ODYSSEY

Homer wrote two important ancient Greek epic poems, one of which is credited to him. It is one of the oldest pieces of literature that is still frequently read today. The poem is divided into 24 books, same like the Iliad. It tells the storey of Odysseus, the Greek hero and king of Ithaca, and his return home after the Trojan War. After the war, which lasted ten years, he embarked on a ten-year expedition, during which he faced numerous dangers and lost all of his crew members. Odysseus was presumed dead during his absence, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus had to deal with a group of rowdy suitors vying for Penelope's hand in marriage.

The Odyssey was written in Homeric Greek about the 8th or 7th century BCE and had become part of the Greek literary canon by the mid-6th century BCE. Homer's authorship of the poem was not questioned in antiquity, but modern scholarship assumes that the Iliad and Odyssey were written independently, and that the stories themselves arose from a long oral tradition. Due to widespread illiteracy, the poetry was read rather than read and was performed by an aoidos or rhapsode.