Odysseus Through the Ages

nine stops·nothing logged yet·I under way·the whole of it still ahead of you

1. I
   Stage I. Homer, the refreshc. 700 BCreading now

   • ○ The Iliad — Books 6, 9, 22, 24 — the wall, the embassy, the duel, the ransom: Odysseus the persuader. (unread)
   • ○ The Odyssey — Book 5; Books 9–12; 13; 21–23 — the raft, the lies, the bow: the homecoming in full. (unread)
2. II
   Stage II. The immediate aftermathSophocles · 5th c. BCahead

   • ○ Ajax — the armor goes to Odysseus; note his surprising compassion at the end. (unread)
   • ○ Philoctetes — the single most important post-Homer text on Odysseus. (unread)
3. III
   Stage III. The Trojan perspectiveVirgil · 19 BCahead

   • ○ The Aeneid — Books 2, 3, 6 — Ulixes, the enemy: the horse from the other side of the wall. (unread)
4. IV
   Stage IV. The conquered speakEuripides · 415 BCahead

   • ○ The Trojan Women — what victory looks like to the women left on the beach. (unread)
5. V
   Stage V. The medieval reinventionDante · c. 1320ahead

   • ○ Inferno — Canto XXVI — Odysseus sails past the pillars, and Dante damns him for it. (unread)
6. VI
   Stage VI. The Victorian OdysseusTennyson · 1833ahead

   • ○ Ulysses — seventy lines. Read it twice — once for the story, once asking whether Tennyson is praising him. (unread)
7. VII
   Stage VII. The historianM. I. Finley · 1954ahead

   • ○ The World of Odysseus — read this one last, then reread Book 9 and see what changed. (unread)