Jeanne Cannavo, age 11, of Staten Island, New York, for her question:
What exactly are the Odyssey and the Iliad?
Mankind is by nature a lover of noble, poetic tales. He cherishes the best of these creations and hands them down from generation to generation. Our literary works of the past few centuries are just a small swirling eddy in the age old river of historic litera¬ture.
We tend to think that our exciting tales of gang busting and high adventure are a brand new form of entertainment. It is true that many of them are set in the 20th century and that our hair raising westerns stem from the fairly recent pioneer days. But tales of this kind glorious and glamorous, fabulous and fantastic are nothing new. The Iliad and the Odyssey are similar tales of exciting adventure that were told and retold and fin¬ally written down about 28 centuries ago.
The ancient stories are based on events that occurred during and following the struggle for Troy, the city of Ilium that fell to the Greeks around 1184 B.C. They were handed down, perhaps as songs and poems, until about 800 B.C. Then some genius wrote them in the form of two epic poems. Scholars suspect that this genius was the Greek poet Homer. In any case, the magnificent works marked one of the high points of all literary history. The well told tales are translated into modern English and are just as inspiring as they were in their original ancient Greek.
The 24 books of the Iliad recount the deeds of the Greek hero Achilles, his sulky tantrum and his final defeat of the Trojan hero, Hector. The 24 books of the great Odyssey recount the fabulous deeds of the wily Greek hero Odysseus on his long voyage home from the Trojan war. There were marked differences between these ancient cultures and our 20th century world. But reading the stirring tales, we are amazed to discover that basic human nature has hardly changed at all.
Some of our modern heroes still throw tantrums and sulk in their tents like Achilles of old. Some of our daring explorers are as brave and tricky as the wily Odysseus. Nations still raid and plunder their neighbors as the Greek warriors sieged ancient Ilium. Parents still grieve for their children as King Priam of Troy grieved for Hector, his son. Wives still wait for their husbands as Penelope patient waited for the return of her adored Odysseus. The human heart still knows the worth of friendship and respects the noble qualities of courage and wisdom, honor and integrity.
One factor in the resounding epics may seem strange. The ancients believed or half¬ believed that they shared their lives with many different gods and demi gods. The tales. are interwoven with singing sirens and hostile monsters, with gods and goddesses and other supex¬people. But somehow they merely add starry glamour to the ancient epics.
The facts in the Iliad and the Odyssey are buried in antiquity and hard to separate from the fantasy. Certain scholars have claimed that no such historic events occurred and even that the great Homer never existed. But patient archeologists have unearthed the site of ancient Ilium, with evidence of its siege. And recent adventurers have traced what well be the voyage that Odysseus took on his wandering way home among the islands of the Mediterranean.