Professor Vandiver makes it clear why, after almost 3,000 years, the Homeric epics remain not only among the greatest adventure stories ever told, but also two of the most compelling meditations on the human condition ever written. Questions include, why does Odysseus long so powerfully to go home? What are the limits of our freedom? Who or what shapes our actions and our ends? What holds people together and keeps them going--or drives them apart and crushes them--in extreme situations such as war or shipwreck? Why do we love our own so strongly? Where is the line between justice and revenge, and what does it mean to be mortal?