The Odyssey And The Iliad

Homer once said, “Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.” (The Iliad pg.405) The quote is relevant to the stories Homer created during the period of the Trojan War. Homer orally performed two of his best works The Iliad and The Odyssey. Homer’s stories are old and probably translated differently than their original telling. Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey still show the basic human emotions and are an inspiration to other authors, poets, and oral presenters.

In the Hebrew Bible and The Odyssey there are heroic figures that play an important role through out each of the books. These heroic figures from the Bible and The Odyssey have many similarities and differences that reflect the different cultures they are from. These heroes are called upon by greater beings, such as gods, to complete difficult journeys and or tasks that the god has made them destined to complete. Each of these legendary heroes demonstrates a particular culture’s needs. Through these journeys and or tasks they are forced to overcome challenging obstacles and make sacrifices.

Homer’s two tales, the Iliad and the Odyssey, are both incredibly well known and widely taught across the world and at many different levels of education. Some call Homer the “greatest poet to ever live” and although this can be disputed his works truly speak for themselves and have braved the test of time quite well. This paper will cover who/whom Homer is as a person, or persons, and the time period of his writings, the truths versus the dramatizations of the Iliad and Odyssey, how the author’s perspective and writings portray ancient Greek culture, along with how the two of them interact with our culture today.

Virgil 's Aeneid takes a character form Homer’s Odyssey and constructs a life for him beyond Homer’s ideas. It is quite obvious that Virgil was heavily influenced by both Homer’s writings, The Iliad and the Odyssey. Both stories tell of parallel journeys home from Troy at the end of the Trojan War. Homer’s Odysseus is returning to Greece and the family he left behind ten years ago. Virgil’s Aeneas, in contrast has been given a direct command by the God, Mercury to create a new Empire. Both men set out on their ships, into the Mediterranean Sea, and both encounter mythical creatures along the way. Sirens and harpies respectively curse and unsuccessfully attempt to lure the men off course. Bad weather however is noted to blow both ships off course. Aeneas lands on an island and lives with the beautiful Dido for a period of time, putting his journey to found a new city on hold. Similarly, Odysseus remained on the Island of Cyclops with the beautiful Calypso for several years, only leaving when the Gods command him to. The love in not everlasting and both tales tell of the men subsequently abandon their loving women waiting for them at home.

Throughout Greek mythology, there are characters that grasp our attention, fill us with dreams, and encourages us to find our sense of adventure fantasy. We encounter new brace characters, and once in awhile we see those qualities and characteristics in another character. that 's the case with the characters of Demeter and Penelope. Although placed in different stories like The Odyssey and Homer’s Hymn to Demeter, both characters share qualities that makes them similar to one another. Furthermore, both powerful female characters experience an impactful loss that turns their life upside down. Demeter, a goddess of fertility, must struggle as she goes in the search for her daughter Persephone as she has been kidnapped by the God Hades and taken to the Underworld. In the other side of the coin lies Penelope, who has gone through heartbreak and depression after the loss of her true love, Odysseus. Both characters then go through their own way to have their love return to them. Throughout their stories it can be clear that Demeter and Penelope are similar to one another as they both experience the loss of a loved one, both actions have consequences that affect the innocent people that are around them, and both characters are portrayed as the helpless archetypes for female roles in their respected stories.

Homer is famous for being a Greek poet and his epic poems. He wrote the Iliad and The Odyssey during seven hundred to eight hundred BC. The Greek people came to know Homer's poems by hearing them recited or by reading copies of them. By three hundred B.C, many different versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey existed in Greece. In

The Odyssey by Homer and the Old Testaments: King James Version are two of the most read and most sophisticated pieces of literature that have transcended through generations. While they share similar qualities; both greatly differ as well, especially when it comes to the women characters. Classical historian and professor of classical studies at Wellesley College, Mary Lefkowitz, makes a significant contrast between these two famous writings. She believes that a major difference between the women of each story differ dramatically when it comes to their personality and actions. “[Although] the notion... that a man should be active and aggressive, a women passive and subjected to the control of the men in her family, are expressed in virtually every Greek myth, even the ones in which the women seek to gain control over their own live.…[so] that it is possible to show that the Greeks at least attributed to women a capacity for understanding that we do not alway find in the other great mythological tradition that has influenced Western thought, namely, the Old and New Testaments." (Women in Greek Myth, Mary Lefkowitz). I completely agree with Lefkowitz statement on these characters, it’s very clear that most of the women in the Old Testament are very flat while the Odyssey is full of well rounded characters especially when it comes to Jacob’s wife Rachel and Odysseus 's wife Penelope.

In ancient Greece literature came to be in a very special way. In the first place, literature has always been significant. It impacts a lot on us now, in school, work, or even just reading a story to your son or daughter at home. Coupled with what people in Ancient Greece did, is very comparable. A long time ago literature meant something special, but not as noticeable to the human eye. A long time ago, far far out in Ancient Greece, there was a story, The Iliad, this story had 15,693 lines! This was one of the first. The Iliad is a story to tell us about Achilles, who was the best warrior, he even fought in the battle against Troy. Another iconic story from Ancient Greece is, The Odyssey. The Odyssey is a story about Odysseus, who tries to return home after the Trojan War.

The two epic poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey, are both credited to Homer furthermore occur through the span of ten years. These two poems compliment one another by telling two unique stories that both offer knowledge to the Trojan War, the Trojan Horse, and the funeral of Achilles. Many of the same characters can be found in both poems. They both manage the battles and hardship of mortal life. The immaculateness of ladies are tried in these sonnets. Nausicaa is a regarded virgin princess and Penelope is referred to and regarded as a righteous lady who fights off lewd men trying to lay down with her, while Clytemnestra shames her spouse and disrespects herself by submitting infidelity. The Iliad is a poem telling the tale of many (Achilles, Hector, the gods, etc.), while the Odyssey is primarily the tale of Odysseus. The two

      The Iliad is a story of rages of Achilles and the War of Troy. Thanks to the techniques of the author, Homer, The Iliad is very colorful, romantic, and it makes the readers imagine the ancient Greeks and their times of war. Homer is believed to be the author of epics other than the Iliad, although their authorship remains uncertain. Historian believes that Homer probably lived in the eighth century, B.C.1 (Discovering World History). However, there are very few things that we know about him. Some historians think Homer's birthplace may have been on an island on the eastern edge of the Aegean Sea, or perhaps in a city on the nearby coast, but they don't have evidence to

Comprehension of literature can be difficult. As a college student, I began reading the Odyssey, the Iliad, and Medea by utilizing the reading habits of asking questions, metacognition, and summarizing the readings, so I could identify the main ideas and eliminate all the unnecessary information. I, as a reader, definitely ended the reading selections with a great improvement of understanding. As I started reading the literature pieces, I was reading with the mind set of comprehension. I identified what I didn’t understand, and I used appropriate strategies to resolve the information I didn’t comprehend. I started to answer my own questions.

One of the main recurring themes in the majority of Ancient Greek mythology is the act of divine intervention. In Greece during ancient times the polytheism of the people played a very large part in each aspect of their daily lives, so it was only natural for them to be included in their mythology. There is not a single Greek myth in history that does not contain some mention of at the very least a single god who played a part in the tale. In one way or another, gods within mythology affect the characters of the myths, the plot or storyline, or the theme of the myth. Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey are two prime examples of this. Within both epics, the gods constantly intervene in the lives and situations of the characters, molding them to the desired outcome.

2. The Iliad and the Odyssey were written by a poet or poets known as Homer. They were stories written about heroes in Mycenaeans times. Homer focused on one important event to base the stories after, the Trojan War. The story was about Paris Prince of Troy, taking Helen of Sparta from her husband. A war started to get Helen back to her husband because her husbands honor was hurt. The story told in the Odyssey is one of the king of Ithaca trying to return to his wife and son after being gone for ten years. The writing of the Iliad and the Odyssey are historically important, because it was one of the earliest ancient texts recorded. The stories gave the Greeks a sense of who they were and taught them how to feel all emotions, as well as

Homer is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey. There is very little known about Homer, and even some doubt that the same author wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Iliad and the Odyssey are epic poems and a vast array of characters in the Iliad were also in the Odyssey. In Book 3 of the Odyssey Homer writes about a great king’s experiences in Egypt.Herodotus wrote The Histories, an inquiry into the reasons behind the Persian Wars. The Histories is written in prose, not poem form. Much more is known about Herodotus than Homer. The hometown of Herodotus is known (he tells us within the first three words of The Histories) as well as the fact that he wrote The Histories. In Book 2 of The Histories Herodotus writes about Egypt. He gives

The Iliad is the quintessential epic. It is full with gods, goddesses, heroes, war, honor, glory, and the like. However, for just short while near the very conclusion Homer avoids all of those epic qualities. The banquet scene in Book XXIV is the most touching, the most "human" scene in the entire poem . In the midst of the dreadful gulf of war and anger there occurs an intimate moment between two men who ironically have much in common below the surface.