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A close encounter with
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
great stories,

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but each is just one episode
in The Odyssey,

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a 12,000 line poem spanning years of
Ancient Greek history, myth, and legend.

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How do we make sense 
of such a massive text

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that comes from and tells of a world
so far away?

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The fact that we can read The Odyssey
at all is pretty incredible,

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as it was composed before the Greek
alphabet appeared in the 8th century BCE.

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It was made for listeners 
rather than readers,

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and was performed by oral poets
called rhapsodes.

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Tradition identifies its author
as a blind man named Homer.

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

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The earliest mentions of him occur
centuries after his era.

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And the poems attributed to him
seem to have been changed

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and rearranged many times
by multiple authors

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before finally being written down
in their current form.

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In fact, the word rhapsode means
stitching together,

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as these poets combined existing stories,
jokes, myths, and songs

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into a single narrative.

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To recite these massive epics live,

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rhapsodes employed a steady meter,

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along with pneumonic devices,

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like repetition of memorized passages
or set pieces.

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These included descriptions of scenery
and lists of characters,

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and helped the rhapsode keep
their place in the narrative,

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

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Because most of the tales were familiar
to the audience,

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

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At some point, the order 
became set in stone

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

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

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it helps to have some background
before jumping in.

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The Odyssey itself is a sequel to Homer's
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
both poems, it's this:

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

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

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prone to jealousy and grudges
of epic proportions.

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

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or excessive pride in believing themselves
superior to the gods.

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The desire to please gods was so great

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that the Ancient Greeks traditionally
welcomed all strangers

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into their homes with generosity

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for fear that strangers 
might be gods in disguise.

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This ancient code of hospitality
was called xenia.

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It involved hosts providing their guests
with safety, food, and comfort,

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and the guests returning the favor
with courtesy, and gifts if they had them.

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Xenia has a significant role 
in The Odyssey,

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where Odysseus in his wanderings
is the perpetual guest,

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

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The Odyssey recounts all 
of Odysseus's years of travel,

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but the narrative begins in medias res,
in the middle of things.

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Ten years after the Trojan War,
we find our hero trapped on an island,

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

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Because he's angered the sea god Poseidon
by blinding his son, a cyclops,

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Odysseus's passage home has been
fraught with mishap after mishap.

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With trouble brewing at home
and gods discussing his fate,

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Odysseus begins the account
of those missing years to his hosts.

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One of the most fascinating things
about The Odyssey

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is the gap between how little we know
about its time period

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and the wealth of detail the text
itself contains.

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Historians, linguists, and archeologists

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have spent centuries 
searching for the ruins of Troy

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and identifying which islands
Odysseus visited.

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Just like its hero, the 24-book epic
has made its own long journey

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through centuries of myth and history
to tell us its incredible story today.