From the moment we learned about the incredible cast Christopher Nolan put together for The Odyssey, we tried to guess which figure from Homer‘s epic poem they might play. We didn’t exactly prove to have Cassandra’s foresight. But in fairness to us, when it comes to one character, we really couldn’t have guessed. That’s because we couldn’t have known the script would include a character Homer never spoke of.
Elliot Page plays a character from a different ancient epic poem, Sinon. And while Page’s character has long been a big part of the story about the Trojan Horse, The Odyssey’s version of Sinon was far more honorable than the infamous liar who helped destroy Troy.
While Sinon is a mythological figure from the ancient world, the Greek soldier is not mentioned in either Homer’s The Iliad or The Odyssey. Neither of those stories actually includes the Trojan Horse, the character’s infamous moment of notoriety. The Odyssey only makes reference to the legendary tale that won the Trojan War. Sinon’s story is instead an important part of a different epic poem that Christopher Nolan’s adaptation also pulls from, Virgil’s The Aeneid.
The Roman epic tells the story of how Aeneas escaped Troy’s destruction and founded Rome. Virgil’s Sinon is not ignorant of Odysseus‘ plan to destroy the Greeks via the Trojan Horse, nor is he presented as a noble and sympathetic figure. His name means “one who misleads or betrays.” In The Aeneid, Sinon does exactly that. He is the reason why the Trojan Horse ploy works. The cunning soldier stays behind on the beach after the Greeks pretend to sail home. He’s tasked with selling the deception. Sinon lies to the Trojans that he abandoned his fellow Achaeans and that his hated enemy Odysseus left him behind to die. He then explains the giant wooden horse was meant as a gift for Athena, and the Greeks intentionally made it too large for Troy to bring inside its walls, lest the city gain too much power and favor with the goddess. In essence, Sinon successfully baits Troy into accepting the Trojan Horse and bringing the Greeks into the walls of their city. After Troy falls for Sinon’s story (against the pleas of soothsayers), he is also the one who alerts the hidden Greek soldiers inside the horse that it’s safe to come out and sack the city.
In Nolan’s The Odyssey, Sinon is an honorable character who knows nothing about the true purpose of the Trojan Horse. Elliot Page‘s character honestly believes it’s a gift to Athena from the departing Greeks. Nolan also changes the story of Sinon’s father, who in mythology is most often portrayed as the son of Hermes, a robber who can make his stolen items change shape or even disappear. In Nolan’s adaptation, Sinon is instead the son of a servant who works for the aristocratic family of Robert Pattinson‘s Antinous.
When the King of Kings, Agamemnon, comes to Ithaca to recruit Odysseus to wage war on Troy, the King of Ithaca recruits his army by lot. Poor young Sinon does not pull a black wooden peg. Rich young Antinous does, but because he’s afraid to fight, he makes Sinon an offer. He says if Sinon takes his place in the war, his father will pay Sinon’s family. Sinon takes the offer, which Odysseus allows while also lying to Antinous’ father about who initiated the swap. Odysseus does not want to embarrass a fellow father by letting him know his son is a coward.
Antinous and his family do not honor the deal (which Odysseus later learns from an unlikely source). Sinon’s father dies a poor, homeless beggar while his son is away fighting the Trojan war. Odysseus will ultimately come to call Sinon the greatest soldier he ever knew, in part because Sinon volunteers to stay behind when the Greeks leave. Odysseus asks him why he had to be the one to do so, since the Trojans might kill any soldier they find on the beach. Sinon knew this, but rather than face death with fear, all he asks of his King in return for his bravery is to make sure his dad knows about his son’s heroics. It’s also fine if Odysseus exaggerates. Sinon doesn’t know his dad is already dead, but he soon finds out.
Odysseus is on the other side of the Trojan Horse when Sinon dies from Trojan spears. He hears the soldier’s final words, as Sinon honestly fulfills his duty in selling a terrible treachery he is unknowingly part of. Odysseus then buries Sinon on the shores of Troy, the only soldier memorial we see him stop at before he leaves for home.
Sinon’s death is not the end of his story, though. When Circe tells Odysseus he must travel to the Land of the Dead to speak with Tiresias, the blind prophet says Odysseus must first listen to Sinon. The dead soldier can speak to him after drinking the sacrificial blood Odysseus spilled to draw out the dead.
In The Odyssey, Elliot Page’s Sinon emerges from the ground covered in mud, angry and confused that Odysseus lied to him. The King says he needed Sinon to believe the lie for it to work, but Sinon says he would have died for Odysseus anyway. He also takes no comfort in the fact Odysseus was right beside him as he perished. All that mattered was that Sinon felt alone as he died in service of something he learned was a lie, a dishonorable end for an honorable man.
In Homer’s epic, Sinon is not among the many ghosts Odysseus speaks to in the Land of the Dead, but Sinon does partially fill the role of Elpenor, a different dead soldier in the story. In Homer’s tale, Elpenor falls off from Circe’s roof and snaps his neck right before the Greeks depart the witch’s home for their meeting with the dead. Odysseus is shocked to see his deceased soldier already there. Elpenor then asks Odysseus to return to Circe’s home and bury him with honor, as the Greeks left his corpse out in their rush to leave. Nolan references that burial tradition throughout his movie, as Odysseus often leaves a location without burying his fallen men. Most notably, this happens with a soldier who dies in the Cyclops’ cave. Odysseus says he would honor the fallen man by escaping rather than by burial. But the dead soldier appears as an angry spirit towards the end of the scene. Dead soldiers appearing in their armor is taken straight from Homer. Odysseus promised to ultimately honor all of his dead soldiers during his exile.
During The Odyssey movie’s version of this sequence, Elliot Page’s Sinon also tells Odysseus what it means to be dead. In Homer’s poem, Achilles does something similar. Page’s Sinon says they wait for the newly arrived to bring word of the living. Achilles—who says he’d rather be a lowborn living servant rather than king of the dead—also wants information from the living. He asks many questions about his son and surviving family. He leaves overjoyed when Odysseus gives him the information, as the dead crave tales of the living.
In the movie, Sinon says his father was the first to greet him, which is how Odysseus learns about Antinous’s own treachery back in Ithaca. Sinon also asks if Odysseus still has the lot Sinon took from Antinous. Odysseus says he always carries it and shows the wooden peg. Sinon asks one final request of his lord: return Antinous’ shame to him.
When Odysseus returns home he does exactly that. Twice. He uses the name Sinon when disguised as a beggar. As Sinon, he gives Antinous the wooden peg, which sends the Suitor into a rage. Antinous denies he ever knew a Sinon, but Polybus reminds him. Antinous says that’s not true, but his anger reveals the truth. He throws the lot back at the beggar. Odysseus returns it later by jamming it in the Suitor’s mouth after stabbing Antinous in the heart. His tells him to let Sinon know Odysseus kept his promise. The juxtaposition of the honorable devotion of Page’s Sinon and Antinous’ cowardliness is a fitting piece of Antinous’ demise in The Odyssey.
Sinon is only in a handful of scenes, but they are all integral to Odysseus’ own story. The soldier served his king, Ithaca, and the Achaeans with honor. His reward was a broken promise to his family and honor stolen in the name of false glory. In death, he points out Odysseus’ own failures and how they impacted so many. Even if we knew Sinon would appear in Nolan’s The Odyssey, we definitely couldn’t have guessed all of the nuance Elliot Page’s character brings to the movie.
