So near, and so far

Next, Odysseus visited Aeolus, the keeper of the winds. Aeolus welcomed the travelers. He gave Odysseus a bag containing all the winds so that he could sail wherever he wanted. Odysseus could return directly to Ithaca. As they approached the shore, Odysseus fell asleep. Hoping to find treasure, some of his men looked inside the bag Aeolus had

Who Was Homer?

Homer was a poet who lived around the 8th century BCE. He composed two great epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. These poems were about the Trojan War, which, if it happened, took place in the 12th or 13th centuries BCE. In Homer's time, poets composed their work in their heads and recited it aloud. Homer's poems were eventually written down and passed on to later generations. The ancient Greeks who lived after Homer regarded him with great respect. Homer's poems were treasured and were central to Greek culture. According to legend, Homer was born in a Greek settlement on the coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey), and was blind.

However, many modern experts think that poems attributed to Homer were actually written by more than one person and were probably changed and added to over time. Some people have even suggested that there was really no such person as Homer. We know so little about his period of history that the truth may never be discovered.

Right: In this fresco, Italian painter Alessandro Allori (1535—1607) depicts the meeting in Hades between Odysseus and the aged seer Tiresias.

Given Odysseus. The winds escaped and blew up a storm, the ships were blown away from Ithaca, and Odysseus was lost again. He returned to Aeolus to ask for more help, but Aeolus was angry that his gift had been misused, and he sent him away.

Odysseus next stopped at the land of the Laestrygonians, a fierce cannibal tribe. While Odysseus moored his own ship outside the bay, the captains of his other ships decided to sail into the harbor. The Laestrygonians attacked the ships, pelting them with rocks. Trapped in the harbor, they could not escape. Only Odysseus’s ship and crew survived.