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I'm Dan Snow and this is why The Odyssey set the tone for all stories to come

Historian Dan Snow sailed in Odysseus’s wake, from Troy to Ithaca – it turned out to be the voyage of a lifetime

Dan Snow sat on a beach reading a book with the water behind him.

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Published: Thursday, 16 July 2026 at 8:00 am

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This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

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Dan Snow loves to live out history, going where momentous things happened in the hope of understanding what those events might have been like. Previously he has trudged through the Somme and the fields of Waterloo, but last year found Snow, a keen yachtsman, traversing the Ionian Sea for his 5 documentary, The Odyssey with Dan Snow. The historian and author was following Odysseus’s fabled journey from Troy to his home on the island of Ithaca.

Once at sea, Snow retraced a ten-year voyage that is 3,000 years old but remains, he says, a touchstone in our culture. “The Odyssey is so important. It’s one of the first stories of Western literature and sets the tone of all stories that will come. You have a hero who experiences everything life can throw at him – monsters, storms, bereavements, tragedy, luck, sex, starvation, the wrath of the gods – and he emerges at the end of all this to get home safely to his wife and son. That’s the kind of story arc of every hero that’s come since.”

There are no reports of Cyclops in the eastern Mediterranean these days, but Snow’s trip is not plain sailing. At one point the sky darkens and the sea is whipped up. “The weather changes radically through the day,” Snow says. “You get intense flurries of wind and squalls. When hot air crashes into mountainous islands, the blasts come crashing into the sea. It really feels like the gods are messing with you.”

The route Odysseus and his crew might have taken is the subject of much debate, but one thing is certain, the ancient Greeks used sail power to traverse what Homer famously called the “wine dark” seas. By doing the same thing, says Snow, we can learn greater truths about life in the Bronze Age. Their beliefs, their views, how their very idea of the gods was shaped, in large part, by storms and maritime disasters, which they interpreted as the anger of Poseidon.

“That’s what I wanted to inject back into our understanding of The Odyssey,” says Snow, who was deeply affected by the experience. “Doing it was the greatest privilege of my life.”

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Of course, The Odyssey is not standard history but a collection of tales of unknown origin about a probably mythical hero that may or may not have been recorded by a poet called Homer, who, in turn, might not have existed. “It’s a complicated idea,” admits Snow. “Technically it’s a crowd-sourced lyrical poetic fairy tale that someone wrote just over 2,500 years ago, but it actually dates from 3,000 years ago.”

But why now? “Because if you watch a TV show about The Odyssey, the presenter is on a ferry and gets off on an island and says, ‘Here we are on the island, is this where the Cyclops cave was?’ The important story is not about whether we can find this place or that place...”

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Making the series, confirmed Snow’s belief that The Odyssey is best understood from the water. “Everyone who would have listened to The Odyssey as it was told knew about the sea. These people traded on the sea, and they all knew that moment of insecurity when a new ship comes into harbour and you had to go, ‘Is this a friend or foe?’ ‘Well, they speak a kind of Greek that we recognise, and they sacrifice to the same gods that we do. Oh, and you know what, they have the same stories we do, The Odyssey.’ It becomes this central part of the Greek identity.”

So, in the end, much more than a fairy tale? “Yes, and it does seem to be based on historical realities. There may have been a character similar to Odysseus, maybe even called Odysseus. Who knows? But if we are going to find that person it won’t be on the land, it will be at sea.”

The Odyssey with Dan Snow airs at 9pm on Thursday 16 July on 5.

Book your £10 seat for the first ever Radio Times Film Night and watch Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey with fellow film fans at Odeon Luxe Islington on Thursday 23 July 2026.

The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here.

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Authors

Michael Hodges

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