With the Bible and Shakespeare the Homeric poems

“With the Bible and Shakespeare, the Homeric poems are the best training for life. There is no good quality that they lack: manliness, courage, reverence for old age and the hospitable hearth; justice, piety, pity, a brave attitude toward life and death, are all conspicuous in Homer. ” --Andrew Lang

Odyssey 9 -12 Odysseus tells the Phaeacians tales of his travels Cave of Polyphemus the Cyclops

Book IX covers • Cicones in Thrace • Lotus Eaters • Cyclopes Blinding of Polyphemus the Cyclops

Lotus- Eaters Odysseus’ men ate the lotus and no longer thought of home—or anything else but eating more lotus. Odysseus had to drag them to the ships.

Land of the Cyclopes - lawless The episode highlights Odysseus’ cleverness. He gives Polyphemus a fake name, “No-one” (Ουδεις). But as his ships make their escape, he shouts his real name to the Cyclops – and Polyphemus calls on his father, Poseidon, to curse him.

Book X • Aeolus, Keeper of the Winds • Laestrygonians • Circe, the witch

Aeolos, keeper of the winds

Shore of Laestrygonians

Circe

Odysseus overcomes Circe with Hermes help. He stays with her as her lover for one year. Circe advises him to travel to the underworld to talk with Tiresias for help getting home.

Book XI • Visit to Hades to Speak with Tiresias

Approach of the dead to the pool of blood.

Ghosts drink from the blood of Odysseus’ sacrifice.

Book XII • • • Back to Circe Sirens Scylla & Charybdis Cattle of the Sun Scylla & Charybdis Isle of Calypso

Sirens

Sirens

Odysseus and the Sirens, Herbert James Draper 1909

Scylla and Charybdis

Stealing cattle of the sun

• Legend: 1 Troy 9 Underworld 2 Cicones 10 Sirens 3 Lotus Eaters 11 Scylla and Charybdis 4 Cyclopes 12 Helios 5 King Aiolos 13 Calypso 6 King Aiolos (again) 14 Phaeacians 7 Laistryonians 15 Ithaca 8 Circe Map of Odysseus’ travels in the Mediterranean