The epic: Homer's Odyssey
English · 10th grade
What an epic is, and what a translation is
Today: An epic is a long poem that tells a hero's deeds in grand, formal language; this one opens as epics do, with a call to the Muse and the story begun near its end, and a translation is one writer's English for a work in another language, so the words your student quotes are the translators' own.
About 40 minutes to teach
Teach the idea
An epic is a long poem that tells the deeds of a hero in grand, formal language. The Odyssey is one of the oldest surviving works of Greek literature, and it goes under the name Homer, about whom nothing sure is known.
An epic opens with an invocation, a call to the Muse, a goddess of song, to tell the story. Then it begins in the middle of things: Troy has already fallen, and the hero is stuck far from home. The earlier adventures come later, told by Odysseus.
The opening also makes a claim. The hero's men died "through the blindness of their own hearts," and Zeus says the same of people in general: they blame the gods for sorrows they bring on themselves. The rest of the poem tests that claim.
A translation is one writer's English for a work in another language. S. H. Butcher and Andrew Lang published this prose translation in 1879, and the old words in it, like "thou hast" and "spake," are their English, not Homer's Greek.
Marcus reads:Book I, the invocation and the gods in council
336 words
Tell me, Muse, of that man, so ready at need, who wandered far and wide, after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy, and many were the men whose towns he saw and whose mind he learnt, yea, and many the woes he suffered in his heart upon the deep, striving to win his own life and the return of his company. Nay, but even so he saved not his company, though he desired it sore. For through the blindness of their own hearts they perished, fools, who devoured the oxen of Helios Hyperion: but the god took from them their day of returning. Of these things, goddess, daughter of Zeus, whencesoever thou hast heard thereof, declare thou even unto us.
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“Lo you now, how vainly mortal men do blame the gods! For of us they say comes evil, whereas they even of themselves, through the blindness of their own hearts, have sorrows beyond that which is ordained.
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And the goddess, grey-eyed Athene, answered him, saying: “O father, our father Cronides, throned in the highest;
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But my heart is rent for wise Odysseus, that hapless one, who far from his friends this long while suffereth affliction in a seagirt isle, where is the navel of the sea, a woodland isle, and therein a goddess hath her habitation, the daughter of the wizard Atlas, who knows the depths of every sea, and himself upholds the tall pillars which keep earth and sky asunder. His daughter it is that holds the hapless man in sorrow: and ever with soft and guileful tales she is wooing him to forgetfulness of Ithaca. But Odysseus yearning to see if it were but the smoke leap upwards from his own land, hath a desire to die. As for thee, thine heart regardeth it not at all, Olympian! What! did not Odysseus by the ships of the Argives make thee free offering of sacrifice in the wide Trojan land? Wherefore wast thou then so wroth with him, O Zeus?”
Do it together
1. Ask Marcus to tell you, in two or three sentences, what happens in Book 1: who is missing, who is waiting at home, and which god is trying to help.
2. Ask Marcus to find the first words of the poem, Say:
Tell me, Muse, of that man,
and say who is being asked to tell the story, and why a singer might begin by calling on someone else.3. Point to "thou hast" and "declare thou" in the passage. Ask Marcus whose words those are, Homer's or the translators', and why a careful writer says Say:
in Butcher and Lang's translation
when quoting it.4. Then go on to the activity together, with a pencil ready for the marking.
Activity
Together: Read it as a singer. You read the invocation aloud, slowly, as if to a room with no books. Marcus underlines every word that names the hero or the hero's trouble and circles the phrase that says why the hero's company died, then reads Athene's speech aloud. Talk it over: where does the poem begin the story, and what does Athene's speech tell a listener about where Odysseus is now? Finish with one question: why might a singer begin here rather than at the fall of Troy? For the parent, about this unit's reading: this is a war poem about getting home, and it does not look away. The Cyclops eats six of Odysseus's men and is blinded with a burning stake (Book 9); giants and a sea monster kill and eat men (Books 10 and 12); and Book 22 is the killing of the suitors, told plainly and at length, then the hanging of twelve serving women who had gone over to the suitors, and the killing of a goatherd. The lessons tell those killings in a sentence or two and print only short, plain lines of the violence. Love between men and women is named only in passing and never described: Calypso keeps Odysseus on the island as a husband, against the hero's will (Book 5), the suitors want Penelope, the hanged women are said to have lain with the suitors, and Odysseus and Penelope go to bed in a few plain words (Book 23); no lesson prints those lines. One clause in Book 10 says the sons and daughters of the keeper of the winds are married to one another. Households keep slaves as a matter of course. The gods, prayers and sacrifices are read as what the poem's people believed, not as the family's own faith.
Tip If Marcus wants the story told in order, ask what a listener would miss by hearing about the fall of Troy first. Beginning with the hero stuck on an island is what makes the listener ask how the hero got there.
On paper
Worksheet
The Epic Opens
The worksheet, as it prints
English · Worksheet
The Epic Opens
Answer each question in complete sentences, quoting the translation where it asks.
Name: Marcus
Score: ____ / 7
1. What is an epic?
2. Copy the first words of the poem, the call to the Muse.
3. Copy the words that say why the hero's company died.
4. Zeus says men blame the gods for their troubles. Copy his words and say in your own words what he claims.
5. Athene tells the gods where Odysseus is. Copy the words that say it, and say where in the hero's journey the poem begins.
6. Why do words like "thou hast" and "spake" sound old, and who chose them?
7. What would happen to the poem's opening if it began at the fall of Troy and told every adventure in order? Answer in a paragraph of four to six sentences.
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Your child’s year, written like this
Marcus isn’t real. Arbor writes these for your kid: their name, what they love, and where they actually are in each subject.