The Odyssey

            
            
             -Myths are traditional stories, usually of unknown origin, that were handed down from the earliest times.
             The Odyssey is a Greek epic myth supposedly written by Homer, a famed blind poet, who also wrote the Iliad.
             The Odyssey complements the poem Iliad (Ilium, which means Troy) that tells about the events that occurred in a period of 49 days in the final year of the Trojan War. Meanwhile, the Odyssey is an account of the 10-year journey of Odysseus (Ulysses; a Greek hero) back to his homeland- Ithaca- after the fall of Troy. This epic also portrays the voyage of Telemachus in the search of his father, Odysseus.
             The Odyssey is said to contain 24 books as the Iliad. .
             Both Iliad and the Odyssey were once considered as answers to questions of early history and religious doctrine.
             Though considered a myth and fictional, several discoveries were made proving the existence of some places mentioned in both poems. In the 1870's, Heinrich Schliemann discovered the ruins of Troy and was also able to explore the ruins of Mycenae (the city of the Greek king Agamemnon). Pylos, home of the Greek king Nestor, whom Telemachus interviewed in the epic, was found by C.W. Blegen in 1939 therefore strengthening the belief that Homer might've wrote history as he heard it told. Archeologists now believe that the Trojan War really took place- from 1194 B.C. - 1184 B.C.
             III- Setting:.
             -The adventures of Odysseus is said to have happened from 1184 B.C. - 1174 B.C. ten years from the close of the Trojan War. The epic begins in Troy (in Asia Minor, across the Aegean Sea from modern-day Greece) and its shores in the Aegean Sea to the island of the Lotus-eaters; Polyphemus, a Cyclops; to the island of King Aeolus, God of the Wind; island of the beautiful sorceress, Circe; to the island of Persephone- Erebus- an earthly doorway to the underworld; to the island of the Sun; the place of the nymph Calypso; and the Kingdom of the Phaeacians.