Greek literature

What happens if we translate polutropos in the first line of Homer’s Odyssey as ‘much-travelling’? The result is Jonathan Burgess’ comprehensive and compelling exploration of The Travels of Odysseus . 1 By centring the theme of travel in Odysseus’ character and story, Burgess brings together the diverse parts of the multifaceted Odyssey and brings them into conversation with the Iliad , the Cyclic Nostoi , and Telegony , and comparable narratives of heroes such as Gilgamesh, Heracles, Perseus, Bellerophon, and Jason. It is a thematic study, then, that does not confine but rather reaches out and forges new and valuable connections, certainly across the Homeric and non-Homeric epic traditions but also across genres and cultures. The emergence of ‘travel writing’ that we can see in, for instance, Herodotus, Xenophon, or Pliny’s Natural Histories is tracked back to the Odyssey , the stories of the Argonauts, or the Egyptian Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor .