Most of what Americans believe about the ancient world comes from blockbuster movies—many of them dating back to the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

Among those beliefs: 

THE ISRAELITES WERE THE GOOD GUYS. That’s because Biblical movies were based (often loosely) on Old Testament stories. And the Old Testament was written by Israelites.

• The Israelites were never portrayed as being as ruthless as their enemies, despite this instruction in Jeremiah 51:22-23: “With you I will shatter men and women, old people and children, young men and maidens. With you I will shatter shepherds and flocks, farmers and oxen, captains and rulers.” 
• “Sansom and Delilah” (1949) and “The Ten Commandments” (1956), pitted noble Israelites against, respectively, evil Philistines and Egyptians. 
• Even when a major figure like King David (Gregory Peck in “David and Bathsheba” (1951) committed major sins like adultery and murder, the movie ended on a high note: God forgives him and sends rain to quench a parched Israel.

A big difference once existed between how audiences treated movies based on Greek mythology and those based on the Bible.

Audiences were content to enjoy films based on Greek myths without taking them seriously. But those watching movies based on Bible stories assumed they were watching history unfolding before them.

This was never truer than audiences’ reaction to director Mel Gibson’s 2004 blockbuster, The Passion of the Christ. Orthodox Christians flocked to the movie, which blamed Jesus’ crucifixion on Jewish high priests, not the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate.

Now audiences seem to believe that “The Odyssey” is delivering history, not mythology. When the first trailer was released in December, critics said that Odysseus’s boat looked like a “Viking ship.” 

“I wonder whether we have become inclined to treat mythological material as though it were historical material,” said Susan Deacy, professor of Classics at the University of Roehampton and the author of The Greek Gods and Their Worlds. “Yet the Odyssey is continually being reimagined, with pretty well every age producing its own Homer.” 

Many viewers were surprised to hear British actors, such as Tom Holland, speaking with American accents and using modern, contemporary expressions. 

But Deacy said this is based on cinematic tradition, not historical accuracy. The ancient Greeks did not speak either modern American English or formal British English. So conversational language may actually be closer to the spirit of Homer’s oral storytelling than the formal style often used in historical films.

Susan Deacy

Susandeacy, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Audiences didn’t “treat mythological material as though it were historical material” in 2004, when Wolfgang Peterson’s “Troy” hit movie screens. It featured Brad Pitt as Achilles, Eric Bana as Hector, Orlando Bloom as Paris, Sean Bean as Odysseus and Diane Kruger as Helen.

Among its deviations from Homer and Greek mythology:

• Menelaus, the husband of Helen, is killed by Hector (instead of returning to Sparta with Helen).
• Agamemnon is killed during the fall of Troy by Briseis, the woman once held captive by Achilles. (According to Greek myth, he was murdered, upon his return home, by his wife, Clytemnestra.)
• Achilles infiltrates Troy in the wooden horse—and is killed on the city’s last night. (Greek mythology has him killed at the gates of Troy before the Greeks erected the Trojan horse.)
• Most incredibly, Paris and Helen escape Troy to presumably find happiness somewhere else. (In Greek mythology, Menelaus intends to kill Helen for running off with Paris. But when he sees her, she bares her still-magnificent breasts and yells: “Kill me!” He’s so dumbstruck by her beauty he drops his sword and walks hand-in-hand with her to his ship for the voyage home.)

For those seeking a movie that adhere closely to the Iliad, the winner, hands down, is “The Fury of Achilles” (1962). It’s an Italian drama set in the tenth year of the Trojan War directed by Marino Girolami and starring Gordon Mitchell as Achilles.

It lacks the spectacle of “Troy” (owing to CGI) but is surprisingly sympathetic to its main characters—Achilles, Hector and Priam.

In one deeply moving scene, Achilles tells Briseis that every other Greek soldier hopes to return home, but he is doomed to die at Troy. He knows he has a vulnerable spot, but he doesn’t know where it is. He knows he is fated to kill Hector, Troy’s finest warrior—and that he himself will die soon afterward. 

Hector is similarly treated with sympathy, knowing he must die—and that when he does, his beloved city will soon follow him. But then he kills Achilles’ dear companion, Patroclus, and feels obligated to accept Achilles’ challenge to single combat.

And finally there is Priam, king of Troy, who, as in Homer, movingly pleads to Achilles for the body of his son, Hector. Achilles answers: “Your son is luckier than I. He has a father who mourns him. Who will mourn me when I’m gone? My father is dead.”

And elderly Priam replies: “If I am still alive when you are dead, I will mourn you as another son I have lost.”

At which point a sorrowful Achilles hands over the body of Hector to his grieving father—and the movie, like the Iliad, comes to an end.

Once again, the Right is enraged—this time, at a movie. 

And not just any movie—“The Odyssey,” which looks to be the blockbuster hit of the summer.

It’s based on the epic poem, allegedly written by Homer, who lived between the eighth and ninth centuries. And while Homer likely earned nothing from his work, the film version of it opened with an estimated $124.5 million in domestic ticket sales and another $139.6 million from overseas, 

Its director, Christopher Nolan, garnered the 2023 Best Picture Oscar for “Oppenheimer.” With a production budget of $250 million, it’s among the most expensive R-rated movies ever made. Universal is spending $125 million to market it.

Christopher Nolan

PhilipRomano, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

The movie stars Matt Damon (the “Ryan” in 1998’s “Saving Private Ryan”) as Odysseus, Tom Holland as his son, Telemachus; Anne Hathaway as his long-suffering wife, Penelope; Zendaya as the goddess, Athena; Robert Pattinson as the suitor Antinous and Charlize Theron as the sea nymph Calypso.

So far, so good—for the Right.

But then comes the “controversial” part: Nolan cast Lupita Nyong’o, a black actress, as Helen of Troy and Elliot Page (a “transitioning” actor) as a soldier.

Right-wingers are furious that that a black woman has been cast as Helen. 

Right-wing commentator Matt Walsh wrote on X: “Not one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong’o is ‘the most beautiful woman in the world.’ But Christopher Nolan knows that he would be called racist if he gave ’the most beautiful woman’ role to a white woman. Nolan is technically talented but a coward.” 

Elon Musk charged: “Chris Nolan has lost his integrity.” And he vowed that that before the end of 2026, his AI tool Grok “will make a full-length movie of ‘The Odyssey’ that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.” 

“By historically accurate, he means whiter than Christmas at Cracker Barrel,” comedian Colman Domingo joked during his stint as guest host on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

The Right’s fury can’t be based on the historical record—because the Odyssey is not history, but mythology. And according to ancient Greek myth, Helen was hatched from an egg laid after her mother was visited by Zeus in the form of a swan.

The Helen that Right-wingers envision is a product of Hollywood movie casting.

Troy did exist, and was located in northwestern Anatolia, in present-day Çanakkale province, Turkey. It lay just a few miles south of the Dardanelles strait, which connects the Aegean Sea to the Black Sea. This put the city in a highly strategic position controlling major ancient trade routes.

As a result, the famous Trojan War might well have been fought over conflicts in trade, rather than the alleged seduction/kidnapping of Helen, Queen of Sparta, by Paris, prince of Troy.

On the other hand, wars have been fought over perceived slights to the ego of one ruler by another. In William Shakespeare’s play, Henry V, the French Dauphin mocks Henry by sending him tennis balls, implying that Henry is a callow youth rather than a serious monarch. This leads Henry to invade France.

As for Elliot Page: Transgender surgery did not exist in the time of Homer. But homoerotic relationships certainly did—most famously among Greek soldiers.

Today, Right-wingers like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth fear that homosexuals make poor soldiers. But their choice in sex partners did not prevent the army of Alexander the Great from conquering most of the known world of his time.

The truth is that most of what Americans think they know about the ancient world comes not from scholarly books but blockbuster movies—many of them dating back to the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

Among those beliefs:

THE ANCIENT ROMANS SPOKE WITH BRITISH ACCIDENTS. That’s because British actors played Roman aristocrats in so many movies during the 1950s and 1960s. 

• Laurence Oliver, Peter Ustinov and Charles Laughton played high-born Romans in “Spartacus” (1960) and Richard Burton and Rex Harrison played them in “Cleopatra” (1963).
• Romans didn’t speak English. They spoke Latin—which at that time was the language of world commerce. Today, it’s not used as a primary mother tongue in any community. A movie whose characters spoke Latin would find itself with an extremely small audience. 

Laurence Oliver in “Spartacus”

SPARTANS WERE THE GOOD GUYS. “The 300 Spartans” (1962) and “300” (2006) celebrate the three-day battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans and 6,700 other Greeks held the narrow pass against a huge Persian army. If the Spartans existed today, these films could serve as recruiting advertisements for their skill at war.

So far, so good.

What these films don’t say:

• The Spartans ruled a slave empire whose people farmed the land, supplied food and served as military laborers. Their forced labor gave Spartans the freedom to focus completely on military training. 
• Once a year, Spartans were allowed to murder any helot they desired, just to remind their slaves who was boss.
• Spartan men were required to live apart from their wives in all-male barracks—and sneak out to have conjugal visits with their wives.
• Homosexuality played a major role in the lives of Spartans.