The two oldest surviving examples of Greek literature are the Iliadand the Odyssey , epic poems that describe the Trojan War, a conflict between the Greeks and the city of Troy that the epics say was fought almost years before the Common Era. I like The Odyssey better. It's a more entertaining read. The Illiad is pretty good, but it's a bit dry in places, and it goes on too long. The Iliad is much better in my opinion, the scope of time is minimized significantly but this makes for a much more thorough look into the characters and plot development.
The Iliad is the earlier work it was written first [1]. Also the events in the Odyssey are a direct consequence of what happens in the Iliad and the reader of the Odyssey is assumed to know the summary of the plot in the Iliad and who the main characters are. So it would come natural to read the Iliad first.
The most significant difference between the two poems, which entails other dissimilarities, is their overall theme and idea. While the Iliad is focused on the war, battles, and fights, the Odyssey is a tale about adventures, trials, and mythological creatures. Is Odysseus a God?
Odysseus was born on isle of Ithaca. Young Odysseus also liked to hunt with his dog, Argos, often going along with him. He is not a god, but he does have a connection with the gods on his mother's side of the family. While on one hunting trip, Odysseus was gored by a wild boar, an incident that left a scar.
When was the Trojan War? The ancient Greeks believed that Troy was located near the Dardanelles and that the Trojan War was a historical event of the 13th or 12th century BC, but by the midth century AD, both the war and the city were widely seen as non-historical. Who Won the Trojan War?
Then one of greek king Odysseus builds a horse, the famous Trojan Horse. And I am so bold as to believe that this characteristic is part of why these two epics surpassed all others and survived antiquity: any other epic from their period would have been redundant.
I spent the first decade or more of my study of Homer passionately dedicated to the Iliad. I started working on the Odyssey primarily because I found students responding to it more easily than to the Iliad. I also grew more interested in how that epic engaged with other traditions, specifically those of Thebes and the so-called epic cycle. But what really changed my relationship with the Odyssey was my own life.
The Iliad made sense to me. In , I taught that other epic three times. We also welcomed two children into the world and lost my father to a sudden sickness in between. There is nothing like losing a parent and becoming one in the same year to force a reconsideration of life. These years also marked half a decade in Texas and a decade since I left New England.
But I also started to see more in the epic itself. If the Iliad is a raging maelstrom of fire and blood, the Odyssey is a lit fuse which may or may not ever lead to a detonation. If the Iliad is loud and brash and confusing, the Odyssey is so subtle that many of us make the mistake of thinking it is simple.
It is extremely sensitive to human mental function , to how we create ourselves through narrative , and to the therapeutic function of stories. In antiquity, traditions of allegory were extremely influential among various approaches to the epics.
Among these, one of my favorite readings of the epics as complements frames one as a narrative concerned with the development and excellence of the body and the other about the virtues of the mind.
From these summaries it is clear that the Iliad is really about the bravery of the body while the Odyssey concerns the nobility of the soul. It is not right to fault the poet if he does not only present virtues in his poem, but includes as well weaknesses of spirit, pains, pleasures, fears and desires.
For it is necessary that the poet show not just noble characters but weak ones too—without these unexpected accomplishments do not appear—from all of these it is possible that an audience will choose the better ones. Of course, not all contrasts made between the two epics were positive. Pseudo -Longinus believed that the differences in the poem were results of the senility of the Iliad poet as he turned to the Odyssey.
For it is clear in many ways that this epic was composed second. Throughout the Odyssey we find episodes modeled on scenes from the Iliad , and, by Zeus, he apportions his heroes grief and misery as if these tales were long already known. Every duty is an important one so the possibility of slacking in any sector would be disastrous to his loved ones welfare and his own strict sense of honor. Because in Troy Hector is like a rock of stability to his family, citizens and the army who all cling onto his strength to keep from being washed away in a deluge of fear and misery from the ever present threat of the invaders.
Within this role of a protector, he often times faces diametrically opposite situations that serve as the great hands pulling Hector limb from limb. Despite Troy? The inheritance of this angry behavior was, in turn, the cause of his damaging relationships with his own family. Just as Troy endured his father? He overlooks Cory? Cory faces a battle inside him as he tries to form a unique identity separate from his father; however, Troy is resistant to Cory's attempts at individuality.
Troy's efforts to restrain Cory from being an individual character makes Cory take on drastic measures, such as verbal and physical violence, in an effort to become the person he wants to be.
You just scared I'm gonna be better than you, that's all" Wilson Sports acts as a barrier between them from ever becoming close, even though they are both interested in them. They encounter unexpected supernatural and unusual events, but they fight until the end. A good example is Theseus fighting with the Minotaur. According to Campbell, the heroes receive help from unexpected sources or rather divine sources when they are about to give up. When they return back home, no one recognizes them.
For instance, Odysseus could not be recognized on his return home even by his own wife Penelope. The character of Achilles, son of Peleus, in both battles has some similarities which are the violent, arrogant and uncontrollable like a beast. In general, the battle of Achilles with Hector and Cycnus had some similarities and differences. Both of the Trojan heroes are loyal to their country and both are Troy greatest warriors. Other than that, both versions of Achilles poses the arrogant and beast characteristic.
Hector kills Patroclus, as he thinks it was Achilles. Achilles joins the war the following day and sets out to kill Hector. After a one on one battle, Achilles successfully kills Hector. It is an obvious reason, why Hector is against the war is because he was fear this war will result in the fall of Troy, which is a feeling and thought that he has that repeats over the course of the Iliad.
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