No Greater Love by Soren Masrud
What would you be willing to do to get back to your significant other after twenty years of separation? In Epic: The Musical, Odysseus, King of Ithaca, discovers exactly how far he is willing to go to return home to his wife.
Epic is based off of Homer’s Odyssey, and consists of forty songs, which are divided into nine sagas. It was written, compiled, and published by Jorge Rivera-Herrans, who released the first saga in 2022. I first discovered Epic in late 2023 while browsing songs to listen to on Youtube. An unofficial release of “Done For” caught my attention, and I instantly fell in love with Rivera-Herrans’ music. Since then, I have eagerly listened to each saga as they have been released. The last saga, The Ithaca Saga, was released on Christmas day of 2024, bringing an end to the development of what is, in my opinion, one of the greatest musicals ever written.
After ten years of fighting in the Trojan war, Odysseus and 600 Ithacan warriors find themselves separated from their homes and families by 600 miles of open sea. This is but a foretaste of the plethora of trials and tribulations Odysseus undergoes during the course of the musical. Because of these challenges, he undergoes a drastic change of character throughout the sagas. In particular, how he changes through The Circe, Underworld, and Thunder sagas is important if one wishes to understand why he makes certain decisions in the latter half of the musical. These sagas and their challenges change Odysseus, molding him into something more dangerous and more broken than he was in Troy.
Leaping with open arms into The Circe Saga, we find Odysseus physically exhausted, mentally shattered, and emotionally mangled. He has just lost an encounter with a ruthless god, resulting in the deaths of 557 of his 600 men. Struggling with this weight, Odysseus manages to sail his fleet’s last ship to the nearest island. Once they land, Odysseus sends out a squad led by his trusted right-hand man, Eurylochus, to scout the island for any possible threats.
After far too short a time, Eurylochus returns alone, battered and distressed. Odysseus immediately questions him as to what happened, and Eurylochus passionately tells him, revealing the main challenge Odysseus will face in this saga: the island they landed on is home to a powerful witch who seduced Eurylochus’ squad and turned them into pigs.
Odysseus is now faced with a choice. Does he run away with his remaining men, abandoning those captured to the witch’s mercy, or does he face the impossible and fight a god-like being even though he has no certainty of winning? His emphatic and immediate answer when Eurylochus presents him with this dilemma is yes–he will fight the witch no matter the odds–for he cannot abandon his men. It does not matter to him that he has never fought a witch before, that he has no one to help him, or that he has just lost almost 600 men and is deeply sleep deprived. He will face her alone. Odysseus will not betray his friends’ trust in him. He will not leave them helpless to the attacks of anyone, mortal or divine. He is doggedly loyal to those he loves, and would do anything to protect them.
Despite not knowing how he’s going to defeat the witch, Odysseus is determined to do so. While advancing through a forest to reach the witch’s palace, he is hailed by an unfamiliar voice. The voice introduces himself as a friend and offers to help Odysseus save his men from the witch, who is revealed to be Circe. The voice tells Odysseus that defeating Circe will require divine assistance, specifically from a god unafraid of sending messages. Odysseus then realizes that he’s speaking with Hermes, who laughs and offers Odysseus the root of a magical flower. This root has the power to neutralize Circe’s magic and allow Odysseus to manifest a creature to fight the witch for him.
Up to this point, Odysseus has had far more interactions with the gods than any sane mortal should. During the Trojan War, Zeus forced him to murder an infant. Poseidon killed 557 Ithacans just to spite Odysseus. Safe to say, Odysseus’ relationship with the gods is rocky.
Despite all the pain and trickery he has endured at the hands of the gods, Odysseus chooses to trust Hermes and accept his help. This, oh esteemed reader, you may find absolutely bonkers. After suffering so much at the hands of the divine, how could Odysseus trust a god? My answer to this, though unsatisfying as it may be, is that he has no choice. Hermes has power that Odysseus needs. If Odysseus truly wishes to save his friends, he must trust Hermes and lay aside his skepticism.
Emboldened by Hermes’ encouragement and floral aid, Odysseus continues on his quest towards Circe’s palace. He reaches the palace without incident and enters confidently. Within those walls, Odysseus and Circe engage in a battle of wits and magic, and Odysseus is ultimately victorious. He does not, however, kill Circe, but he begs her to release his men and help them get home. Circe, with unexpected kindness, agrees to help him. She cannot deliver him back to Ithaca, but instead sends him and his men safely to the underworld. There, Odysseus is to meet with Tiresias, a gifted but dead prophet, who will be able to tell him how to get home.
As we say farewell to The Circe Saga, we see Odysseus in a completely new mood. Starkly contrasting his depressed state when he landed on Circe’s island, Odysseus is calm, collected, and resolute as he and his men prepare to dive headfirst into the underworld. The challenges Odysseus faced during this saga have, much in disagreement with the rest of the sagas, built him up. His tangle with the witch proved his capability of fighting against colossal odds. Herme’s assistance showed him that even when facing enmity from multiple gods, Odysseus can still put some trust into the divine, their promises, and their aid in times of trial. This rebuilding of confidence affects not only Odysseus, but also his men. Seeing their captain and king once again fully in his strength, Odysseus’ crew is instilled with a strong devotion. These factors play an immense role in how the rest of the sagas play out, for without this devotion and confidence, the Ithacans would never have followed Odysseus into the underworld.
Contrasting the slump we find our beloved war criminal in at the start of The Circe Saga, at the beginning of The Underworld Saga, Odysseus is confident and determined. As he is travelling through the underworld to find the prophet of Apollo, Tiresias, he is confronted by the screams and nightmares of the dead. Memories of the infant he slew in Troy assault Odysseus. The voices and visages of his dead friends hound him. Worst of all, from out of the darkness, Odysseus hears the voice of his mother. He had thought she was safe at home in Ithaca, yet she was singing to him. She weaves a bittersweet melody of pain, sorrow, and love, but, despite this and the many other voices surrounding him, Odysseus and his crew follow Circe’s instructions and remain on course.
Once he and his men find Tiresias, Odysseus goes alone to consult with him, leaving his men to watch their ship. Upon entering the Prophet’s resting place, Odysseus is immediately greeted with a confirmation of his worst fears. Tiresias declares there is not a world where Odysseus returns home. Hearing this, Odysseus tries to bargain with the prophet. He cannot understand how this happened after everything the Ithacans have been through. Instead of answering, Tiresias continues his foreboding prophecy, telling Odysseus of visions and horrid futures. Once he has finished giving his awful revelations, he disappears.
After the vanishing of the prophet, Odysseus is left by himself. Alone with his thoughts, he becomes deeply contemplative, wondering if all the trouble he and his men have faced until this point has been his fault. Would they make it home safely if he gave up trying to be kind? Would they make it home safely if he gave into his anger, ruthlessness, and cunning? Would they make it home safely if he became a monster just like Circe, the Cyclops, and Poseidon? Under the pressure of not only returning his crew home, but also returning to his wife, Odysseus determines that it is better to be a monster and return home, and thus, he becomes the monster.
As an astute reader would notice, this saga is comparatively short to The Circe Saga. In truth, The Underworld Saga is the shortest part of Epic. However, to make up for its lack of length, it is perhaps the most impactful of any saga. Until this point, Odysseus has been doing everything he can to prevent unnecessary bloodshed. He has been trying his hardest to get the Ithacans home safely without loss of life, and till this point he has mostly succeeded. In the name of open arms, he refused to kill the lotus eaters, the cyclops, or Circe and her nymphs. All this mercy and trust cost him the lives of 558 of his men, and brought him to the underworld where he is told he cannot return home. Odysseus cannot accept this. Instead of falling into depression and giving up, Odysseus only grows in rageful determination and decides to throw away all mercy and kindness, instead acting only in the interest of him and his men getting home. Odysseus’ ultimate goal, for which he would sacrifice anything, is to return to his wife.
The Thunder Saga begins serenely. The listener is drawn in by a haunting, oceanic melody that develops into a siren call. Taking on the guise of Odysseus’ wife, Penelope, the siren calls out and attempts to entice, seduce, and convince Odysseus to leap into the ocean to be with her. Odysseus declines, but strings her along to gather sorely needed information. Since he and his men left the underworld, they had been sailing vaguely towards their home without making much progress. Odysseus and his crew had little direction, no plans, and only a vestige of hope, but that all changed when Odysseus discovered the sirens.
Sirens have an immense and detailed knowledge of the seas, and Odysseus is keenly aware of this. While he distracts and manipulates the first siren, his men capture several others in the area, dragging them onto their ship in nets. Odysseus masterfully presses the siren for information, and, confident in the magical power of her song, the siren humors him and tells where his only path home lies. Now, one would think Odysseus would be ecstatic to hear this, but he is terrified by the siren’s words. The Ithacans’ only path home lies through the lair of Scylla, a mysterious beast that even Poseidon fears. This revelation momentarily stuns Odysseus, but he swiftly gathers his composure and continues to lull the siren into a false sense of security. Once the siren is completely confident that he is entranced by her song, Odysseus acts.
The siren screams as Odysseus’ arrow tears through her shoulder. Odysseus shouts out from the ship, declaring to the siren that she had been deceived. He had known all along that she was a siren. Resisting her song was easy once he and his crew had filled their ears with wax, and he had learned the information he needed by reading her lips. While Odysseus is monologuing so deliciously, his men drag the wounded siren onto their ship, binding her and tossing her next to the other sirens. The pack of sirens is now completely at the Ithacans’ mercy. Knowing this, they beg and plead Odysseus to spare them, but he, being true to his words in Monster, hardens his heart and commands their execution. Odysseus embraces the bloodshed, truly becoming the monster.
Sometime later, the air is still and silent as the Ithacans sail towards the lair of Scylla. Odysseus stands by himself, deeply troubled. Eurylochus approaches Odysseus and makes an attempt at conversation that is about as cold as the waters passing beneath them. During a lull in the tragic excuse for conversation, Eurylochus tells Odysseus that he has something to confess. Eurylochus, full of remorse, tells Odysseus that he had opened the wind bag Aeolus had given them. Odysseus, shocked by this betrayal, says nothing as Eurylochus begs for his forgiveness.
As Odysseus and Eurylochus stand there in silence, the ship sails into a large cavern, the lair of Scylla. Seeing that they have reached their destination, Odysseus commands Eurylochus to light six torches. Eurylochus does so and distributes them amongst those men who are not rowing the ship into the darkness. The light of the torches shines out over the water, and by that light Eurylochus notices something approaching the ship. As the being moves closer, it becomes obvious that the entity is Scylla. She rises menacingly from the water, her six heads poising to strike. Odysseus, having waited until this moment to execute his plan, yells for his men to row for their lives. Odysseus hopes that by moving fast and distracting Scylla, he and his men can go through her lair mostly unharmed. He was only half right. The Ithacans make it out of Scylla’s lair and onto the path home, but not without the blood of six men soaking into their ship’s deck. As they sail away from the cave, Odysseus can see the faint outline of Scylla watching them from its entrance.
Eurylochus approaches Odysseus, the crew trailing behind him. Everyone looks stunned, angry, or confused. Everyone except Odysseus. As the king of Ithaca stands on the deck, surrounded by old friends and trusted comrades, Eurylochus speaks, demanding to know whether the death of the torchbearers was planned. He demands to know whether Odysseus willingly sacrificed them, using them as an offering to get through Scylla’s lair. Odysseus, determined beyond what his flesh should have allowed, declares he did. Odysseus, King of Ithaca, sacrificed six of his men so the rest had a chance to get home. Odysseus, who so wished to greet the world with open arms, chose ruthlessness, but Eurylochus cannot abide this. Eurylochus feels betrayed, and backed by the rest of the crew, decides that they can no longer trust Odysseus. Surrounding their captain, brother, and king, they mutiny. Eurylochus draws his sword and advances on Odysseus, demanding he surrender himself. Odysseus draws his own sword and commands Eurylochus to drop his weapon, but Eurylochus defies him and attacks.
In a fair battle, Odysseus would have won against Eurylochus. Just as Odysseus gets the advantage over him, one of the crew steps forward and strikes Odysseus in the back, ending the fight immediately. Odysseus drops his sword in shock and covers his wound. Beginning to black out, he gasps in pain and asks why they would betray him like this. The crew, surrounding him, reply, saying they can no longer trust him. At this, Odysseus collapses onto the deck unconscious.
Odysseus wakes, but no longer on the ship. Head aching and vision blurring, he sees Eurylochus standing nearby and asks him where they are. Eurylochus responds, despondently saying that they are on the first island they found after the mutiny. The island is teeming with cattle, and the crew is starving. Eurylochus tells Odysseus that nearby there is a statue to the sun God, Apollo. Odysseus, connecting dots faster than a four-year-old high on sugar, begins pleading with Eurylochus, begging him not to kill the cattle. He tells Eurylochus that the island must be the home of the sun god, and killing his cattle would doom them all. Eurylochus, tired, starving, and with no hope of ever returning home, disregards Odysseus. As Odysseus begs him to reconsider and tries to convince him that they can get home, Eurylochus raises his blade and slays the nearest cow. As soon as the cow falls, bellowing in pain, the skies change. A storm surrounds the island in a flash, winds blowing with divine anger while thunder claps all around them. Odysseus cries out, telling Eurylochus that he’s doomed them all. Eurylochus, confused, just stands there as the men cower. Odysseus, a king to the end, takes command, having his bonds cut and instructing the crew to run to the ship and row as fast as they can. Swiftly, everyone gets on the ship and they sail away from the island as fast as they can, but it is of no use.
Thunder rings out all around them, and the skies swell in anger. A man descends from the skies, halting the ship in its tracks before addressing Odysseus. Revealing himself to be Zeus, King of the gods and Thunder Bringer, the man queries Odysseus, asking who will pay for the death of the sacred cattle. Zeus declares someone must take the blame for the death of Apollo’s cattle. Someone must die for this transgression. Merciless to the core, Zeus gives Odysseus the choice to either give up his own life or give up the lives of his crew.
Odysseus, once again given an impossible task by this god, begs him not to do this. He begs Zeus not to make him choose, but the Thunder Bringer is firm.
Eurylochus steps forward and calls to Odysseus, who is paralyzed by choice. Odysseus, replying emptily to Eurylochus, says that he has to see his wife. Eurylochus, despairing, tries to convince Odysseus not to choose against them, tries to tell him that they will all die if he chooses this, but Odysseus merely says that he knows.
Sensing that a choice has been made, Zeus rises above the ship, gathers all his might, and throws lighting down upon them all.
Odysseus watches as the ship and crew sink slowly into the abyss. Everything they did to get home has been proven useless. Every sacrifice was in vain. Worst of all, Odysseus sinks with them. The last things he sees before blacking out are the bodies of his friends and fragments of his ship drifting into the endless abyss.
The Thunder Saga ends opposite to how it begins. Instead of being in control and surrounded by comrades, Odysseus is drowning and accompanied only by broken bodies and timber. Instead of being confident in his choices and strength, he is quite literally torn apart by the choices he has made. While ruthlessness did get him through the sirens and past Scylla, it also got him a mutiny followed by a visit from a deeply hateful and indifferent god. For all his cunning, Odysseus never would have expected to be betrayed by his own men. Maybe it was fitting that his closest brush with death was delivered by the hands of his very brothers.
In this saga we see the effects of what Odysseus has undergone. His actions in Scylla and Thunder Bringer are especially noteworthy since they contrast so strongly with his actions in The Circe Saga. The man who would once risk his life to save barely a handful of men from nigh certain doom sacrificed six men for merely a chance to get home. The king who led 600 men through a decade-long war and did not lose a single one gave up the lives of his whole crew just to save his own. He sacrificed everything that mattered to him with utter ruthlessness. Truly, the Odysseus we now see is no longer the same man he once was.
Throughout the three sagas we have analyzed, The Circe Saga, The Underworld Saga, and The Thunder Saga, we have seen Odysseus’ personality and priorities change drastically. While he was never as carefree or happy as some of his men, Odysseus was not always the broken, tired, and bloodsoaked man we leave drifting into the abyss at the end of Thunderbringer. His fights with gods, monsters, and men have worn him down, shattering his hope, his strength, his mercy, and his love for his crew. The only part of Odysseus left intact after everything he underwent was his love for his wife. His single desire after The Underworld Saga was to return home to her. We see in There Are Other Ways that this love for his wife runs deeper than his pride. We see in No Longer You and Monster that his love for Penelope is stronger than his senses of self preservation and mercy. We see throughout the entire Thunder Saga that his single motivation is to return to his wife. While this has always been his desire, it grew into desperation so strong that he was willing to give up anything to see her again. This desperation is undoubtedly the consequence of the hopeless odds and unmitigated bloodshed and horror he has continuously faced throughout his journey.
As we leave Odysseus, King of Ithaca, to his supposedly water fate, we have several matters to ponder. What does this analysis mean to you, reader? What does it mean to me, and why have I written it? What was the point of this all? Unfortunately for you, this is possibly the one part of this entire paper that I am qualified to write.
The sufferings of Odysseus teach us several things. A dogged loyalty to your goal, if held, can outlast any trial, tribulation, or pain. Odysseus held to his goal of getting home despite every odd he faced. He stayed loyal to his wife despite the seduction of Circe, the prophecy of Tiresias, and the betrayal of his men. Love is stronger by far than any pain you can face in this life. Odysseus suffered greatly through his journey. Although he was given the choice of death and supposed peace multiple times, he did not give in. His love for his wife kept him strong through every fight and test he faced. Finally, there is no dishonor in asking for help when facing difficulty. Odysseus was only able to succeed against the odds he faced because of aid from his men, Circe, Apollo, and Tiresias.
Readers, there is no strength like love. There is no determination like that of a strongly held goal. There is no dishonor in seeking aid when your circumstances are overwhelming. These lessons may seem obvious, but I assure you, they are some of the most important things you can ever learn. These lessons have been important to me through my life, short as it has been, and I believe they are worthy of sharing. Jorge Rivera-Herran’s work has reminded me of these lessons and reinforced them in me countless times, just as any great work of art and culture should. I believe that this musical is worthy of sharing, writing about, and loving because of what it instills in us, teaches us, and reminds us. There is no greater love than that of sacrificing your life for that of those you love, and Odysseus, King of Ithaca, for all his faults, displays that love strongly.