The Odyssey

Homer’s epic of Odysseus’s ten-year return from Troy to Ithaca — the shipwrecks, the monsters, the disguises, and the reclaiming of a household that had given him up for dead. Composed in Greek hexameter in the oral tradition around the 8th century BC and, with the Iliad, the oldest surviving work of Western literature. It is conventionally cited by book and line rather than by page, because every printed edition is somebody’s translation.

Why it’s on the list: Assigned in the University of Austin’s Chaos and Civilization course, where it sits alongside Hesiod’s Theogony and Aeschylus’s Oresteia and Prometheus Bound — a sequence that reads the Greek canon as a set of answers to the same question: what does a civilization have to impose on chaos to become a civilization, and what does it cost.

Where I saw it: On the University of Austin’s Fall 2025 reading list, “65 Texts Our Students Are Reading”, November 13 2025, saved to Kyle’s “Books To Read” Apple Note. The full 65-text curriculum, course by course, is transcribed on UATX Fall Reading List.

Connections

• UATX Fall Reading List — the curriculum this is assigned in.
• Classics · Literature — the canon it opens.