Odysseus
Essays

The question as to what happens after death is not fathomable within human reason. As such, it remains one of the biggest mysteries of life. The belief in life after death is what keeps the hopes of the human race intact even in the face of the tragedy of death. The concept ‘afterlife' appears absurd in light of rational thought yet strangely familiar. Since time immemorial, numerous theories and beliefs have emerged in bid to work out this disarray. As for Christians, there is a mainstream belief that revolves around Heaven and Hell for rewarding righteousness and punishing evil respectively. In Hinduism, the belief is that upon death, the human soul deserts the body and reincarnates in a different form based on ‘actions and consequences.' In Ancient Greek religion, there was a wide range of beliefs. As it appertains to this study, Ancient Greeks believed in life after death where the soul departed the body and moved into the Underworld. One of these beliefs was in life after death in an alternate universe where souls went for the afterlife. They held on to the faith that death merely marked the end of human life or human and not the existence of the soul. While the Ancient Greeks believed in the existence of the soul after death, they saw the afterlife as one that lacked purpose; according to them, life after death was meaningless.

Virgil's Aeneid has long been read as a direct response to Homer, the Roman poets attempt to establish himself in the same lineage and even to surpass the Greek master with an epic even greater in scope and in skill…

Coman writes, in the July 2001 issue of Quadrant, that what gives Homer's "The Odyssey" such an eternal relevance is that it defies definitive analysis, thus it retains a sense of mystery that draws readers in by posing…

Persian Wars (490 BCE to 479 BCE) between the Greek city-states and the Persian Empire were predicated by various circumstances, ranging from cultural ideologies to political connivances.

Two poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson were derived from Homer, concerning different periods in the life of Ulysses (or Odysseus, in the Greek). "The Lotos-Eaters" refers to a land where this people lived and where Ulysses…

On the surface, the conflict between Thetis, the great Achilles' mother, and her warrior-son, seems typical of many mother-son conflicts. Thesis is a protective and worried mother, and desires her son's security.

Greek art and its relationship with the modern world cannot be stressed enough, for it could be said that ancient Greece and even the modern Greek nation would be unrecognizable if it was not for Greek art which over…

Christa Wolf's Cassandra: A woman finally believed?

¶ … frame story is the telling of a story through another story. Many frame stories also connect other stories that might not be otherwise connected. Frankenstein is an example of a frame story.

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings follows the basic concepts and structures of classical mythology, including having heroes who embark on journeys of self-discovery, and those journeys of self-discovery are often thrust…