The Elements Of Day-To-Day Lifestyle In Homer's The Odyssey

Throughout history, many different cultures and societies have risen and existed. Each society has different central ideas that are important to it, and each one differed from another. In the Odyssey, the main character, Odysseus, went away to Troy soon after their son, Telemachus, was born. He left his wife, Penelope, with their son thinking he’d be back soon. Little did he know, it would take him twenty years to get back home to Ithaca. Through the story, different ideas show up that show the importance of them to ancient Greek culture. Three important values, customs, and/ or elements of day-to-day lifestyle in ancient Greek culture are religion, storytelling, and loyalty.

Religion played a major role in the day-to-day routine of ancient Greek culture. For example, the books says, “Come, we’ll cut out the noblest of these cattle/ for sacrifice to the gods who own the sky;/ and once at home, in the old country of Ithaca,/ if ever that day comes-/ we’ll build a costly temple and adorn it/ with every beauty for the Lord of the Noon.” (ll. 884-889). The quote explains that they were going to sacrifice

The Odyssey had many examples, one of them being, “Homer opens up with and invocation, or prayer, asking the muse to help him sing his tale.” (Homer 750). Storytelling was an important idea for the Greek because everything then was passed down from word of mouth. There was no technology, printing press, or anything that would copy a book word for word except for handwriting. All stories were slightly different from each other because they were modified as they were passed down. Storytelling was also a form of entertainment for the Greek society, as it was popular and there were no modern day electronics, such as a televisions, phones, or computers. Finally, stories were used to explain a lot of the things that happened to the Greek, and were how many of the natural occurrences were