave their fabric of sea purple.

A wonder to behold.

♪ Cramer: We had been thinking about it, where it would be.

We had been looking for it.

And Melissani fit exactly.

Yangos Metaxas: It's spiritual.

It's sacred.

You can imagine how the people of the Mycenaean times must have been impressed.

The sheer beauty of it.

The mist itself lingering over the water.

In Homer's imagination, as he describes it, it seems like a weaving pattern on the rocks.

The very word "melissa" in Greek means bee, honeybee, and the bees were considered to be souls.

Cramer: Odysseus, when he understands where he is and that he is at home, he starts to walk from Melissani to the Raven's Rock, where Evmeus, his trusted shipkeeper and friend stays.

And that is a distance of about 30 kilometers, and that's about 7 to 8 hours walking, exactly as it is described in Homer's tale.

♪ [Laughs] Cramer: And Makis was very much a lot of energy and a lot of, how would you call it, yes, energy inside him because of this.

And he bought new shoes, and we were walking in Athens, like this.

And I would get an electrical shock all the time.

And I said, "What's happening here?

"What's happening?

"You wear new shoes.

Is there something wrong with the shoes?"

He said, "No, nothing wrong with the shoes.

Just common shoes."

And I would get every 2 minutes or 3 minutes a small electrical shock from him.

He understood the magnitude of what happened here.

♪ [Goat bleats] ♪ Cramer: There was this photograph of the dome, the entrance when it was found by Makis, which was between the trees.

He saw this stone of the entrance.

♪ Cramer: Because you have this theory, you actually find a tholos tomb, which is a tomb from the Mycenaean period where kings were buried in.

It's a beehive shape built dome.

It was kind of wonderful that you find this dome after that, which really says you're right.

♪ Cramer: They started to cut trees on top of the hill and to clean everything.

And they went also in through the entrance.

The entrance was blocked, because the whole tholos tomb had fallen in at a certain point.

So they had to clean it, get out all the blocks, all the stones.

Woman: Toward evening.

We're in the Brusia, and they have started to dig.

They think this has something to do with Ulysses.

This is apparently-- it's the door.

And they are digging in there.

There's already people watching.

They're coming from all over town.

That's our president of the town.

Here is the interested family.

Stina.

Stina, Gianna, Ismini.

Hey, Ismini.

Ismini!

My father and my family are from here.

I used to spend my summers here.

And we heard that they were starting to excavate this area.

It so happened that it was on my family's land, so it was really exciting.

And my mom was just sort of videotaping around in general.

I think we had probably just had a video camera for a little while.

And she's filming everything.

Woman: Here on the inside, you can see there's a circle.

The stones.

Of course I'm gonna talk.

Milliaresis: I was about, I guess, 14 or 15.

I guess 15, probably.

Woman: And that's the head archaeologist back there.

Milliaresis: I was always really excited and interested in archeology.

And so I would come and watch what they did every day.

And it just really was something that really was important to me.

Cramer: When the excavation started, of course I went a lot, but I had 3 small children to take care of and a shop.

And we rented rooms.

So I was running around all day anyway.

So I didn't have so much opportunity to go so often, but I went there regularly.

Makis was there almost every day.

Milliaresis: But to be there, you know, when they're digging up these thousand-of- year-old bones and the, you know, pieces of pottery and other things, like, it's a different experience.

Woman: They found pottery shards, Ismini says.

Woman: Hmm?

Woman: Ismini says it looks like pottery shards.

Woman: Where?

Woman: That box.

Woman: It looks like bones.

Cramer: When they arrived at the floor of the tholos tomb, when they cleaned the whole tholos tomb and you were on this level, there was nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

So that was kind of, what's happening here?

I mean, that was so strange.

And then if you would stamp on the floor with your foot, you could hear that it was hollow underneath.

And then they discovered that the floor was not a floor.

And there were ancient burials under the floor.

Woman: OK. Today, we are July the 11th.

It is early morning.

And here we are at the dig.

And this is what they have done so far.

There's Mr. Kolonas.

He is the main archaeologist.

And he's looking the other way.

Ha ha ha!

And our president of the town.

Woman: This is what they found.

A jar.

I'm standing at the door.

It's all good.

And there are bones.

There's something under here.

♪ Milliaresis: Of course, that was really exciting.

And so my mom asked, you know, Dr. Kolonas if he would talk to me.

And so she had me actually ask him some questions, and she filmed it.

Woman: All right.

Here we are with Mr. Kolonas.

He's the main archaeologist.

And he is a very well-known person in Europe and all over.

But I remember asking him, you know, because there was already sort of this talk of like, could this be Odysseus' tomb?

[Kolonas speaking Greek] Um, it's a little early to say whether this could be the tomb of, like-- Woman: Ulysses.

And there is a skull and bones.

Cramer: This tomb had been robbed after the Mycenaean world collapsed, because everybody knew there was gold inside those graves.

♪ The bones of the last king that was buried there was still there.

And they had never lifted these bones.

But under these bones, they found some important findings.

Cramer: Bullhorns.

And the little ax.

When you find these symbols that were used by Mycenaean kings, that's-- yeah, you can only hope for that, but you don't really think that will ever happen.

But there it was.

♪ ♪ Greensmith: Odysseus, when he arrives home, he cannot reveal his identity.

After 10 years of traveling and 20 years away, he has to enter not as a king, but as a beggar.

♪ Metaxas: Queen Penelope ask him, "What was Odysseus wearing the last time he saw him?"

And Odysseus says that he had the brooch on his clothes that was displaying a dog grabbing a deer, which was desperately trying to escape.

Voice of Homer: I can picture him now.

Great Odysseus wore a purple woolen cloak with double folds.

And on it was a golden brooch with double clasps.

On the front was a curious design.

A hound held a dappled fawn in his front paws, biting it as it writhed, trying to flee.

All marveled to see it.

Cramer: It was so strange and exciting.

It was all very more like a blur for me.

That seal was the seal that is described in "The Odyssey" by Homer, exactly as we found it.

♪ Cramer: A deer that was grabbed by a lion.

Wild animal.

To find such a thing as a Mycenaean tholos tomb, the Mycenaean beehive shaped dome, which was only for kings after you did research and concluded that it should be about there and then that you actually found it, that is not something you expect.

It's unbelievable, definitely.

♪ Greensmith: On this brooch, there was a dog.

And in the dog's forepaws, there was a fawn.

And the dog had been hunting the fawn.

And the brooch shows the dog gazing at the fawn in the moment just before he goes in for the kill.

[Barking] Now, if we think about the zoomed-in nature of that moment, we have the Trojan War.

Odysseus' homecoming.

Odysseus is disguised as the beggar.

Odysseus' conversation with his wife.

Odysseus' cloak.

Odysseus' brooch.

It is an unbelievable set of Russian dolls, an unbelievable kaleidoscope that gets us down to this one tiny moment.

But in this moment and in this image... that is Odysseus.

♪ Greensmith: When Odysseus is describing it to Penelope and he's very clear that it says it's a dog, kuon, in Greek, grappling with, writhing with a dappled fawn.

And yet, it's always struck people as a strange image.

This is a character who knows an awful lot about hunting.

It's implausible.

Because dogs can't do that.

Dogs can't hold something up, something as big as a fawn, in just 2 of its 4 paws.

There's also lots of other animals that would better fit the hunting scene Odysseus is describing and incidentally, would also fit the meter of the Homeric line.

"Leon," the Greek word for lion, which is the exact same metrical quantity as the word kuon, the Greek word for dog.

Now a lion grasping a fawn and looking at it as it writhes, that's what we're talking about.

Then we're in real hunting territory.

♪ Man: Seals are made according to the type of stone that they're made from.

And there are two major types of stone, hard stones and soft stones.

So, the soft stones, we call them steatite, uh...soapstone.

You can scratch these stones with a pen knife.

Very easy.

The more aristocratic stones, you need abrasion.

You can't carve these.

The Mycenaeans had nothing harder than bronze.

You have to use sand as an abrasion tool.

We actually have depictions of this on Roman tombstones.

And it's a bow.

And a stick is basically sharpened at one end.

You're gonna... rotate the drill.

There we go.

We're making some abrasion on the sherd.

So after many hours, you actually have got the etched lines engraved into the stone.

And then you polish it so you get a nice smooth surface.

Then comes the hard part... drilling a string hole through it.

My name's John Younger.

I'm a professor at the University of Kansas.

I did my PhD dissertation on seal stones.

When I went to graduate school, then I specialized in Prehistoric Greece.

And I compiled a list of 1,200 of these.

"Corpus of Minoan-Mycenaean Seal Stones."

This is volume 5, supplement 3, fascicle 1.

This is very common.

A standing bull with branches in front and below.

That is like a dime a dozen.

This is a nice agate piece with a bull and some kind of...palm?

And the more exotic the seal, the more colorful the seal indicates your status in this society.

And they are jewels.

You wear them as jewels.

The seal stone is like a signature, in exactly the same way when you sign your tax returns.

[Man speaking] It's found in Kefalonia by the excavator Kolonas.

And it gives a description with the dimensions and what the material is.

And so it says "a light greenish rock crystal."

It's got a lion who's attacking some kind of deer.

And pose is pose type 49B.

And at some point, it says that it's kind of rectangular.

That's unique.

Seals are never, never rectangular.

Ohh... if that's real... that would be unique.

Cramer: The grave and the discovery, it has such a big impact on our life in the way that afterwards, everything we did or thought, we had to do to live our life.

We had to bring up our children.

We had to work.

But it was always this, always in connection with the grave.

Man: Well, I was like 9, 8 years old when it all began.

So, it's funny, because my father was absent most of the time.

To give you an example, people, they were calling at home for my father, and me and my brother were just saying, he's at the tomb.

And the people didn't understand what that meant.

Ha!

They thought-- Yeah.

That's how it all began.

[Laughs] Cramer: It was always something happening in connection with the grave.

Either it was a publication.

Either it were people that were angry and say that nothing of that was true.

Other people started to threaten us, to call us names.

You know, how does a shopkeeper-- they thought--they said Makis was a shopkeeper-- know anything about Homer?

And you know, "Homeric Ithaca is where it is in Ithaca.

Don't start to change this."

Philippos Metaxas: You hear things.

You cut up conversations, comments.

So, yeah, I knew.

I knew that this is a topic that creates friction.

Well, I was playing football at a local team.

And we're playing also-- had to go to Ithaca to play a match.

So, I think that was the first time I understood that I was like a not very welcome person, even as a kid there.

Cramer: We always had the idea that the kingdom of Ulysses, of Odysseus, was the area of the Ionian Islands.

So it was Kefalonia, Zakynthos, Lefkas, Ithaca.

And we never wanted to exclude anybody or to do harm to anybody.

But of course, Ithaca is the island that kept the name alive through the ages.

It was a symbol, an important symbol.

And the people of Ithaca protect that, and rightly so.

So, when we found this ancient tomb and everybody started to talk again about Homeric Ithaca and Odysseus, yeah, that was quite threatening, I suppose, for them.

It was very difficult for Makis... because he was in local politics.

♪ For us, Ithaca is a different place.

Yes.

But we love each other.

Yeah, thank you.

And I voted for him.

Thank you.

[Laughs] It is his efforts that we got to where we are.

Although I don't agree with him.

Ha ha!

They were very angry.

And I also remember that they they even-- they were even throwing stones at you.

I don't think they were just kids.

I mean, spirits were a bit more aggressive.

And this created the big problem, both to your person because they started opposing you and they started feeling afraid that you would probably run as a candidate for a seat in the parliament.

Yes, OK. Because none of the political parties would be willing to lose the seat because of the people of Ithaca.

They were not believing you, because they thought you were the enemy.

The thing is, sharing the knowledge with people about this new discovery really never came out.

[Makis Metaxas speaking] ♪ Cramer: Mr. Kolonas has published some articles in archaeological journals, but he hasn't published the dig in its whole.

Well, Mr. Kolonas always was a very busy man and he had other digs.

And then he became responsible for all the archeology in the whole of Greece.

[Dog barking] Melina Mercouri, voice-over: Falco brings up the bronze pieces, which have baffled them.

But they soon are identified as parts of ancient furniture by the Greek archaeologist aboard--Lazaros Kolonas.

Yes, but he had the wrong priorities, definitely.

When they found the tomb.

And he was working in the Ministry.

Other archeologists would say-- "Don't do it."

"Don't think that you're going further with this."

You know, things like that.

It was all very... negative.

All negative, but... Milliaresis: He was very afraid, actually.

I think that was really realistic for him to be afraid.

Because in archeology, one of the things that you should not do, which people do and certainly did in the past, was you're not really supposed to be going to look for something.

♪ You find something, and then you interpret it.

♪ We've had this amazing tomb sitting here.

So, it's like, you know, as a family, like, we care about this.

And I know, you know, for Kolonas, too, a lot of not making any big statements was about politics.

And, you know, and you have to think about those things.

Man: I believe, you know, this grave is like this because of the political situation.

Kolonas did not public say ever that this is Ulysses' grave.

But Makis--ha!--that's one of the problem.

"We found Ulysses."

♪ Yangos Metaxas: When Kolonas first came, he was dismissive, very dismissive, very unbelieving.

But it was spectacular, really spectacular, the change.

Because after the findings, it seems that in Kolonas' mind, the evidence that was coming up eventually convinced him.

He gave the first presentation where he announced the findings in public.

And a lot of people-- well, I was there.

We were all there.

It was winter of '93 and '94.

Makis Metaxas: Yeah.

Something like that.

And he was full of himself.

He was full of himself.

I mean, his sails were full of air.

I thought that, I mean, if he's going at that speed, in 2 years, we're going to have his books.

I don't know what happens.

♪ [Splash] Voice of Homer: Do you wish to return home right now?

I wish you the best.

But if you knew what pains you were fated to suffer before you set foot on your native land, you'd stay right here with me.

♪ OK. OK. [Latch clicks] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Exhales] ♪ Philippos Metaxas: Archeology in Greece is really important and powerful, and they don't like outsiders.

And of course, my parents were seen as outsiders, and they tried to undermine it.

In our case, it happened, I guess.

Man: It's a pity to focus only on Homer.

Because what we have in Kefalonia concerning the Mycenaean period is very important.

And we, as the archeological service here on the island, it's important for our research to be based on data.

The only thing we can say now is that we have a center of power, nothing more... because we are waiting for the final publication.

[Classical music playing] ♪ Cramer: We knew that in university circles, it was kind of not done to look for Homeric Ithaca.

That was something that was only for people that were dreaming, that you find this and that you can connect it to Homeric Ithaca.

Homer is taught as an epic poet.

And there is no connection to the reality in these poems.

♪ [Birds chirping] Voice of Homer: But come now, to convince you, I'll show you the landmarks of Ithaca.

♪ ♪ ♪ Man: For me, "The Odyssey" and Homer and the epics in general, they spoke to me, almost screamed to me the first time I read the first line of "The Odyssey."

Because the first couple of lines, like the first 4 lines, it says, "Sing in me, muse.

"Through me, tell the story of the man skilled in all "the ways of contending.

"The wanderer, harried for years on end.

"After he had plundered the stronghold "on the proud height of Troy.

"Tell us in our own times.

Lift the straight song again."

And I was like, wow, this is actually a tradition that was about singing and poetry.

[Music playing] ♪ Greensmith: Both "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" are filled with song.

And there are two internal singers, characters who are singers, called rhapsodes.

Rhapsode comes from two words of Ancient Greek.

"Rhapto," meaning to stitch or to weave, and "aoide," meaning song.

And they would go around performing large chunks of this poetry.

♪ So the Homeric song is really poetry that has been stitched together, hence rhapto, by different rhapsodes over a long period of time.

So, if you were reading "The Odyssey" aloud in Greek, you would be reading something like this.

[Speaking Greek] Which is the first line of "The Odyssey" in the rhythmical Greek.

[Speaking Greek] [Vocalizing rhythmically] [Flames crackling] Atwater: The fact that "The Odyssey," this document that is held and lionized in Western culture as the fountainhead of Western culture, you find out that this is preliterate.

Right?

This comes from a bard.

This comes from a minstrel.

This was a song.

And, you know, memory was a huge part of that.

Greensmith: For a long time, it was considered that it would bend the rules of plausibility and feasibility and the capacities of any human brain to memorize this amount of material.

But in the 1930s, a scholar called Milman Parry, who did a lot of field work in a Yugoslavian community where most of their literature was disseminated not through written word, but through song.

[Singing in Bosnian language] Parry saw that every noun, every word would have an adjective to describe it attached to it automatically.

So, for example, in English, we might say "A dark and stormy night."

Night being the noun, dark and stormy being the adjectives described.

Like when we might say "It's a bitter pill to swallow."

Bitter is attached to the word pill.

These phrases would come straight into the mind and roll off the tongue.

And that could happen over a huge amount of material and a song that would go on for a very long time.

[Singing in Bosnian language] ♪ And when he applied this thinking back to the Homeric poems, he found an uncanny similarity.

So Achilles isn't just Achilles.

He's swift-footed Achilles.

[Speaking Greek] Odysseus is not just Odysseus.

He's Polutlas, much-enduring Odysseus.

He's Megaletor, great-hearted Odysseus.

You know, it's these kind of devices that are about memory and about audience engagement.

You might not have to remember the entire epic, right.

But if you remember this episode and you build on it, now you have an epic poetry.

And you have a document like "The Odyssey."

♪ Greensmith: And precisely because of this oral tradition, these tales that traveled in time as well as in space across Greece, there may well be that certain rhapsodes were basing their characters on actual figures who lived and reigned and fought and battled and won and lost in this late Mycenaean period.

[Bird squawking] [Water dripping] Atwater: These things are anchors that kind of help everybody hold on to in terms of when everything else goes, we have our identity and these things.

♪ Man, rapping: ♪ I shed some light on where its darkest at ♪ ♪ Where the kicks and the coffins match ♪ ♪ Get aired to max ♪ ♪ You from where minimum is offered at ♪ ♪ Couple days from graduation ♪ ♪ They took off his cap, an outcast ♪ ♪ Caught him holding ♪ ♪ Told him come up off the stacks ♪ ♪ Flash the big boy, Black on black ♪ ♪ That's an awful match ♪ Man: So where I'm from is everything to me.

And I try to exude that in everything that is me.

So, in my music and, you know, the way I dress, the way I walk, the way I talk.

You know, it's Philly.

And then in the lyrics, you shout out the spots that only we know.

So you got the, you know, the Liberty Bell, Rocky steps.

But then when you hear ♪ West Philadelphia, born and raised ♪ like, you know, Will Smith.

But at the beginning of that story, it's Overbrook High School, what we affectionately call the Castle on the Hill.

It's just because of its stature, because of its prominence and what it meant to West Philly.

But Odysseus, he talks about this mountain.

And he's like, you know, "You'll know that you're here when you see the mountain."

And in my mind, that's the same as the Castle on the Hill.

So, the first part will go... [Piano playing jazz tune] Moody: ♪ A man of one name, but many meanings ♪ ♪ Many schemes, but yet and still, he remains blameless ♪ ♪ It's dangerous, terrain switch ♪ ♪ He's resilient, built to survive ♪ ♪ Added endurance to the brilliance ♪ [Piano playing continues] Oh, yeah, you got me.

And then I go into my joint.

♪ I go by Chill, they call me Moody ♪ ♪ Both together, it's son of, son of Moody ♪ ♪ Blood of West Philly is running through me ♪ ♪ Running to me, learn quickly, there's no chances ♪ ♪ Imma fail before the class is in the 'ville ♪ ♪ It was the Castle on the Hill ♪ ♪ Locations far from basic ♪ [Continues playing jazz tune] ♪ That's hot.

♪ Atwater: That's why oral traditions are powerful.

A human has to tell you this story.

A human has to sit down with you and engage with you and tell you about this great time in our human civilization.

And I think it's those universal things that echo across epics.

[Waves crashing] There's an African proverb says when an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.

You know, you're charged with keeping these stories alive, keeping these places alive.

[Water dripping] ♪ [Engine humming loudly] ♪ Younger: Homer is a process.

It's a centuries-long process.

And when you recite "The Odyssey," you're reciting something that's been formulated over centuries.

♪ [Speaking Greek] This is John Younger from America.

Tell me, where will I go to go study the seal?

OK. We will be there in about 20 minutes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

♪ OK, so we have the seals here in little zip bags.

♪ Almost all of these seals are workshop fresh.

Not used, not worn.

Here's the rock crystal one there.

And I expected to see a lot more wear.

It's been kept care of.

There's a lot of detail in this thing.

But you'll notice that the foreleg of the lion should have a tibia.

And you can actually see the separation of the tibia.

There are dots with little rectangular ends for the talons.

This seal, it is special.

I mean, there's a parallel to "The Odyssey."

And the parallel is, um... is not exact.

Isn't that Homer?

I want to be able to get into that tholos.

For so many years, Homer was just a story.

But now with excavations, we have lots of Homeric details that we can point to and say, yes, that's in Homer.

The most famous example is the cup of Nestor, which Homer describes as a gold cup which has doves on the handles.

And there is such a cup from the shaft graves at Mycenae dating to around 1600 BCE.

That's really intriguing.

This is definitely a country tholos, meant to look like it's been here much longer than any other tholos in the world.

Describing the blocks of the interior dome, how they're so loose and kind of square, like chunks of feta.

I don't think I've ever seen it.

♪ I've already downloaded some of these images.

And so these black ones, the black steatite there, which are kind of normal, is a Cretan material.

But they show virtually no sign of being worn or being used.

All of them come from Crete.

The rock crystal dates to around 1500, 1450.

The rest of them date to around 1300.

So the rock crystal has been passed down from one generation to the next.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

My feeling is that if you want to become king of Ithaca, you go to Crete to get your seals.

And we have noticed that when you receive your new seals, you also receive an heirloom, which would be the rock crystal.

Whenever Odysseus says who he is, he says, "I'm Cretan."

So, the main thing that got me here was to look at this particular seal.

The lion and the deer are nicely sculpted.

The lion is pretty shaggy and looks kind of fierce.

And the deer has got these big ears, like a roe deer.

But the way it was published, it looked square, like it had squared corners right there.

And that would be a very unusual shape.

Usually, if they have square corners like that, then it's because it's been placed into a setting and therefore could conform to Homer's description that this is a belt buckle or what have you.

So I came here expecting to see a seal that was--actually, not, a seal, but actually a piece for a setting in something, and I don't see that.

♪ But if we're thinking about Kefalonia as being part of the Mycenaean world, then I don't want this to be unique.

Put it into a context.

And the context, it's rich.

Another hundred seals made out of rock crystal.

And therefore, it belongs to a larger cultural community.

And that then fits in with your concept that this island is part of this larger cultural community.

It doesn't sit here alone.

I've always looked at the Ionian Islands as being on the edge of the Mycenaean world, looking West.

No.

This is part of this.

This is not on the edge of anything.

The culture here is absolutely what Homer is talking about.

I think it's pure prejudice that I've never come here.

This is not on the fringe of something.

This is right in the middle of it.

I would like to see more about how Kefalonia fits into this Mycenaean central-- because I was not expecting this.

Well, I'm ready to go together to show you more.

♪ So we have a road over here.

There, yeah.

The tholos tomb.

Yeah, yeah.

Younger: This is a big road.

This is unusual.

If this is one, let's say, curb of the road and that's the other curb of the road, we have about 3 meters.

About 3 meters, yes.

OK.

It's wide enough for chariots, for a chariot, with huge curves.

And you say, how long is this?

It's about 300 meters.

300 meters?

Yes.

We don't have many chariot roads.

We don't have many chariot roads here.

We don't have many chariot roads anywhere in the Mycenaean period.

This is very evocative.

I mean, it really looks important.

Yeah, yeah.

OK.

I'm getting an idea.

Let's imagine that they build the tholos like the people of long time ago.

And then you have this avenue that goes from there to the tholos.

And that's where you would--you'd go down here in your chariots, and you would visit the tholos.

In the Argolid, OK, we have a road wide enough for a chariot.

But yeah, it starts-- it starts near Tyrins.

And I'm very impressed by the Tyrins fresco that shows women, you know, in a chariot procession.

And we have down in the tholos down there that we have smashed pots.

So, drinking vessels.

Yeah, a lot of them.

A lot of them.

The obvious reconstruction is people are driving in chariots.

Men and women driving in chariots slowly down.

And you get to the tholos and have a libation.

Yes.

And you smash the drinking goblet there.

Is there anything you don't find here?

No, I don't think so.

Ha ha ha!

From what I know.

Can you show me the altar?

Of course.

What is this thing?

Oh, whoa.

You see, it's making this-- It is big.

It's from Mycenaean period.

You see, this-- It's big.

Yeah, it's very big.

It's big.

A grave circle.

It's this.

It's a low wall of stones that encircle an area which is a cemetery.

This is the size of the 2 grave circles at Mycenae.

We don't have very many of the-- I'm sorry, I'm doing the John Younger thing again.

We don't have very many of these things.

This looks to me like work that you would expect to see at the capital...Mycenae.

The road, the chariot, the grave circle, this is-- you know, it's on an island.

It's on an island in the Western Sea.

I would expect to see this in Mainland Greece.

This is beautiful.

Well, I came here for one thing.

Instead, I think I found a grave circle.

We have a ceremonial road leading down to the tholos big enough for a chariot.

[Exhales] There's more here than meets the eye.

So I guess I'll be back.

♪ Milliaresis: One of the biggest problems in archeology is how much does not get published.

Like, I taught classes about, you know, Mycenaean world and these time periods.

And it's like, it's always the big ones that you talk about-- Mycenae, Pylos, Tyrins.

But I would always tell my students about this site.

But I mean, here we are 30 years later, and we still don't know for sure.

Cramer: Well, Mr. Kolonas always was a very busy man.

And then he was retired, became retired.

And then we thought, well, probably he's going to write it now.

But yeah, life goes on.

And I can't really explain, but it hasn't happened yet.

♪ ♪ [Chuckles] ♪ Milliaresis: Dr. Kolonas, he was really incredibly kind.

You know, I was just this kid.

And yes, like, my family owned the land, but it wasn't really that with him.

Like, I felt like he just genuinely was being a nice person.

And he's like, "Here's this kid who's interested in this stuff.

Let me sit and talk to her for a few minutes."

It really left an impression on me.

Like, I just kind of wanted to be like him, I suppose.

So now, 30 years later, I've come back here and I get to talk to him again.

Can you tell us a little bit about what's happened here at the tomb and this whole area, what's happened in these past 30 years?

What you think about it, what your ideas are about it, and the whole situation?

[Speaking Greek] Ooh!

♪ [Chuckling] ♪ [Cheering] Oh, and I thank you.

And I thank you.

[Applause] [Music playing, woman singing indistinctly] ♪ [Festive music playing] ♪ Bravo!

Ha ha ha!

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Voice of Homer: Tell me, are you truly Odysseus' son?

With that head and those fine eyes, you look just like him.

♪ ♪