Homer

One word that could be used to describe Penelope is "pragmatic." While she is certainly honors her husband's memory, which is part of the reason that she refuses to marry any of her many suitors,...

Odysseus is the archetype of an epic hero. He has immortal ancestors, he has completed a quest, and he has superhuman intellect. However, Odysseus is still human. Be that as it may, it seems...

We've reached Book 22 of The Odyssey. Odysseus has just proved his incredible strength and skill by successfully firing an arrow through a row of axes. Odysseus is disguised as a humble beggar, so...

On Circe's island, Eurylochus senses a trap and so stays back while other men go ahead and are turned into pigs; he then runs back to the ship to tell Odysseus. After Odysseus asks Circe to turn...

Odysseus demonstrates admirable leadership skills during his journey to the land of the Cimmerians. Knowing the inherent dangers of the voyage they are about to undertake, he validates the fears...

This is a good question. There are several reasons why the works of Homer (Iliad and Odyssey) were used in education. In light of this, let me name a few of these reasons. First, to study Homer...

Perhaps the best way to look at this question is to analyze some of the underlying assumptions. First, the "Homeric" works that have been transmitted to us, including Iliad, Odyssey and the Homeric...

Penelope is to Odysseus as Odysseus is to his destiny, in other words Homer created two sides of the same coin. Penelope waits for her husband's return and to do so must use, adapt, and...

Achilles' behavior in the Iliad, at least on first consideration, does not seem to warrant much empathy. Throughout Books 1 through 23, Achilles is, for the most part, a boastful, self-centered,...

In book 10, Odysseus and his men sail to Aeaea, the island of Circe. On the island, Odysseus and his men split into two parties, and the group led by Eurylochus travels to Circe's home. Once they...

The two legendary poems attributed to Homer are the epics the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Iliad is the story of the final weeks of the Trojan War when the Greeks overtook the city of Troy, also...

The flawed Achilles is most often identified as the hero of the Iliad. He is offered the choice of long life without glory or a short life with glory. He chooses the life of death and glory because...

The Iliad and The Odyssey, both written by the Ancient Greek poet Homer, are two of the most studied and most admired epic poems of Ancient Greek literature. The Iliad is one of the best historical...

This is a great question. To understand honor in the Homeric world, you have to know something about the cultural code of ethics. In other words, you should know something of what this culture...

The article makes very clear that the vales to be taken away from Homer's works are the notions of honor and glory. The fact that Greek society placed such a high value on these attributes is...

This concept of arete that is highlighted in #2 is very important in my opinion. You might want to think about the legacy of Homer's work on Greek society at large. It is clear that his two poems...

I certainly think that there are different approaches to take with this question. If we are looking at who experiences more of the emotional range that defines "heroism," Odysseus might receive...

Simply put, Homer's texts were seen as tools of education of Greek males because they represented the very best that Greek males were meant to epitomize. The article makes specific mention of...

The principal evidence of orality in the Homeric epics lies in the extensive repetition they contain. Characters are given an epithet, "swift-footed Achilles" or "many-witted Odysseus," and this is...

In Book 9 of the Odyssey, protagonist Odysseus relates to the Phaeacians his encounter with Polyphemus the Cyclops. He took twelve men ashore with him to the land of the Cyclopes and told the rest...

Clearly, Homer's two very famous epic poems cannot be purely factual. At least, we have no reason to believe that there once existed creatures such as the cyclopes or Scylla. Therefore, these are...

Scholar Dorothea Clinton Woodworth, in her article "The Function of the Gods in Vergil's Aeneid," has argued that Virgil's Aeneid essentially concerns the theme of destiny and that the gods...

When Plato writes that "there is an old quarrel between philosophy and poetry," it accentuates that a difference in world view that exists between both. For Plato, this difference in cosmology is...

Based on the article, the answer is that the narratives of Achilles and Odysseus are used in our own educational settings. Just as these works told much about Greek society, these texts are used...

If we use the article as a reference, the stories' primary impact on the listener is to suggest that Homer's works went very far in defining the Greek culture. The article asserts this at several...