A reading tracker for the Greek classics
Follow Odysseus through 2,700 years of literature.
Nine stops, one reader — Homer to Sophocles to Dante to Tennyson, ending with the historian who read them all.
Odysseus Through the Ages · the nine stops
- IHomer, the refresh — Iliad & Odyssey, the essential booksc. 700 BC
- IIThe immediate aftermath — Sophocles, Ajax & Philoctetes5th c. BC
- IIIThe Trojan perspective — Virgil, Aeneid II · III · VI19 BC
- IVThe conquered speak — Euripides, The Trojan Women415 BC
- VThe medieval reinvention — Dante, Inferno XXVIc. 1320
- VIThe Victorian Odysseus — Tennyson, “Ulysses”1833
- VIIThe historian — M. I. Finley, The World of Odysseus1954
…with optional detours through Aeschylus, Ovid, and Graves for the unhurried.
Then keep going: every surviving Greek play, both epics, one lifetime. Of the roughly 450 plays these five men wrote, 44 remain — plus two epics. The tragedy is the loss; the good news is the syllabus.
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Odysseus is having a cultural moment again this year. He tends to, every few centuries — this time, read along.