An omen of two eagles fighting each other is taken by Halitherses to indicate that Odysseus is fated, after a lapse of 20 years, to return and put his house in order by taking a terrible revenge on those who plunder his wealth. We are told how 'wise' Penelope has resisted the relentless pressure of her suitors to remarry - one ruse was to promise her hand only when a shroud for her father-in- law Laertes was completed, but each night she undid the work of the day. There could be no other ending civilization will, as always, prevail. Odysseus will receive life-threatening trials and irresistible temptations (even an offer of immortality, besides those of the flesh), he is frequently aided by Athena but constantly at the mercy of Poseidon, and he must, literally, go to hell and back, but his desire to return home to civilization will never die, and his superior skills and culture, along with a divine will, ensure that he does. The adventures of the hero against strange peoples and monsters is a device to show throughout the value and necessity of civilization, that life in ordered Greek Ithaca is superior to that of the foreign lotus-eaters and barbaric Cyclops. Again, this is because Homer is perhaps more concerned with a universal truth rather than a simple homecoming story. Like the Iliad, which covers only 52 days of the Trojan War, the Odyssey only covers 42 days of Odysseus' 10-year voyage, the events which happened previously are told in flashback. Their voyage in the grand fleet was to be hit by storm and misfortune, and none more so than the ship of Odysseus. The Greeks had finally sacked Troy after a 10-year siege, but their ruthlessness in doing so incurred the wrath of the gods. The poem covers the voyage of Odysseus, the mythical king of Ithaca, on his return home from the Trojan War in Anatolia. The issue is unlikely ever to be resolved. Other scholars maintain that it is the work of another author precisely because of these differences. Some scholars see the Odyssey as the work of Homer in later life, hence the slightly different subject and style compared to the Iliad. They also thought him the greatest ever writer and referred to him simply as 'the poet.' Homer drew on a long oral tradition of telling the Greek myths, and this heritage is seen in the repetition of epithets, introductory phrases, and recurring descriptive formulas. The Greeks thought its author Homer was from Chios or Ionia and credited him with both this book and its prequel the Iliad, the two masterpieces of Greek literature. The Odyssey, written sometime in the 8th century BCE (although some scholars would place it in the 6th century BCE), is an epic poem of more than 12,000 lines organised by scholars in Alexandria into 24 books. The Odyssey is the first, and for many, still the best page-turner ever written. The reader is in equal measures thrilled and exasperated, just like Odysseus himself, with every new setback and wills the hero to finally make it home. The Odyssey is such a timeless story not only for its terrifying monsters, rip-roaring action scenes, and wealth of information on Mediterranean geography and legends but also because it involves the irresistible plot line of a worthy hero trying desperately to get back to his city, his family, and his throne. For the Greeks, the story occurred sometime in the 13th century BCE during the Bronze Age, in a heroic golden era much better than today's sorry state of affairs. The mythical king sails back to Ithaca with his men after the Trojan War but is beset by all kinds of delays and misadventures where he battles monsters and storms but also resists (eventually) the advances of beautiful women in the knowledge that, all the while, his faithful wife Penelope is awaiting him. Homer's Odyssey is an epic poem written in the 8th century BCE which describes the long voyage home of the Greek hero Odysseus.
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