Part I: The World of the Epic
Homer, the Trojan War, and What is an Epic
Who Was Homer?
Nobody knows for certain. He may have been one poet or many. He may have been blind — later traditions said so. He probably lived somewhere in the Greek-speaking world around the 8th century BCE, though the stories he told are far older, passed down by generations of oral poets who memorized and performed them for audiences who could not read.
What we know is this: the Iliad and the Odyssey, attributed to Homer, are the oldest surviving works of Western literature. They were composed and performed aloud, before they were ever written down. This means the Odyssey was originally a song — a very long one, meant to be heard over the course of several evenings, with a singer accompanying himself on a stringed instrument called a lyre.
When we read it now, silently on the page, we are doing something Homer never imagined. Try, when you read the great passages, to hear them being sung.
The Trojan War: What You Need to Know
The Odyssey is a sequel. It assumes you already know the story of the Trojan War — a ten-year conflict between the Greeks (also called Achaeans or Argives) and the city of Troy, on the coast of what is now Turkey. The war began, according to myth, when a Trojan prince named Paris kidnapped the Greek queen Helen, and the Greeks launched a thousand ships to get her back.
The war lasted ten years. Troy fell when the Greeks hid soldiers inside a giant wooden horse, which the Trojans pulled into their city as a trophy. In the night, the soldiers crept out and opened the gates.
The man who thought of the horse was Odysseus.
The Odyssey begins after the fall of Troy. It is the story of one man's decade-long struggle to get home. Every other Greek hero has already returned, or died trying. Odysseus is still out there somewhere — a missing person, presumed dead, while his home falls apart without him.
What Is an Epic?
An epic is a long narrative poem that tells the story of a hero whose actions affect the fate of a people or a world. Epics have certain recognizable features: they begin in the middle of the action (in medias res), they involve gods and supernatural forces, the hero faces impossible odds, and the journey is both physical and internal.
But Homer does something that later epic poets — Virgil, Milton, Dante — never quite match: he makes his hero cry. He makes him frightened. He makes him exhausted and homesick and sometimes simply wrong. Odysseus is the cleverest man in the Greek world, and cleverness in this poem is both his greatest gift and his greatest danger.
The central question of the Odyssey is not whether Odysseus will survive. We know from the very first lines that he makes it home. The question is what the journey costs him — and what kind of man arrives.
Two Timelines: Story vs. Song
Homer does not tell the Odyssey in order. He drops us into Year 10 of Odysseus's journey — the hero trapped, his son searching, his house under siege. The great adventures (the Cyclops, Circe, the Underworld) only appear in Books 9–12, as a flashback narrated by Odysseus himself at a banquet. This is in medias res in action. The two timelines below make the difference visible.
What Actually Happened Chronological
Odysseus fights at Troy for ten years. The Greeks win by his stratagem of the wooden horse.
Odysseus raids Ismarus on the way home. Six men per ship die — the first losses.
Some crew eat the lotus and forget their desire to return home.
Polyphemus traps and eats Odysseus's men. Odysseus blinds him, but Polyphemus calls down Poseidon's curse.
Within sight of Ithaca, the crew opens the bag. Blown back to sea.
Giant cannibals destroy eleven of twelve ships. Only Odysseus's vessel survives.
Circe turns crew to swine. Odysseus resists with moly. They stay one year.
Odysseus sails to the land of the dead. Speaks with Tiresias, his mother, Achilles, Agamemnon.
Odysseus hears the Sirens. Loses six men to Scylla. Avoids Charybdis.
The starving crew eat Helios's cattle. Zeus destroys the ship. All die except Odysseus.
Odysseus is trapped on Ogygia for seven years. He weeps on the shore every day.
Calypso lets him go. Poseidon wrecks his raft. He washes up on Scheria.
The Phaeacians sail him home. Disguised as a beggar, he plots with Athena and Telemachus.
Odysseus strings his bow, kills the suitors, and passes Penelope's test of the bed.
How Homer Tells It Narrative Order
We meet the son, not the hero. Telemachus searches for news of his father while suitors consume his household. Year 20 — Odysseus is absent.
We finally meet Odysseus — weeping on a beach, seven years a prisoner. Zeus orders his release. Poseidon wrecks him. Year 20 — near the end of the story.
Odysseus washes ashore, meets Nausicaa, enters the palace of Alcinous. At a banquet, he is asked to tell his story.
Odysseus narrates his own adventures — Cyclops, Circe, the Underworld, Scylla, the Cattle of the Sun — covering Years 10–11. This is the only place we hear these famous stories, told in the hero's own voice at a feast. The storyteller becomes the story.
Back to the present. Odysseus reaches Ithaca, is disguised by Athena, reunites with Telemachus in secret.
Odysseus enters his own home as a stranger. Recognized by his dog Argos and his nurse Eurycleia — but not yet by Penelope.
Penelope sets the contest. Odysseus strings the bow and slaughters the suitors.
Penelope tests Odysseus with the secret of their bed. Father and son visit Laertes. Athena brokers peace.
Notice how Homer withholds the most exciting adventures until the middle, and gives them to Odysseus to tell in his own words. The poem doesn't ask what happened — it asks what it means to the man who survived it.
Key Term: Xenia
Xenia (ZEH-nee-ah) is the ancient Greek code of hospitality — the sacred obligation between host and guest. Zeus himself was believed to protect travelers. A host was required to feed and shelter a guest before even asking their name. A guest was required to behave with honor and not overstay their welcome. Violations of xenia are punished throughout the Odyssey. Watch for them.
Discussion
- Homer was a storyteller before he was a writer. What difference does it make that the Odyssey was originally performed aloud, not read silently?
- The Trojan War lasted ten years. Odysseus's journey home takes another ten. That's twenty years away from home. What do you think that does to a person — and to the people left behind?
- Homer tells us in the first lines that Odysseus makes it home. Why would a storyteller give away the ending before the story begins?