Odysseus Arms

Ad Age Small Agency of the Year, Odysseus Arms, needed to send prospective clients something that would convey their story-driven, scrappy approach. We settled on a retelling of their namesake, The Odyssey, but rewritten for the modern, busy reader. Each book came with cyclops reading glass(es).

The Big O

The Odyssey: Homer's original re-imagined for a modern, busy audience.

Man of the Year 1,100 B.C.

This is the story of Odysseus, the man with the plan, the King of Ithaka, the king of biceps, perfect posture, magnificent jawline, a perpetual presence on the cover of every teen magazine, every month for a B.C. century, abs that modeled for every god statue in town, the faces of adoring goddesses reflected in his gleaming breastplate, vision that inspired men to follow, ideas that outsmarted gods, some many times over, and a knack for hideous-monster-confounding brilliance. This is the legend of a long journey home. Let’s begin.

Woodenstock

The deck timbers strained and creaked under Odysseus’ sandals. It was one of the oldest ships in the fleet and hardly worthy of a King but the rest had been used to transport the entire Greek army to Troy where they’d sat for the last ten years. The most heavily fortified city of its time, and Ithaka’s rival, wasn’t a great candidate for invasion. Its walls were several boulders thick and high enough that catapults couldn’t even lob anything in. So rather than waging war, the Ithakans had been more like camping outside for the last decade. The King had finally been called in to help. 

Odysseus stepped off the hot ship onto the even hotter Troy sand and waded into what was more like a festival crowd than an army. Someone vomited on his foot, collapsing. Everyone had pretty much given up on fighting after about a year. Since then, the ground had been raised slightly by a knee-deep layer of trash. On top of it, tents had sprung up housing dice games, lute players, and wrestling for drachmas. There were salty fish snack stands and guys selling togas that read “Ithaka v. Troy.” In one tent, a couple big guys faced off downing ever-bigger goat bladders of wine. A snickering warrior wrote “Bacchus Rules” with a charred stick on a passed out naked friend. Word of the debauchery had actually reached Bacchus himself at one point and he stopped in for a special guest appearance. But after five years of this, even he said he wasn’t feeling well and excused himself to go take a shower and resuscitate his liver.

As for the men, their only shower in a decade was when it happened to rain. They had formed their own cloudscape hovering just above the ground from smoking, roasting goats and a visible smell shimmering off of all of it. High above, a catapult rock plinked off the Trojan wall proving for the forty-three millionth time you could break a rock that way. The guard, Ascanius, took a moment to point down and laugh. What a great job, he thought to himself. Greek spears and rocks never came close. The guards were basically there to kill time and drinking was encouraged which he never expected from a security job. Life was good. This was the most fun war fought in a long, long time. 

You may recall Ascanius. History writes that he was a revered King who founded a great city. But if you read the fine print on that “history” you’d find it was loosely jotted down by Bacchus and his writing partner, a king-size goat bladder of wine. Possibly a different Ascanius because this one was the only guard who still lived at home with his parents, climbing the wall each day to the job his brother had pulled some strings to get him. He had washed out of most professions of the day. For example, as a vase and mural painter, his historical renderings were so accurate, they led historians many centuries later to theorize that a group of rhesus monkey’s actually established Troy. He just never seemed to nail his bailiwick. But as a guard, he had decent pay and maidens seemed to dig the uniform. He took another swig of wine and squinted down at the tiny dots moving around on the ground below. He zeroed in on one tiny dot, which seemed to be saying something really important.

From the beach, Odysseus’ majestic baritone thundered, “Cease this!” Faces turned to see who the killjoy was and took in the stunning development; Dad’s home. Everyone froze. Odysseus didn’t want to move his feet and risk sinking deeper in the filth. While his troops pulled themselves together, he mentally ran over to the massive Trojan gate, climbed the wall, scurried along the top and slid back down. He already had a plan.

Tsk. Tsk. This had once been a proud army. He tried to hide his disappointment in the men before him. Ten years? No progress? Wasn’t it obvious? But pointing out the futility of the last decade would kill morale so he started in casually, “I’m just spitballing here…” with the old Odysseus charisma and proceeded to lay out what anyone could’ve seen to do. "Get Epeius off the job of painting catapults to look like sea monsters and put him to work on a giant wooden horse," he ordered. Logs were stacked to form a barricade to hide construction. Perhaps the Trojans would think they were building a ship. It should be noted, however, that during this time the guards inside Troy had no idea what was going on. From their vantage point, they guessed the Greeks were building a bonfire, or even better, an outdoor concert stage. Hands down, this had been the best siege ever.

The night the horse was completed, Odysseus and a team of thirty handpicked members of an elite Delta Force climbed inside through a trapdoor located in the belly and hid, giggling to themselves. The Greek army then took the logs from the barricade and scattered them over the field afront, collapsing tents and upending salty fish snack stands. Following that, they tidied up a bit, plowing ten years of trash around the corner and out of sight. The Trojans would find their other gift of an enormous compost pile a little later on. In one night, the rowdy party scene was transformed into a surreal landscape: an empty field, scraped bare, with a building-sized wooden horse being rolled across at a slow dignified pace by its tiny handlers. Men scrambled around its feet, occasionally setting alight a few lemon-scented incense barrels to freshen things up. Once at the wall, the giant wheels groaned and creaked to a stop as the horse stood staring at the front gate. Then the entire Greek army tiptoed across the battlefield, boarded their ships and sailed on out, leaving behind their colossal lawn ornament.

The next morning, Ascanius climbed up to his guard post as usual and peered out on what should have been a field full of hungover Greek army regulars. Instead, it was completely deserted. His guard contingent had gotten absolutely plastered the night before but he swore to himself he'd never hallucinated. He’d heard that drinking from wooden vessels was bad for you so he’d recently switched to lead goblets, but maybe not soon enough. He wiped his eyes and checked again. Empty field. It was weird. And silent. Then looking down, he saw it. A sublime wooden horse, six stories tall. 

Clearly, a humiliated and thoroughly defeated Greek army had given up and left a lovely parting gift, a token gesture for a decade of hospitality in their front yard. They did this sort of thing in those days. Ascanius headed down, put the key in the lock and cautiously opened the gate. A horse, their symbol, it really was thoughtful. And the craftsmanship was wonderful. Tightly fit tongue and grooving, beautiful finish on the planking. The guards pulled it inside, pretty heavy, quality construction. The Greeks weren’t bad guys, he thought. He was going to kind of miss them 

The next thing Ascanius remembered was getting beheaded. His head rolled around on the ground. It gave him a disorienting last view of a mob of Greeks sacking the city, drinking all the wine, chasing goats, chasing maidens, knocking over the salty fish snack stands, peeing on everything and stealing that really nice bust of Artemis from the town square. 

As they sailed away, Odysseus’ men kept slapping him on the back and replaying the looks on the fat Trojans’ faces when they dropped out of the horse. The next best thing to being a hero was being with one. One young guy was so excited he ran up to Odysseus, thrust out his chest, and jumped right into him, sort of a bumping of chests. It felt good, more manly than a hug. They all offered Odysseus wine from their goatskins. Odysseus was a closer, and wine from goatskins is for closers. Yes, it was time to return home. But there wasn’t much time to celebrate. The seas were getting rough.

(continued)