That is a
damned good joke. But why are the Odyssey women so old?
Penelope I get. She's old.
Well, and Circe can be any age because she has bewitched him.
"Try the wine."
My hope for the derpy Odyssey is we begin with the Judgement and realize Paris and Helen do not even
like each other, they are just means to each other's ends. He wants to carry her off because she's #1 on the hotness scale and that will add it his fame. Helen for her part is awful throughout the whole 10 years; she loves being the cause of so much death and misery as it adds to her fame. She runs away with Paris in the first place not from love but to escape Menelaus, who is a barbarian douche bro (OK that part I get). Her sister Clytemnestra's no prize either, ask her husband (Menelaus' brother Agamemnon, because that's how myths go):
The Iliad/Odyssey is
not a love story*, it's about power, manipulation, and vanity. The only love in the entire Orestia I can remember is in fact Electra's love and loyalty for her father. Even Orestes just comes across as a dink.
* Except the two super gay lovebirds, Achilles and Patroclus, who made Victorians VERY unhappy:
The Greeks were misogynists**, and there are only two women in Homer who aren't crap. Penelope, the patient virtuous ideal wife, and Cassandra, the Ancient World's great wrong place / wrong time. She is cursed with the gift of prophesy but with nobody believing her because Apollo wanted to bang her and she said yes, but then no.
Cassandra also rocks because she is AFAIK the first recorded instance of a hot redhead.
** There's an old joke among classicists: the Romans fucked men because they loved men. The Greeks fucked men because they hated women.