In the following essay, Spires focuses on the human element and scale of the Odyssey as an important reason for its continued popularity.
As Peter Jones remarks in his 1991introduction to E. V. Rieu's translation of the poem, "The Odyssey-the return of Odysseus from Troy to reclaim his threatened home on Ithaca-is a superb story, rich in character, adventure and incident. . . and making the household, rather than the battlefield, the centre of its world" (p. xi). That, I think, goes a long way toward explaining its perennial appeal, even some 3,000 years after it was written.
That is not to say that the Iliad, Homer's other epic poem, is not also a superb story: just a different kind of story. If Homer's works were operas, the Iliad would be something out.....
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