Why you don’t really get Homer

When you hear the phrase “Ancient Greece”, what are the first words that come into your head? The names of a few great thinkers, perhaps: Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Zeno? Or maybe some grand abstractions: democracy, philosophy, geometry, reason? If so, then you are in good company: if there is one thing everyone knows about the Greeks, it is that they forged the great systems of knowledge and philosophy upon which all Western thought depends. But this is precisely the conception you ought to put out of your mind if, like thousands of others this week, you decide to go to the cinema and watch The Odyssey. The Odyssey does not come from the same world as the other pinnacles of Greek culture we all know and love and tweet about. For one thing, it is much older: the events it recounts take pl