Greek Dialogues - A Lost Troy Story? Herakles’ Bizarre Cameo in Odyssey 11

Date and Time: Tuesday 12th May 2026 at 17:00h GMT

Venue: Room G.21, Faculty of Classics, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DA

We continue Greek Dialogues with a compelling lecture from Dr Karolina Sekita (Lewis-Gibson Visiting Fellow and University of Tel Aviv) examining one of the most enigmatic moments in the Odyssey, where Odysseus encounters the shadowy presence of Herakles in the Underworld. While the Nekyia is often read as a unified vision of the realm of the dead, certain episodes within it have long resisted easy explanation, raising questions about how early epic was composed, transmitted, and reshaped over time. By situating this scene within a wider network of mythic traditions and visual culture, the lecture opens up a fresh perspective on how fragments of heroic narrative could circulate across contexts, leaving traces that complicate—and enrich—our understanding of Homeric poetry.

Odysseus’ encounter with the eidōlon of Herakles in Odyssey 11 is among the most curious moments of the Nekyia, a passage that already aroused suspicion in antiquity. This paper argues that such suspicion is not misplaced.

The description of Herakles, his elaborate baldric, and the imagery of birds and battlefield clamour consistently point away from the Underworld and toward a Trojan setting. I suggest that the lines preserve a fragment of an otherwise lost epic episode centred on Herakles’ sack of Troy, perhaps connected with traditions adjacent to the Argonautic cycle.

Iconographic evidence offers suggestive support. Early representations of Herakles of the so-called ‘Greco-Phoenician’ type, depicting the hero with bow in a Trojan context, align more readily with a narrative of Trojan warfare than with any katabatic scene.

The Herakles of the Odyssean Nekyia, in short, may be less the ghost of a hero than the ghost of a poem: a displaced fragment of Troy-sacking epic that has come to rest, somewhat incongruously, among the shades.