The Iliad and The Odyssey are the earliest works of Western literature and are the wellspring for much of Western culture.
The Iliad, beginning Sing, g.
This is the story of The Odyssey is not just about Odysseus\' adventures on the way home, it is also about faithful marital love, and The Iliad and The Odyssey are the earliest works of Western literature and are the wellspring for much of Western culture.
Instead, Homer and the fates send him on another ten years of travels.
One expects Odysseus\' story to end with his returning home as a hero.
Then, after ten years camped outside Troy and the loss of countless lives on both sides, he brings the Trojan war to a dramatic conclusion with the now famous Trojan horse.
As the Greeks leave for Troy, it is Odysseus\' cleverness that allows him to find the hero Achilles who is crucial to their victory.
Odysseus is known as polytropos, a man of many twists and turns and tricks, a man who lives by his wits.
The characters and events are well known, and the form - a long journey of discovery and testing - has become a standard device in storytelling.
The Odyssey, Homer\'s epic tale of Odysseus and his ten-year journey home after the Trojan war is a wonderful story that has entranced generations over the last two and a half millennia.
The Iliad is the story of the Trojan War, but much more: it has many tender scenes, it critiques the idea of the hero and it examines the role of the Gods in history.
The nearly invincible Ajax struggles to choose between heroic glory on the battlefield and the blessing of returning to the beloved land of his fathers.
I have kissed the hands of the man who killed my son, an act which provokes deep sympathy in Achilles, who in turn returns the body of heroic Hector which he had defiled.
King Priam kisses the hands of Achilles, saying I have endured what no one on earth has endured.
A Greek and Trojan pair, Diomedes and Glaucus, meet on the battlefield, but realizing that they have an ancestral connection, they exchange conversation and armour rather than taunts and blows.
Homer creates complex human characters.
But it is much more than a great war epic.
It is a story of heroes of immense pride and animal strength operating in their element.
The Iliad, beginning Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus\' son Achilles / and its devastation describes the devastation unleashed by Achilles\'s rage, engulfing soldier and civilian, hero and coward, ruler and slave and even women and children.
The Iliad and The Odyssey are the earliest works of Western literature and are the wellspring for much of Western culture
