Literature and History

As Homer's Odyssey, Books 17 through 24, reaches the violent climax of Odysseus' great adventures, the episode turns to consider Homer's worldview.

Homer's Iliad, covering Books 1 to 8, is called the Tyrannosaurus Rex of ancient epics, with one glittering, shiny bronze metal at the core of its 24 books.

The most famous part of Homer's Odyssey, Books 9 through 16, follows Odysseus through perilous adventures and begins to reveal a sense of who he is.

The violent and spellbinding middle books of Homer's Iliad, Books 9 through 16, leave the listener with questions about Homer's theology, in this episode of Literature and History.

Adventure, monsters, temptresses, and a whole lot of wine-dark Aegean: Homer's Odyssey, Books 1 through 8, and an introduction to the world of the poem, in this episode of Literature and History.

As Homer's Iliad, Books 17 through 24, reaches its spectacular climax, the episode asks a big question: who wrote it?

Nonnus' fifth-century Dionysiaca, the last epic from Greco-Roman antiquity to survive in full, tells of the wine god Dionysus' journey eastward, to India.

Heliodorus of Emesa, writing in the 3rd or 4th century CE, wrote the longest novel to survive from antiquity, an adventurous romance that reemerged into Europe in the 1500s.

In roughly the 160s CE, the Greek satirist Lucian of Samosata wrote A True Story, one of history's earliest surviving novels, with strong tinges of what the episode calls science fiction.

Euripides' The Bacchae, called one of the darkest and bloodiest works of Ancient Greek tragedy, concerns the spread of cult religions during the late Peloponnesian War.

The work of Sappho, Pindar and other remarkable Greek lyric poets raises questions about everything assumed about poetry, what it is and what it does.

Apollonius' Jason and the Argonauts, Books 1 and 2, follows Jason's journey to find the Golden Fleece and introduces the Greco-Egyptian writer, Apollonius of Rhodes.

The third of Sophocles' Theban Plays, Antigone is a timeless, dark story about a clash of wills and also a snapshot of the philosophical brawls of 5th-century BCE Athens.

In Apollonius' Jason and the Argonauts, Books 3 and 4, a mesmerizing Medea takes center stage at the Argonautica's end, dominating the epic's events.

Aeschylus' Oresteian trilogy, one of three: a terrible family curse, a wronged queen, and a Trojan War that was only the start of the bloodshed, in this episode of Literature and History.

Masks, choruses, huge prosthetic penises: before reading Sophocles, Euripides and company, the episode says, it is a good idea to know a bit about ancient Greek theater.

In the second part of Aeschylus' Oresteian trilogy, the infernal House of Atreus has witnessed almost every imaginable act of depravity, except for one.

Hesiod, called a grouchy farmer poet, wrote Works and Days before Aristotle, Socrates and Plato, and the poem still continues to fascinate.

In the third part of Aeschylus' Oresteian trilogy, Orestes is pursued all the way to Athens by the monstrous Furies: will he prevail, or be torn apart?

The second of Sophocles' Theban Plays, Oedipus at Colonus, rising out of the ashes of the Peloponnesian War, tells of a man who has lost everything but his own dignity.