The Odyssey and Sicily's Olive Trees
Jul 19, 2026
The Scene That Was Cut
Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey cuts one of the most important scenes in the entire story involving an old olive tree.
Near the end of Homer's story, Penelope still isn't sure the man sitting in her hall is really her husband after twenty years, so she tests him. She has someone offer to move their marriage bed. Odysseus reacts before he can stop himself, because he knows something no impostor could fake. Since he built that bed himself, using a living olive tree as the base, it can never be moved without uprooting and destroying it. Anne Hathaway has said it got cut for pacing as the film was already racing toward its climax at that point, and stopping for another identity check would kill the momentum, according to Nolan.
But it's the one scene in the poem that was never going to survive contact with a 2.5-hour runtime, because it isn't built for spectacle. It's built for patience. After all, this takes place in book 23 of 24 of the translated Odyssey, or nearly 500 pages into most translated books.
As we say at Pegaso, good things take time ;)
Nolan Kept the Heart of the Odyssey
What Nolan didn't cut was the heart of the story. Most of The Odyssey was shot on location in Sicily where the story actually takes place. He said no CGI was used where he could avoid it. The island of Favignana, off Sicily's northwest coast and known locally as Goat Island, became Ithaca; it's also believed to be the real spot where Odysseus and his crew came ashore to eat before their run-in with the Cyclops. The Cyclops sequence itself leans on Sicily's volcanic terrain (and the real Polyphemus is said to have lived in caves on the eastern side of the island). The Aeolian Islands — Lipari, Basiluzzo, Vulcano — stood in for the domain of Aeolus, keeper of the winds, with Stromboli smoking in the background for good measure. Add in Castello di Santa Caterina, perched above the coast, for Penelope's besieged household, and you've got a movie that didn't need to invent much of anything. The mythology was already right there.
Ancient Olive Trees in Sicily
The olive tree itself has real, documented roots in Sicily, not just poetic ones. A pollen-core study led by researchers at Sapienza University of Rome found evidence of olive cultivation in Sicily dating back roughly 3,700 years (around 1700 BC) — a thousand years before the first Greek settlers arrived — and traced the tree's later spread across the island to trade routes through the Strait of Messina, particularly contact with Mycenaean traders. By the time those Greek colonists did show up, olive cultivation was already spreading through the wider region historians call Magna Graecia, the Greek-settled stretch of southern Italy and Sicily, according to the World History Encyclopedia. In Greek life, the tree carried weight well beyond agriculture: olive oil fueled temple lamps and funded trade, olive wreaths crowned victors at the Olympic Games, and, as far back as the archaic period, the tree itself was treated as something closer to sacred property than a crop. Olive trees have always been the main character!
Olive Oil and Mythology
We're excited to announce a new product launching soon! Like Christopher Nolan, we've always been inspired by the mythology of Sicily, and Pegaso is rooted in the tradition and magic of the island. We're working with local artists to bring you something really delicious, artful and fun, so stay tuned! Subscribe to receive updates.
