The information in this Web site is not intended to supplant the reading of Homer's great epic. All study must begin with the text itself. Instead, I hope that this information will act as an aid (a nineteenth-century classicist might have used the lovely but archaic word "ancilla"), giving you direction for further reading and research.

The site is divided into the following parts:

• Homer. Here you'll find bibliographies listing poems about the poet, about the muse he addresses in the first line of the epic, and about the antecedents of the Trojan War in the Judgment of Paris, the Trojan Horse, and the character of Helen.
• Olympians. Zeus, Poseidon, Hermes, and Athena are not the only great gods present in the Odyssey, but they are the ones most central to the fate of Odysseus.
• Mortals. Here I have chosen the four human beings most interesting to subsequent authors, particularly poets: Odysseus, the protagonist; Penelope, weaver, weeper, and deceiver; Telemachus, wondering about his father and his own manhood; and Nausicaa, who presents a temptation for Odysseus different from Circe's but no less compelling.
• Other Gods and Monsters. These are the ones that children's picture books and grade B movies focus on: the Cyclops, the Lotus Eaters, the Sirens, Calypso, and Circe.
• Design. Some of the best poems written about characters and events from Homer don't fall easily into a single, narrow category. Here you'll find poems divided according to their location in the epic, Odyssey 1-12 and Odyssey 13-24, along with information about the structure of the epic as a whole and about the Odyssey in other arts.
• Resources. A bibliography of translations; a sample of the same passage from Book 10 in a variety of translations; bibliographies of retellings of the Odyssey for children; and recent criticism.

Illustrations. Art on this page and subsequent ones was chosen for the diversity of both its subjects and origins. The band decoration along the left margin of this page comes from an amphora (a large storage vessel) that shows the hero Achilles receiving his armor. His gorgon-decorated shield is of a particular Boeotian shape, an archaic design that painters often liked to bestow upon mythological heroes. All of the figures, except the man (Peleus? Phoenix?) standing behind Achilles are named. The fact that the vase has black figures painted onto a red clay background identifies the work as early, probably mid-sixth century B.C. The pelike (another large storage vessel) shown above on the right is about one hundred years later, from the period when vase painters had learned that painting in the background with black and leaving figures the color of the red clay allowed them to add fine details. This vase from the classical period, about the time of the building of the Parthenon, shows Apollo in his role as patron of the arts and a muse. Two of the dominant types of Greek vase painting take their names from these two contrasting techniques: black figure and red figure. By way of contrast, the picture of a cult statue of Olympian Zeus, above left, comes from a set of engravings for the Iliad and Odyssey completed in 1793 by the great English illustrator John Flaxman.