Aoidos Assignment
You will take your turn as the Aoidos, or storyteller, for two chapters in The Odyssey. You may work in
partners for this assignment
Directions:
1. Choose an interesting scene from the Fagles translation of The Odyssey.
a. An interesting scene: a scene or passage during which something happens that affects the
plot and/or characters or a scene that teaches the audience a lesson.
b. Length: ½ to 1 full page.
c. Each partner must read and speak for the same amount of time.
2. You will stand on the spot when telling your story.
a. To tell your story, you need to act out the passage with your voice, hand movements, a
prop or two, perhaps an instrument. You are not allowed to move from the spot—your
voice needs to tell the story. Stand firm and tall on the spot.
b. Dress code: no baseball caps or hoods.
c. Recitation code: no gum, candy, throat lozenge, etc. Your mouth should be clear.
d. Make eye contact.
e. Speak audibly, intelligibly, and with a good tempo. It’s no use if your audience has
difficulty following you.
3. To tell your story you may:
a. Read the passage with the skill of a storyteller. Make it interesting. Use proper
inflections. Use proper pauses. Make it sound like you actually enjoy the passage—don’t
sound like an automaton.
b. Rewrite the passage in your own voice to help your own way of telling the story. The
story must be the same as the book’s (you’re not allowed to change characters, settings,
plots, etc.). You may change character names to shortened versions of their names or some
sort of nicknames we all understand. You will need to find a clever way to introduce these
new names to your audience (you’re not allowed to just tell us you’ve changed the names,
it has to be part of the story).
c. Find another translation of The Odyssey you like and read that passage with the skill of a
storyteller.
4. Then, you will ask us questions about what you’ve read to see that we understood and can
extrapolate (we see that you were going somewhere with what you read to us). Follow the models
your teacher gives you in class—she gives a simple and complete example particularly for Book 1.
5. Perform MSQCV and hand this in to help you prepare your presentation (follow the model)
Book 1 Lines 25-53
25 But now
26 Poseidon had gone to visit the Ethiopians worlds away,
27 Ethiopians off at the farthest limits of mankind,
28 A people split in two, one part where the Sungod sets
29 And part where the Sungod rises. There Poseidon went
30 To receive an offering, bulls and rams by the hundred—
31 Far away at the east the Sea-lord sat and took his pleasure.
32 But the other gods, at home in Olympian Zeus’s halls,
33 Met for full assembly there, and among them now
34 The father of men and gods was first to speak,
35 Sorely troubled, remembering handsome Aegisthus,
36 The man Agamemnon’s son, renowned Orestes, killed.
37 Recalling Aegisthus, Zeus harangued the immortal powers:
38 “Ah how shameless—the way these mortals blame the gods.
39 From us alone, they say, come all their miseries, yes,
40 But they themselves, with their own reckless ways,
41 Compound their pains beyond their proper share.
42 Look at Aegisthus now…
43 Above and beyond his share he stole Atrides’ wife,
44 He murdered the warlord coming home from Troy
45 Though he knew it meant his own total ruin.
46 Far in advance we told him so ourselves,
47 Dispatching the guide, the giant-killer Hermes.
48 “Don’t murder the man,” he said, “don’t court his wife.
49 Beware, revenge will come from Orestes, Agamemnon’s son,
50 That day he comes of age and longs for his native land.”
51 So Hermes warned, with all the good will in the world,
52 But would Aegisthus’ hardened heart give way?
53 Now he pays the price—all at a single stroke.
1. Where is Poseidon? Why is this in the story at all?
2. What happened to Aegisthus?
3. Did this have to happen to Aegisthus? (in other words, could he have avoided it—
how or how not)
4. What is Zeus talking about (really)? Look particularly in lines 38-41.
5. Why is Zeus talking about this?
6. Why Aegisthus?