The Historical Accuracy Of Homer's The Odyssey

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The Historical Accuracy of The Odyssey Homer wrote The Odyssey in which Odysseus travels to many locations and comes across trouble trying to get back to his homeland, Ithaka. After a storm blows him off course he arrives at the Kyklops’ island. Then he sails to Aiolos’ island and receives a bag of wind in which his crew members foolishly open and they were blown back to Aiolos’ island. Later they sail past a monster which eats some of his crewmembers. Homer composes parts in The Odyssey that are fictional; however most of The Odyssey is accurate such as the locations and creatures that appear in the epic poem. Odysseus lands on an island occupied by vicious Kyklops. According to Houtzager, Kyklops’ are “primitive shepherds and inhospitable bandits” (86). Even though the Kyklops may not…show more content…
Two famous monsters from The Odyssey are Skylla and Kharybdis. Skylla appears as a six headed monster with twelve tentacles and Kharybdis is a giant whirlpool under a “wild fig [with] a shaggy mass of leaves, grow[ing] on it” (Homer 212). Skylla and Kharybdis are located “in the straits of Messina” between Sicily and mainland Italy (Levi 55). In The Odyssey, Kirke tells Odysseus that he must past Skylla or past Kharybdis in order to reach Ithaka. Odysseus chooses to pass by Skylla therefore he would only lose six men instead of a ship and most of his crew. Skylla appears fictional, unlike Kharybdis. Kharybdis is located in Sicily, in the strait between Sicily and the boot of Italy. Its “modern name is Garofalo” and it does pose as a threat just as in The Odyssey; though not a gigantic whirlpool, it still destroys ships (Darling 1999). Garofalo “forms when strong winds blow across the strait in the opposite direction to the flow of the tide” and it creates “a violent broken swell… which can be rough enough to overturn small vessels and create… navigation hazard[s] for larger ones” (Darling

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