The Odyssey

Homer Was Probably Born Around 725Bc On The Coast Of Asia Minor, Now The Coast Of Turkey, But Then Really A Part Of Greece. Homer Was The First Greek Writer Whose Work Survives. He Was One Of A Long Line Of Bards, Or Poets, Who Worked In The Oral Tradition. Homer And Other Bards Of The Time Could Recite, Or Chant, Long Epic Poems. Both Works Attributed To Homer - The Iliad And The Odyssey - Are Over Ten Thousand Lines Long In The Original. Homer Must Have Had An Amazing Memory But Was Helped By The Formulaic Poetry Style Of The Time. In The Iliad Homer Sang Of Death And Glory, Of A Few Days In The Struggle Between The Greeks And The Trojans. Mortal Men Played Out Their Fate Under The Gaze Of The Gods. The Odyssey Is The Original Collection Of Tall Traveller'S Tales. Odysseus, On His Way Home From The Trojan War, Encounters All Kinds Of Marvels From One-Eyed Giants To Witches And Beautiful Temptresses. His Adventures Are Many And Memorable Before He Gets Back To Ithaca And His Faithful Wife Penelope. We Can Never Be Certain That Both These Stories Belonged To Homer. In Fact 'Homer' May Not Be A Real Name But A Kind Of Nickname Meaning Perhaps 'The Hostage' Or 'The Blind One'. Whatever The Truth Of Their Origin, The Two Stories, Developed Around Three Thousand Years Ago, May Well Still Be Read In Three Thousand Years' Time. Barry B. Powell Was Born In Sacramento, Ca, In 1942. He Studied At Berkeley And Harvard And Taught For 34 Years At The University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Where He Is Bascom-Halls Professor Of Classics Emeritus. He Is Celebrated For His Argument Tying The Creation Of The Greek Alphabet To The Recording Of The Homeric Poems, But Is Also Well Known For His Textbooks On Greek Myth And Greek History And His Work On The History Of Writing. He Has Published Translations Of The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, And The Poems Of Hesiod. He Has Published Original Poetry, Many Fictional Works, Including An Academic Mystery A Land Of Slaves, A Memoir Ramses Reborn, And The Illustrated Tales Of The Trojan War. My Name Is Zameer Ahmed. The Main Purpose Of My Work Is That I Should Entertain The People.