Both of Homer’s beloved epics are alive with meanings that we all in this new century can understand. One need not be a classicist. And, thanks to the work of translators, we can know the poems in our own language.

THE ILIAD resonates with the enormous tragedy that befalls a beseiged city, all of its inhabitants, and indeed the fates of both the aggressing as well as the defending armies. It contrasts poignantly the quotidien pleasures and realities of peaceful existence with the harsh brutalities that afflict those at war. It makes us understand our mortality, even as we suffer it. It describes heroism and its cost. And it does so in great, simple poetry. Because of all these relevancies, we may think more deeply about the price of war, the hubris of war, the reverberative misery that inevitably accompanies it. We may care more about the women and children who suffer, who lose everything, and we may gain sympathy even for the roughest of warriors, for they suffer terribly even as they gain an ephemeral glory.

THE ODYSSEY gives us the veteran of wars. It reveals the terrible price of dislocation, the strangeness of other countries and peoples and the skills required to adapt to them. In fact, only a person of heroic adaptability as well as cautious curiosity has much chance against the bizarre requirements of trying to reach home, both geographically and spiritually. It depicts (with great gusto and excitement) the temptations that lie along the way. The character of Penelope is no longer seen as a profile only of the dull, weaving , faithfully waiting wife, but rather as a beseiged and intelligent woman, confined by custom to the home, who creates strategems appropriate to her environment which are as useful and wise as those of her famously creative husband, absent these many years. The poem resonates through the experience of many kinds of people, both humble and visionary. It is also a testament to the importance of care-taking the earth, of earth-household. And it depicts most touchingly the travails of adolescent boys who are fatherless, as they move towards manhood - their need for a good mentor who can save their lives. Through these many motifs we can learn to care more sensitively for all who are afflicted by war, both those who fight it, are changed by it, and those who hope and strategize for their survival.