same struggles. In Homers world, our main character, Odysseus, is the brave king of Ithaca who on countless occasions displays his cunningness, strength, and loyalty like many other great heroes do. On the surface, he may appear to be grand and powerful, but he holds deep emotions of pride, love, and melancholy. In the Odyssey, written by Homer, our
Through its almost three millennia of existence, Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey , has been a source of insight into the principles of Ancient Greek civilization and culture. The poem’s themes reveal different traditional values that make up the foundation of Ancient Greek society. One of the motifs which The Odyssey examines is the nature of thumos , or heroic courage. In this essay, I will argue that the Iliadic goal of glory through thumos is slowly overcome by a newfound Odysseadic objective to
Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey begins at a point equivalent to the middle of a horrific basketball season. The team has yet to have one victory, more than half the men are down for the count, and the high hopes everyone started with have officially been demolished. Odysseus is on his journey home from the Trojan War a hero when he faces numerous hardships that eventually keep him from his homeland of Ithaca for twenty years. When the despairing Odysseus is introduced he has lost his entire crew and
The Odyssey, by Homer, is an epic poem following the journey of the legendary Odysseus on his journey home from the Trojan War. Odysseus is a combination of the self-made, self-assured man and the embodiment of the standards and mores of his culture. He is favored by the gods and respected and admired by the mortals. Even the wrath of Poseidon does not keep him from his homecoming. He is confident that he represents virtue even when a modern audience might not be so sure. But his confidence is what
In The Aeneid of Virgil, Virgil set out to make the argument that the old-style hero exhibited in Homer’s epics The Iliad and The Odyssey is not sufficient for the modern world (which at the time was Rome during the first century B.C.E). He attempted to create a hero that encompassed the best of both Achilles and Odysseus while also evolving the meaning of hero beyond that of active accomplishments. From the very beginning, Virgil establishes Aeneas as a hero not known for his warring antics but