Iliad Vs Odyssey

During the point of time when stories were at the beginning of their creation the only means of communicating and transmitting knowledge amongst a world without writing was with human speech. Without the knowledge of writing, the most effective way to preserve the needed details of a story was to create them by using poetry.
Taking long narrative poems such as “Beowulf”, “The Odyssey”, and “The Iliad” as examples, one can usually find a hero who has absorbed himself in some sort of action. The action(s) could be of some mythic greatness or have historical meaning but are actions of which also relate the ideals and values of the culture from which the story is derived. Though all three poems are of similarity, they each tell a different story. One being a story of war, another a …show more content…
So how does one determine how much one’s life is worth? According to the Britannica,
“In certain areas a man’s wergild was determined by his status in society; for example, in England, a feudal lord’s wergild could be many times that of a common man. The wergild of a woman was usually equal to, and often more than, that of a man of the same class; in some areas, a woman’s wergild might be twice as much as that of a man.”
For those of you that have read “Beowulf”, vengeance would seem to be the ongoing theme even from the start of the poem.
Now for those of you that haven’t read it, Ecgtheow was Beowulf's father. Ecgtheow found himself in a blood-feud with a tribe called the Wulfings for killing a man named Heatholaf. Ecgtheow sought refuge with King Hrothgar, King of the Danes, who satisfied the feud by paying wergild to the Wulfings.
“That feud thereafter for a fee I compounded; O’er the weltering waters to the Wulfings I sent
Ornaments old; oath he swear me.” (Book VIII, page