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INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF HOMER´S ILIAD AND THE ODYSSEY

 Admired through the ages as the ultimate epic, Homer’s Iliad , along with its companion-piece, the Odyssey , was venerated by the ancient Greeks themselves as the cornerstone of their civilization. By force of its prestige, the Iliad sets the standard for the definition of the word epic : an expansive poem of enormous scope, composed in an archaic and superbly elevated style of language, concerning the wondrous deeds of heroes.

 What, then, were the heroes of the Iliad? In ancient
Greek myth, heroes were humans, male or female, of the remote past, endowed with superhuman abilities and descended from the immortal gods themselves.
The prime example is Akhilleus, more commonly known as Achilles in the English tradition. This, the greatest hero of the Iliad, was the son of Thetis, a sea-goddess known for her far-reaching cosmic powers. It is clear in the epic, however, that the father of Achilles is mortal, and that this greatest of heroes must therefore be mortal as well.

 So also with all the ancient Greek stories of the heroes: even though they are all descended in some way or another from the gods, however many generations removed, heroes are mortals , subject to death. No matter how many immortals you find in a family tree, the intrusion of even a single mortal will make all successive descendants mortal. Mortality, not immortality, is the dominant gene.

 We think he lived and wrote around 800 bce. He may have been a single man, or Homer may refer to a group of bards of the time. What we do know for sure is that
Homer was not the inventor of the stories he composed, he was interpreting and writing them down.
 Epics were traditionally presented orally and the bards who would sing, as they say, the poem, and would have to recall the epics from memory.

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Both the Iliad and the Odyssey are epic poems written by Homer, whoever he is, around 800 bce.
The Iliad recalls the heroic deeds of Achilles, who’s hubris, or pride, is his downfall.
The Iliad is set on the backdrop of the Trojan war, an event that has recently become to seem more than just a myth.
 The causes of the real Trojan war were probably something boring like oil, or simple expansion, but in Greek Mythology, meaning The Iliad and Odyssey, the Trojan war began over a single woman: Helen of Sparta. The most beautiful woman in the world, who was given to Paris of Troy after he judged Aphrodite the most beautiful goddess in heaven, over Hera, the wife of the almighty Zeus. When Helen was taken from her husband Menelaus, the King of Sparta, he and his brother Agamemnon combined forces and sailed to Troy, which is where modern Iraq is, with 1000 ships and began a siege that would last for ten years.

 Oddly enough, the Iliad only focuses on a span of around fifty days in the ninth year of the siege of Troy. The majority of the poem is vivid battle scenes with man and immortals and acts of heroic violence. The poem ends with Hector’s death, the brother of Paris, who Achilles straps to his carriage with the belt that Ajax, the second strongest man after Achilles, had given him, and drags his corpse around the walls of Troy and only gives the abused body back to the Trojans when the King of Troy comes himself to beg for his son.
 Surprising to most, the iconic symbol we think of when we think of Troy, the
Trojan horse, never actually appears in the Iliad , and is only hinted at in the
Odyssey.

 The Odyssey tells of the heroic deeds of Odysseus and the hardships he encounters on his long journey home.
 The Odyssey , similarly to the Iliad , starts at the end of a ten year journey with the cunning hero Odysseus. The majority of the action of the poem happens in Odysseus’s telling of his ten year journey to Menelaus, who helps Odysseus finally reach his home of Ithaca. Odysseus’s tale includes encounters with mountainous oneeyed monsters and gorgeous women with incredible power, and is the source of much of what we know about Greek mythology.

 The Odyssey shows a strong contrast in its focus from the Iliad .
In the Iliad , the importance would seem to be glory and honor and deeds of strength and force . In the Odyssey, the Greeks show a focus more on compromising and intelligently working through problems to find a solution.