This is a hero’s journey that keeps coming up later in the history of political thought.
Borges calls the first metaphor of the book one of the greatest in human history when Homer sings of the sea being wine-dark.
The structure of the story how he returns to the place he set out — an inspiration to T.S. Eliot’s poetry.
The part where he ties himself to the mast of the ship so he won’t be tempted into the deep by the sirens, comes up later as an early representation of the challenge of constitutionalism for a polity.
So many unforgettable scenes in this story.
And to think the Greeks told it to each other around a campfire, sung it really, that text was not the primary mode of learning and communication is another consideration.
The aesthetics of poetry serve the memory.
