Expanding Eyes: A Visionary Education

Between books 18 and 22, Achilles learns of the death of Patroclus and finally faces Hector, who runs from Achilles three times around the wall of Troy before the final showdown and mortal wound.

In book 9 of the Iliad, the turning point towards inevitable fatality, Achilles refuses to return to battle; in books 10 and 11, Odysseus and Diomedes kill the Trojan counter-spy Dolon, and three main Achaean warriors are injured.

Zeus begins fulfilling his promise to Thetis that the Achaeans will lose; giant Ajax fights Hector to prevent a rout, and Agamemnon promises Achilles a catalogue of gifts at a late-night emergency assembly.

The Iliad opens with its first word, Rage, as two men fight over a woman who is a war prize; the heroic code of honor forbids either from backing down for fear of public shame.

Homer's Iliad still carries the rich characterization and the themes of anger, revenge and justice; among its mysteries are whether there was a Homer, whether there was a Trojan War, and the real Troy, excavated by Heinrich Schliemann.

The wanderings of the Odyssey may hold mythical patterns of death and rebirth to a new identity, universally human patterns not limited to exceptional heroes.

Telemachus searches for his own identity in relation to his unknown parent in book 1 of the Odyssey, a timeless human dilemma set within the poem's complex structure.

In book 24, Zeus sends Iris to arrange for Priam to collect his son's body from Achilles; Priam's speech stirs new compassion in Achilles, and the poem's final line is given to the noble Hector.

Whether book 24 of the Odyssey is by another, inferior poet and has any artistic necessity, whether a total thematic pattern draws the poem's themes together, and the fascinating character of Odysseus in later literature.

Odysseus was given his name by his grandfather Autolycus, a thief, as the episode of the scar reveals; before the bow contest, strategies are set to even the odds against the suitors.

A brief recap of the first six episodes of the wanderings in Homer's Odyssey, including the Kikones, the Lotus Eaters, the Cyclops, Aeolus, the Lestrygonians and Circe, before the descent to Hades and meetings with Tiresias and Agamemnon.

Odysseus spends seven years captive on Calypso's paradisal island in the Odyssey; his most heroic act is choosing life and its trials over immortality.

Sarpedon's speech to Glaucus in book 12 affirms the heroic code of fighting for glory; Hera seduces Zeus to distract him, and the Trojans breach the ramparts to try to set fire to the ships.

Paris and Helen in book 6 of the Iliad are difficult, perhaps impossible, to judge, selfish or compelled by the will of the gods and fate; in book 7, Big Ajax duels Hector inconclusively, and Paris refuses to return Helen.

Diomedes, a quiet team player and noble alternative to Achilles, drives the Trojans back against their own walls; Hector meets his wife Andromache and their son Astyanax inside the walls of Troy.

Father and son reunite in the hut of Eumaios in a moving, psychologically complex scene; strategies are devised to make up for being outnumbered, and Odysseus meets his old dog Argos.

Athena puts Odysseus on a level of equality with herself as storyteller, liar and trickster; Eumaios the swineherd proves a genuinely good man of lower-class origins, and Telemachus returns to Ithaca.

Odysseus lands on Ithaca at the halfway point of the Odyssey, after wanderings that suggest death to an old identity and birth of a new one, involving a spectrum of female figures from ideal to evil.

Telemachus visits Menelaus and Helen in Lakedaimon and Nestor in Pylos, learning that becoming a man in the Odyssey takes more than being a warrior, including a lesson on the complexities of marriage.

Patroclus wears Achilles' armor into battle and is killed by Hector; Zeus ponders saving his son Sarpedon from fate but lets him die too, and Achilles' grief brings his mother Thetis from the ocean.

The suitors of the Odyssey humiliate themselves, unable to draw the bow that Odysseus shoots through twelve axe heads; after the battle and the hanging of the treacherous maids, Penelope tricks Odysseus before their reunion.

Greek tragedy was ritualized and stylized, with masked actors and a singing, dancing chorus; the opening scene of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound shows Prometheus bound to the rock by Hephaestus, in a play about limits.

The earlier generation of Classical heroes is closer to myth and folktale than the Trojan generation: the tragic death of Herakles, taken up to Mt. Olympus, Theseus facing the Minotaur in the labyrinth, and Daedalus and Icarus.

Greek mythology holds two generations of heroes; the Trojan War heroes look back to an earlier, greater generation, including the comic, happy-ending myth of Perseus, a trickster hero, and the tragic story of Herakles.

Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days give the myth of Pandora: Zeus's revenge against humanity is an artificially constructed woman given to Epimetheus, Prometheus's brother; she opens a jar and all evils fly out.

In the fourth act of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, a proud and defiant Prometheus faces Zeus's messenger Hermes; the lost final play of the trilogy featured his reconciliation with Zeus.

In the second act of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, Prometheus speaks to Oceanus, who counsels repentance and humble obedience; Prometheus responds with a speech in which fire becomes the fire of the creative mind.