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Not all monsters carry weapons — some offer honey, song, or eternal love. Join us as we count down the most terrifying creatures and supernatural threats Odysseus faced throughout Homer's epic, "The Odyssey!" From half-bird horrors to six-headed sea abominations, these ancient nightmares prove that the deadliest dangers don't always need claws to destroy you. Which creature frightens you the most?
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00:00Ten terrified sailors are trapped inside the lair of a one-eyed, man-eating cyclops.
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the most terrifying monsters,
00:12creatures, and supernatural threats encountered by Odysseus during his journey in Homer's ancient Greek tale, The Odyssey.
00:18The crew has been sidetracked by self-indulgence.
00:22It will become a running theme throughout The Odyssey.
00:27Number 10. The Harpies.
00:29With painful screeching, and often depicted as possessing a monstrous appearance,
00:34the sight of these half-human, half-bird creatures is enough to give anyone ornithophobia.
00:48Yet for the characters in The Odyssey, the Harpies are even more terrifying as an unseen force that can steal
00:55a person away in an instant,
00:56especially when storm winds are involved.
00:59In ancient Greece, if someone, especially a person who had done something bad, vanished without a cause,
01:05the blame often pointed towards the mythical Harpies.
01:13It was believed that the creatures carried them off to the Irinaes, the goddesses of vengeance.
01:19The gods, including Zeus, often used the creatures to punish those who wronged them.
01:38Number 9. The Lotus Eaters.
01:40What if the deadliest trap ever laid for a hero required no weapons whatsoever?
01:45The Lotus Eaters are, on the surface, just a typical tribe of nice people who offer strangers their local flora
01:51that tastes as,
01:52quote, sweet as honey.
01:53The natives here warmly welcome them with an offering of lotus, a sweet-tasting flower with mind-altering properties.
02:02But the lotus flower induces a profound, paralyzing bliss that dissolves memory, ambition, and identity entirely.
02:09Odysseus' men, who consume it, lose all desire to return to Ithaca, weeping when forcibly dragged back to the ships.
02:16Some experts think the Lotus Eaters were meant to symbolize a real scourge of ancient Greece.
02:22The horror here operates on an existential frequency that physical monsters cannot reach.
02:27The quiet annihilation of selfhood wrapped in the appearance of paradise.
02:31Homer understood that the destruction of purpose can be more complete and more terrifying than the destruction of the body.
02:37But their leader, Odysseus, stays sober.
02:42He has just one goal, to return home to Ithaca, where his wife and son are waiting.
02:47Number 8. Calypso
02:49Luxury and imprisonment are not mutually exclusive, and Calypso proves it with devastating clarity.
02:56You will regard us.
02:59I am Calypso.
03:04Come, rest.
03:06This powerful, immortal nymph detains Odysseus on her idyllic island of Oieia for seven years,
03:12offering him eternal youth, immortality, and her devoted companionship.
03:16She is entirely sincere, yet that sincerity is exactly what makes her monstrous.
03:22Calypso promises Odysseus immortality if he'll stay with her forever.
03:27But he refuses, knowing he must return to his wife and his kingdom.
03:31Odysseus spends his days sitting on the shoreline in tears, staring towards home,
03:36as Calypso ignores the torment he's experiencing to keep him tied to her.
03:40In the end, it takes direct intervention from the gods to force her to release Odysseus from her sway,
03:46angering her against the deities for their double standards in not allowing goddesses to be with mortals.
03:51No one leaves my island, and all that live here exists to serve me.
03:57Number 7.
03:58The Shades
03:58When Odysseus descends to the underworld in the haunting episode known as the Nechia,
04:03what greets him is arguably more disturbing than any living monster he's faced.
04:07The Shades are the remnants of the dead, thin whispering echoes of people, robbed of warmth and substance.
04:14Stay!
04:16Stay!
04:19Stay back!
04:21They swarm towards sacrifices, desperate for even the briefest flicker of coherent thought.
04:26Among them stands Odysseus' own mother, whom he reaches for three times,
04:30and three times his arms pass through her like smoke.
04:33You must hurry.
04:34Men are trying to steal your world.
04:37Other Shades include the legendary Achilles and Ajax.
04:40These echoes don't threaten violence.
04:42They do something far crueler.
04:44They offer an unobstructed view of death's true nature,
04:47quietly confirming that everything a person is will eventually dissolve into cold, hungry nothing.
04:53Penelope was alive and waiting for me.
04:56But my mother's words burned my soul.
05:00Number 6.
05:01Cersei
05:01There's something uniquely chilling about a predator who doesn't need to be angry to destroy you.
05:07I had hope for a lion from such a myth.
05:10Cersei, the powerful witch of Aeia, welcomes Odysseus' men with enchanting music and an elaborate feast.
05:16Yet before that can happen, with a wand and potion, she transforms the crew into pigs.
05:21Not out of hatred, but like a routine task.
05:23Come closer!
05:26You don't recognize me!
05:30Odysseus escapes only through Hermes' divine assistance.
05:33Even after she becomes an ally, after restoring the crew, offering guidance, and sharing her bed,
05:39Cersei retains an atmosphere of absolute conditional power.
05:42Yet her cooperation never quite erases the knowledge of what she can do without much effort.
05:47You conspired with Poseidon against me!
05:50Don't blame the gods for your deeds.
05:52You were giving your men back, and yet you lingered in my bed.
05:56Number 5.
05:57The Lacedragonians
05:58Odysseus' ability to persevere is put to the test again, just days after he leaves Aeolia.
06:05These cannibalistic giants don't lurk in caves waiting for unlucky wanderers.
06:09They respond to Odysseus' fleet with immediate, coordinated, devastating force.
06:14From clifftops above the Telepilos harbor, they rain down boulders that shatter ships like
06:19tiny toys.
06:20Then they wade in, spearing drowning sailors like fish and hauling them off to be consumed.
06:25In the span of minutes, 11 of Odysseus' 12 ships are obliterated, and their crews are
06:31annihilated, making this the most catastrophic single event in the entire epic.
06:36In a matter of minutes, Odysseus loses hundreds of men and all but one of his ships.
06:42Only Odysseus' vessel escapes because he wisely moored it outside the harbor entrance.
06:48The Lacedragonians aren't monstrous individuals.
06:50They're a functioning society of predators.
06:53That organized collective hunger makes them genuinely terrifying.
06:56Once again, the Poseidon curse is devastating in its cruelty.
07:02Number 4.
07:02Sirens
07:03Imagine a death so appealing that you'd steer your ship directly toward it with a smile.
07:08The sirens, creatures whose singing surpasses anything humanly conceivable, don't chase
07:13sailors or ambush them in darkness.
07:15The sirens are these creatures whose songs are so beautiful that they pull you off course
07:25and you shipwreck.
07:27They simply sing, and their victims come to them, willingly, gratefully, utterly unable to
07:33choose otherwise.
07:34The rocky shore around them is carpeted with the bones and remains of everyone who ever
07:39heard that music and followed it home.
07:41Odysseus, desperate to experience their song without perishing for it, has himself tied to
07:46the mast as his crew rose past with ears sealed in beeswax.
07:49This way, he can listen to the sirens without steering the ship toward the island's rocky shores.
07:55Even knowing the outcome, he screams to be released.
07:58The sirens are terrifying precisely because they don't need to be monstrous.
08:02Their weapon is perfection itself.
08:05Odysseus' encounter with the sirens is one of mythology's best-known stories.
08:10Number 3.
08:11Polyphemus
08:12Among the Cyclopes, one stands so far above the rest in infamy that he demands his own
08:18reckoning.
08:18He is a giant cyclops.
08:21A ravenous beast with the strength of 20 men.
08:25Polyphemus, son of the god Poseidon, imprisons Odysseus' men in his enormous cave and begins
08:31methodically eating them two at a time with the casual routine of a man doing chores.
08:35He scoffs at Zeus' laws of hospitality and dismisses the gods entirely.
08:40It takes a devious plan by Odysseus to escape.
08:43He blinds the giant with a fire-hardened stake, and he and his remaining crew hide under sheep.
08:57Yet that cunning carries a devastating price.
09:00Polyphemus prays to his divine father for revenge, and Poseidon answers, making Odysseus' homeward
09:06journey exponentially longer and more punishing.
09:09Victory over Polyphemus is also, quietly, the beginning of catastrophe.
09:13The Cyclops is standing there, cursing him.
09:18Suddenly, Odysseus almost inexplicably turns and says,
09:23You want to know who I am?
09:25I am Odysseus, son of Laertes.
09:28Number 2.
09:29Charybdis
09:29Every other monster in the Odyssey can theoretically be outwitted, avoided, or overcome through
09:35cunning and courage.
09:36Charybdis obliterates that comfort entirely.
09:44This massive, inscrutable sea creature lurks in a narrow strait, three times daily sucking
09:50the entire ocean into an abyss and violently expelling it again, destroying anything caught
09:55in the process without awareness, without malice, and without mercy.
09:59No blade reaches her.
10:00No clever speech dissuades her.
10:02Odysseus would go close to that.
10:05He would risk having his whole ship capsized.
10:08When Odysseus later drifts back into her vortex on a makeshift raft, his survival comes
10:13down to clinging desperately to a fig tree overhead until the whirlpool releases his wreckage.
10:18Against Charybdis, Odysseus' legendary intelligence counts for nothing.
10:23She reduces the greatest hero alive to a man hanging from a branch, waiting and hoping.
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10:48Always on, always live.
10:49Are you not entertained?
10:52Number 1.
10:54Scylla.
10:54A six-headed abomination anchored in a cliff face above the same narrow strait as Charybdis.
10:59Each of Scylla's heads is armed with three rows of teeth and an endless mechanical hunger.
11:08Scylla.
11:11Athena, protect us.
11:12She cannot be negotiated with, cannot be meaningfully wounded, and most alarmingly,
11:18cannot be bypassed.
11:19Odysseus makes a cold, conscious calculation that's like an ancient version of the train
11:24track dilemma.
11:24This terrifying creature who you know for a fact will grab up six of your men.
11:32He chose to sail close enough for Scylla to claim multiple men rather than risk the entire
11:37ship to Charybdis.
11:38He watches, unable to intervene, as six of his finest sailors are yanked, screaming from
11:44the deck and eaten alive above him.
11:46Scylla doesn't just take lives.
11:47She forces her victims to participate in the decision that dooms them.
11:52It snatches six men off the ship's deck and swallows them whole.
11:58Will Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey be your favorite adaptation of an ancient Greek tale,
12:03or is another film already occupying top spot?
12:05Let us know in the comments.
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