Odysseus' reliance on his wit and wiliness for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces, during his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, is at once the timeless human story and an individual test of moral endurance. If The Iliad is the worlds greatest war story, then The Odyssey is literatures greatest evocation of every mans journey through life. It then looks at the story of the poem itself and its major theme of Achilles anger, in particular in the first seven lines. It begins with the wider cycle of myths of which the Iliad was a part. So begins Rober Fagles magnificent translation of The Odyssey, which Jasper Griffin in The New York Review of Books hails as 'a distinguished achievement.' If The Iliad is the world's greatest war epic, then The Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of everyman's journey through life. This free course, Introducing Homers Iliad, focuses on the epic poem telling the story of the Trojan War. The complementarity extends even further: between the two of them, these two. Renowned classicist Bernard Knox observes in his superb introduction that although the violence of The Iliad is gripping and relentless, it coexists with both images of civilized life and a poignant yearning for peace. Just as the central heroes of the Iliad and Odyssey are complementary, so too are the epics that centralize them. The Iliad is a timeless poem that still vividly conveys the horror and heroism of men and gods wrestling with towering emotions and battling amidst devastation and destruction, as it moves inexorably to its wrenching, tragic conclusion. From the raging battles outside the walls of Troy to the strangely surreal ten years it takes Odysseus to journey home, these bold re-envisionings of Homers.

Thus begins the stirring story of the Trojan War and the rage of Achilles that has gripped listeners and readers for 2,700 years. The Iliad (/ l i d / Ancient Greek:, romanized: Iliás, Attic Greek: 'a poem about Ilium') is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer.

The iliad and the odyssey are