The classicists aren’t happy with Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey, and who can blame them? Why not let Matt Damon strut and sparkle as he doubtless would if Homer were in the director’s chair? Odysseus’s moral center, as Nolan has emphasized, is the Golden Rule, whose violation is the source of his woes. Plato’s Republic is, among other things, an explicit critique of Homer’s epics and the corrupting passions—rage, grief, lust—they taught the ancient Greeks to emulate. In what Plato calls the “old quarrel between philosophy and poetry,” Homer must submit to reason or be cast out of the ideal city of the Republic.