Fast forward around four hundred
years to find Homer, a blind Greek-speaking poet living in Ionia (Turkey),
earning his keep by reciting a larger-than-life poem about heroes and fair
Helen at ill-fated Troy. After the city
falls, the Greeks make their way back
home. Odysseus has so much misfortune that the poet composes a second
epic to cover his ten-year trip back to
Ithaca. While Homer included some
very reliable details, he also filled in
the gaps with tidbits from his own
time and a big dash of imagination. He
was, after all, making a living in the
storytelling trade.
By the 1800s most scholars dismissed
Homer, Troy, and the whole gang as pure
poppycock, asserting that all of it had been
invented by some ancient committee.
Pu;ng their scholarly pipes, they wrote
o; a lot of ancient literature as a ;gment
of antique imagination. Luckily Heinrich
Schliemann, a German publicity-loving
entrepreneur, got in touch with Frank Calvert, who ;rmly believed he was living at
the actual site of Troy. ;ese two began the
tradition of using archaeology to vindicate ancient literature while pipe-pu;ng
scholars ate crow.
;e Romans believed the Trojan War
was their starting point. According to
tradition, Rome was founded exactly
438 years a;er the fall of Troy (Velleius
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With a little background
in place, most quickly
learn that this three
thousand-year-old
literature still o;ers food
for thought and potent
words for modern ears.
Paterculus 8. 5). One of her founding fathers, Aeneas, would lead a gang of Trojan
refugees from the burning city and settle
them near what would eventually become
a point of argument for Rome’s namesake,
Romulus and brother Remus. Be sure to
add Virgil’s Aeneid to your reading list if
you want the whole epic picture.
;e heroes of Homer’s epics lived by
a code that would guide behavior from
Homer to Alexander the Great. Uninformed readers might conclude the Trojan
War was about stolen Helen or lost love,
but nothing could be further from the
truth. It was the heroic code that would
drive hundreds of Greek ships against
Troy, compel Achilles to sit angrily in
his tent, force best friend Patroclus to
take Achilles’ place on the battle;eld and
push an army to blockade a city for a full
decade.
C. M. Bowra summarized the heroic
code this way: “;e great man is he who,
being endowed with superior qualities of
body and mind, uses them to the utmost
and wins the applause of his fellows because he spares no e;ort and shirks no
risk in his desire to make the most of his
gi;s and to surpass other men in his exercise of them.”
1
;e Romans would add their own ;air
to the heroic code. Virgil’s Aeneas, for
example, embodied Roman pietas, a virtue which admonished each of us to put
God, community, and family ;rst.
While monsters and swashbuckling
adventures keep the reader happy, Homer’s Odyssey is teaching the big life lesson
that we are each de;ned by our generosity to strangers. From prince to farmhand
the rule is the same: if you treat strangers with kindness, you’ll be remembered
well. Hero Odysseus also teaches us to
handle trouble with long-su;ering patience so that we’ll eventually make it
home safely.
Ancient epics are an important addition to your reading list. ;ey are a gold
mine for further thought and discussion if
we don’t insist our kids start on them too
young. I recommend waiting until your
reader is in the critical thinking stage ( 13+)
because of the weighty issues presented in
these stories. Parents will enjoy reading the
epics with your junior or senior high student. My favorite translations are by Robert
Fagles and Stanley Lombardo.
Originally performed from memory
and accompanied by a stringed instrument, these tales were the blockbusters of
the ancient world and the backbone of ancient Classical education. I leave you with
the important words of Penelope, wife of
Odysseus, spurring us on to generosity:
“For how would you ever ;nd out, stranger, whether or not I surpass all other women in presence of mind, if you sit down to
dinner squalid and disheveled here in my
hall? Our lives are short. A hard-hearted
man is cursed while he lives and reviled
in death. But a good-hearted man has his
fame spread far and wide by the guests he
has honored, and men speak well of him
all over the earth.”
2
Amy Barr is a homeschool mother of three
and a full-time instructor of other home-educated students as co-founder of ;e
Lukeion Project,
www.lukeion.org. As an
archaeologist, she spent more than a decade
excavating sites throughout the Mediterranean and teaching Classics at the college
level. Now she and her husband, Regan
Barr, o;er their expertise through live on-line workshops and college preparatory high
school courses about the Classical world,
Latin, and Greek. ;e two of them lead annual family tours to the Mediterranean and
invite you to join them for a tour of the best
sites in Greece, May 2012.
Endnotes:
1. C. M. Bowra, ;e Greek Experience, New York:
1957, pp. 20–21.
2. Stanley Lombardo, trans., Odyssey, Hackett Publishing Co., 2000. 19.359–367.
www.; eHomeschoolMagazine.com