The Odyssey Lesson Plan

The ancient Greeks hailed Homer as their greatest poet. Although the Greeks recognized other poets who composed in Greek before Homer, no texts from these earlier poets survived. Perhaps they were lost, or perhaps they were never written down. Homer himself was probably on the cusp between the tradition of oral poetry and the new invention of written language. Texts of the Iliad and the Odyssey existed from at least the sixth century BCE, and probably for a considerable span of time before that. These two great epic poems also had a life in performance: through the centuries, professional artists made their living by reciting Homer, performing the great epics for audiences that often...