{"id":9790,"date":"2026-08-20T16:18:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T14:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/serwisnaukowy.uw.edu.pl\/en\/?p=9790"},"modified":"2026-09-02T16:19:43","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T14:19:43","slug":"the-iliad-and-the-odyssey-homer-in-our-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/serwisnaukowy.uw.edu.pl\/en\/the-iliad-and-the-odyssey-homer-in-our-times\/","title":{"rendered":"The Iliad and the Odyssey: Homer in our times"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After decades of a false sense of stability, the world has once again been caught off guard by a series of upheavals: a pandemic, economic turmoil, and a bloody war on Europe\u2019s borders. Living in a time of historical uncertainty, when a sense of impending disaster has become the new normal, we search for a language capable of giving a name to the fears that consume us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ancient Greeks faced a similar challenge at the dawn of their civilization, as they built their first poleis<\/em>. They, too, had their own ways of \u2013 as we would say today \u2013 processing the trauma of war, mourning, and a leadership crisis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to read Homer<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

To explore how reading Homer can help us understand the world around us, Prof. Marek W\u0119cowski brings together three perspectives: that of an ancient historian studying social relations in archaic Greece, that of a philologist analyzing the poems, and that of a scholar of Homer\u2019s reception, tracing the history of The Iliad<\/em> and The Odyssey<\/em> from Antiquity to the present day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOriginally, it was supposed to be a very short book, but when I sat down to write it, I realized that I was actually writing three different books. On the one hand, I\u2019m writing about Homer as a historian of Antiquity \u2013 as someone trying to extract information from Homer about the historical context in which his poems were written and what historical value they might hold for us.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt the same time, I wanted to write about Homer as an artist. You see, after World War II, scholarship was dominated by a school of thought that viewed Homer\u2019s poems as the product of a certain tradition, with a strong tendency to obscure the poet or even to discard the idea of a creative artist in favor of the influence of the oral literary tradition in Greece.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd third, I always had the thought in mind that I would like to write about Homer in the context of what is happening today with ancient literature and how it can help us interpret a world that has accelerated rapidly and transformed from a place that was quite pleasant, comfortable, and warm for some into a dangerous world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese three ideas seemed to me to be compatible, provided that I began the story in the present day, starting by showing how Homer was used during historical cataclysms, world wars, and earlier,\u201d explains Prof. Marek W\u0119cowski.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A hostage and a Renaissance master\u2019s mistake<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It turns out that many of our familiar ideas about Homer are rooted in historical misunderstandings \u2013 or translators\u2019 mistakes. Take Pandora\u2019s box. In Hesiod\u2019s poem, it was actually a large clay jar (pithos<\/em>) \u2013 the image Prof. Marek W\u0119cowski uses to open his book. The word \u201cbox\u201d itself came from a mistake by the Renaissance scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Homer may not have been a single person. The Greek word hom\u0113ros<\/em> usually meant \u201chostage,\u201d while the blindness attributed to him may have been nothing more than legend. \u201cHomerids\u201d (\u201csons of Homer\u201d), meanwhile, was a collective name for a guild of professional singers from the island of Chios.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Homer who exists in our minds and in every era is a little different, both for the poets and writers who read him and for scholars. And this stems from various events that have shaped Homer and our perception of him over the centuries, right up to the present day,\u201d comments Prof. W\u0119cowski.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the poems themselves raise another question. Their analysis has led some scholars to reject the single-author theory and argue that The Iliad<\/em> and The Odyssey<\/em> were written by different poets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Epimetheus opening Pandora’s box, by Giulio Bonasone. Source: public domain \/ Pithos from Crete, ca. 675 B.C. Louvre. Source: public domain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Homer and his guide, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1874. Source: public domain. \/ Marble bust of Homer. Roman copy based on a Greek original from the Hellenistic period; artist unknown. Photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen \/ Wikimedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From the trenches of Gallipoli to PTSD therapy<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

One revealing chapter is the story of how Germany\u2019s elite ideologically appropriated the epic. After their defeats in the Napoleonic Wars, the Romantics proclaimed the medieval Song of the Nibelungs<\/em> the \u201cGerman Iliad,\u201d looking to it for a spirit of national unity. In 1815, Prussian youths went off to war with pocket editions of the Nibelungenlied<\/em> in their backpacks. In 1945, the last SS division bore the name \u201cNibelungen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turning to Homer in wartime is more than a literary escape. In 1915, on the island of Imbros, British poet and soldier Patrick Shaw-Stewart gazed toward the shores of Troy near Gallipoli and wrote poems in the trenches, addressing Achilles directly and asking what death on the battlefield meant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Australian soldiers in the trenches during the Gallipoli Campaign, April 1915. Photo: Henry Charles Marshall. Source: New South Wales State Library. \/ Patrick Shaw-Stewart (1888\u20131917). Source: public domain.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The Triumph of Achilles, fresco by Franz von Matsch.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Kladderadatsch, No. 14, April 4, 1915. Source: Heidelberg University Library.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Homer in modern warfare<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Turning to classical literature in times of crisis is not necessarily an escape from reality. Ukrainian writer Oleksandr Myched, in his book The Language of War<\/em>, notes that while literature cannot save us, invaders understand the threat it poses \u2013 which is why they destroy libraries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Szczepan Twardoch, a Polish writer, draws on the ancient story of Princess Polyxena to portray the suffering of women during Russia\u2019s aggression against Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukrainian publishers are producing translations of Jonathan Shay\u2019s Achilles in Vietnam<\/em> and Odysseus in America<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Homeromancy<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In ancient times, Homer also had a distinctly practical side. People could consult his poems for guidance and even \u2013 by reciting certain passages \u2013 avoid an unwanted pregnancy. Individual verses were also inscribed on amulets believed to protect against the effects of alcohol consumption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn many cultures, divination is practiced using texts of high status, usually sacred texts such as the Bible. This practice dates back even further to Greco-Roman Antiquity, when, for example, divination using Latin literature \u2013 specifically Virgil\u2019s Aeneid<\/em> \u2013 was very popular for a long time. In Greek literature, divination using Homer can take several different forms. The simplest is exactly like divination using Virgil or the Bible: we open the book at random, read a single verse, and, based on its interpretation, imagine what it tells us about the life situation we find ourselves in. There is also a magical, more practical application, where a particular verse is meant to help us avoid getting drunk or becoming pregnant,\u201d explains the researcher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond simply opening the book at random and treating the chosen verse as an omen, there was a precise technique preserved on Greek papyri from Egypt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are also more specialized methods, known from several surviving papyri from Greco-Roman Egypt. This is a specific divination technique in which someone selected 6x6x6 verses from Homer and grouped them. Then, by rolling a six-sided die three times, we obtain a sequence of numbers that allows us to find, in a table on a very long papyrus, the appropriate verse, which will serve as a guide to what we should do in the current situation. There\u2019s no reason why we shouldn\u2019t use this method today as well. Of course, with due caution,\u201d explains Prof. W\u0119cowski.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philological madness<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In the 19th century, classical philology became obsessed with tracking down so-called interpolations \u2013 later additions to the poems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAn interpolation \u2013 that is, a foreign insertion into a literary work \u2013 arose when someone decided that only a correction or the addition of a line in The Odyssey<\/em> or The Iliad<\/em> would allow us to better understand the context or enrich the narrative. There are instances of major interpolations intended to introduce entirely new meanings that were important to someone decades or centuries later. We are familiar with many such instances, as are scholars studying the literature of other eras, such as the Renaissance. But ordinary readers of literary works often forget just how much forgery exists in the history of European literature \u2013 whether it be entire works attributed to great authors many hundreds of years later, or instances of interpolation that someone introduced long ago. There are a great many such instances in Homer,\u201d asserts Prof. W\u0119cowski.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In academic circles, it was even joked that no self-respecting German professor would sit down to breakfast unless he found at least one new interpolation in Homer. Although the method was overused, it allows modern historians to identify later sections of the text, such as the tenth book of The Iliad<\/em> (the so-called Doloneia) or modifications to the ending of The Odyssey<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe know for certain that the so-called tenth book of The Iliad<\/em> is a later addition. There are clear differences in artistic sensibility, vocabulary, poetic imagery, and the structural features of this book, all of which indicate that it is a later addition. The second, though more controversial, is the ending of The Odyssey. Here, too, some scholars believe that large sections \u2013 beginning with the moment when Penelope recognizes Odysseus and they go to bed \u2013 are inauthentic. Others believe that the entire work is authentic, while still others think that this inauthentic final section is much shorter. Here, too, we can be certain that something is amiss, but in this case, we may be dealing not so much with an interpolation as with an editorial revision or a change introduced later, perhaps by the poet himself. So it\u2019s not so much an interpolation as a self-correction,\u201d explains Prof. W\u0119cowski.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan, 2026. Photo: United International Pictures<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Nolan for our times<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Christopher Nolan\u2019s latest adaptation of The Odyssey<\/em> is proof that Homer can still ignite cultural and ideological debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even before the film reached theaters, it came under fire from ultra-conservative circles. Among their targets was the casting of a Black actress as Helen and a transgender actor as Achilles. The latter turned out to be nothing more than a rumor. The actress\u2019s role, meanwhile, proves more complex than expected, but the new Helen has once again become a source of controversy \u2013 just as she was in Antiquity. Nolan has thus found a subversive way to play with the Greek tale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The director also gives us more than the classic Hollywood happy ending. Instead, he opts for an ending drawn from a lesser-known Greek tradition. Odysseus\u2019s westward journey is itself a reference to the direction of Greek colonization in the period when The Odyssey<\/em> was written. In this way, Nolan\u2019s film becomes a story of the destruction of the old order \u2013 its Trojan horse echoing the atomic bomb in his earlier film Oppenheimer<\/em> \u2013 and the painful birth of an entirely new world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBoth the ancients and we today can read The Odyssey<\/em> in two ways. If we look at it from a certain distance, as Nolan intended to some extent, from a historical perspective \u2013 not to reconstruct the history of the Late Bronze Age, but to try to relate The Odyssey<\/em> to our own contexts, to our world \u2013 we can treat it as a story about the end of an era, the collapse of a certain world, as well as a beginning \u2013 the dawn of a new world. And this is how Homer\u2019s poems have been interpreted many times in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019d say that Nolan is trying to have his cake and eat it, so to speak. He wants to present The Odyssey<\/em> simultaneously as a story of collapse and of a new beginning. And we must remember that when Odysseus, at the beginning of the film, plans to sail westward \u2013 toward where the sun sets into the sea \u2013 this is nothing other than the direction of the Greeks\u2019 colonizing voyages in Homer\u2019s time, both before and after, expeditions that led the Greeks to settle in Sicily, southern Italy, and further along the coast of Spain. And this new Greek world, which had already taken shape quite firmly in Homer\u2019s time, is also present in this film. This ending has both ancient and historical significance. It is by no means a Hollywood-style happy ending,\u201d comments Prof. Marek W\u0119cowski.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can read about this and many other topics in Prof. Marek W\u0119cowski\u2019s Homer in our times<\/em>, published by Znak in 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Homer in our times, Marek W\u0119cowski, 2026. Source: Znak Literanova Publishing House<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The text was originally published in Polish on the Serwis Naukowy UW website on August 20, 2026.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why do we keep turning to stories written nearly 3,000 years ago when the world is in turmoil? In his latest book, Homer in our times, Prof. Marek W\u0119cowski of the University of Warsaw explores how the Iliad and the Odyssey spoke to societies rocked by war and upheaval \u2013 and why they still resonate today, helping us process the trauma of war and expose the mechanisms of political hubris. The ancient bard, it seems, still has plenty to say about our world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":9791,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[1892,1545,1891,1889,1890,1387],"class_list":["post-9790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-history","tag-department-of-ancient-history","tag-faculty-of-history","tag-homer-in-our-times","tag-the-iliad","tag-the-odyssey","tag-university-of-warsaw"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/serwisnaukowy.uw.edu.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/serwisnaukowy.uw.edu.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/serwisnaukowy.uw.edu.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serwisnaukowy.uw.edu.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serwisnaukowy.uw.edu.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9790"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/serwisnaukowy.uw.edu.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9802,"href":"https:\/\/serwisnaukowy.uw.edu.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9790\/revisions\/9802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serwisnaukowy.uw.edu.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/serwisnaukowy.uw.edu.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serwisnaukowy.uw.edu.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serwisnaukowy.uw.edu.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}