9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
A close encounter with[br]the man-eating giant,

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a sorceress who turns men into pigs,

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a long-lost king taking back his thrown.

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On their own, any of these make[br]great stories,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but each is just one episode[br]in The Odyssey,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
a 12,000 line poem spanning years of[br]Ancient Greek history, myth, and legend.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
How do we make sense [br]of such a massive text

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that comes from and tells of a world[br]so far away?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The fact that we can read The Odyssey[br]at all is pretty incredible,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as it was composed before the Greek[br]alphabet appeared in the 8th century BCE.

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It was made for listeners [br]rather than readers,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and was performed by oral poets[br]called rhapsodes.

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Tradition identifies its author[br]as a blind man named Homer.

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But no one definitively knows whether[br]he was real or legendary.

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The earliest mentions of him occur[br]centuries after his era.

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And the poems attributed to him[br]seem to have been changed

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and rearranged many times[br]by multiple authors

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
before finally being written down[br]in their current form.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In fact, the word rhapsode means[br]stitching together,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as these poets combined existing stories,[br]jokes, myths, and songs

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
into a single narrative.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
To recite these massive epics live,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
rhapsodes employed a steady meter,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
along with pneumonic devices,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
like repetition of memorized passages[br]or set pieces.

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These included descriptions of scenery[br]and lists of characters,

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and helped the rhapsode keep[br]their place in the narrative,

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just as a chorus or bridge of a song[br]helps us to remember the next verses.

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Because most of the tales were familiar[br]to the audience,

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it was common to see the sections[br]of the poem out of order.

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At some point, the order [br]became set in stone

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and the story was locked into place[br]as the one we read today.

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But since the world has changed[br]a bit in the last several thousand years,

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it helps to have some background[br]before jumping in.

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The Odyssey itself is a sequel to Homer's[br]other famous epic, The Illiad,

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which tells the story of the Trojan War.

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If there's one major theme uniting[br]both poems, it's this:

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do not, under any circumstances,[br]incur the wrath of the gods.

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The Greek Pantheon is a dangerous mix[br]of divine power and human insecurity,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
prone to jealousy and grudges[br]of epic proportions.

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And many of the problems faced by humans[br]in the poems are caused by their hubris,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
or excessive pride in believing themselves[br]superior to the gods.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The desire to please gods was so great

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that the Ancient Greeks traditionally[br]welcomed all strangers

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into their homes with generosity

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
for fear that strangers [br]might be gods in disguise.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
This ancient code of hospitality[br]was called xenia.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It involved hosts providing their guests[br]with safety, food, and comfort,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the guests returning the favor[br]with courtesy, and gifts if they had them.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Xenia has a significant role [br]in The Odyssey,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
where Odysseus in his wanderings[br]is the perpetual guest,

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while in his absence, his clever wife[br]Penelope plays a non-stop host.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The Odyssey recounts all [br]of Odysseus's years of travel,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but the narrative begins in medias res,[br]in the middle of things.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Ten years after the Trojan War,[br]we find our hero trapped on an island,

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still far from his native Ithaca and[br]the family he hasn't seen for 20 years.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Because he's angered the sea god Poseidon[br]by blinding his son, a cyclops,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Odysseus's passage home has been[br]fraught with mishap after mishap.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
With trouble brewing at home[br]and gods discussing his fate,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Odysseus begins the account[br]of those missing years to his hosts.

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One of the most fascinating things[br]about The Odyssey

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is the gap between how little we know[br]about its time period

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the wealth of detail the text[br]itself contains.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Historians, linguists, and archeologists

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
have spent centuries [br]searching for the ruins of Troy

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and identifying which islands[br]Odysseus visited.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Just like its hero, the 24-book epic[br]has made its own long journey

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
through centuries of myth and history[br]to tell us its incredible story today.