'A story of sex, strategy and power': How women shape the plot of Homer's Odyssey

The epic 2,800-year-old poem – now adapted for the big screen – is so much more than a straightforward tale of heroism. The protagonist Odysseus is a heroic male – but the story is shaped by the stratagems, subterfuge and seductions of the women, nymphs, sorceresses and goddesses he meets along the way. It's what makes him seem so human.

The epic poem The Odyssey tells of the mythical Greek soldier Odysseus's quest to return to his kingdom of Ithaca after years of fighting in the Trojan War. His perilous, decade-long voyage home is full of gruelling challenges and hazards – which this month play out on the big screen in Christopher Nolan's adaptation, starring Matt Damon among many other stars. 

The protagonist may be male, but The Odyssey is a story in which women predominate. Our hero's quest to return to and regain his kingdom is shaped at every turn by the stratagems and seductions of the women, nymphs and goddesses he meets along the way. The Odyssey is not a straightforward tale of heroism, but a story of sex, strategy and power that still resonates today.

The poem begins in medias res – in the middle of things – with Odysseus weeping on the coastline of Ogygia, where he has been living with the nymph Calypso for the past seven years. For all that he proved himself a hero on the Trojan battlefield, he now looks utterly powerless, an impression that is reinforced by the fact that it takes a council of the gods to secure his release from the island.

But Odysseus is not a prisoner of Calypso so much as of himself. The modern reader might reasonably diagnose his inertia – his inability to press on and fulfil his homecoming – as a symptom of PTSD. Which is not to diminish the hold that Calypso has on him. As Odysseus readily admits to the nymph, his wife Penelope cannot compare to her in beauty, for she is a mere mortal.

Odysseus's wife Penelope has been far from passive during her husband's long absence. She has valiantly and cleverly resisted the advances of 108 suitors who have descended upon the palace in their eagerness to marry her and become the new king of Ithaca. Penelope's weaving of a funeral shroud for her father-in-law Laertes – and her unpicking of the tapestry by night – is one of the most memorable episodes in the poem. She is, so to speak, a moving target, whose success in warding off the suitors will have a direct bearing upon Odysseus's ability to reclaim his kingship.

It is significant that Odysseus's chief supporter among the divinities is a goddess. The strategic Athena aided him at Troy and took the initiative in urging his homecoming. Then when he washes up in a vulnerable state on........

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