Most people, whether they admit it or not, enjoy thrilling tales of adventure and bravery set in times of war and exploration. Apart from the Old Testament, the oldest stories of this kind—stories that helped shape much of Western storytelling—are the Iliad and the Odyssey, written by Homer about 3,000 years ago. These epic poems are full of battles, clever heroes, strange creatures, and unpredictable Greek gods. Alfred J. Church, a British scholar and writer in the 1800s, translated and adapted these poems for young readers in clear, accessible prose in his book The Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer. These stories are not only exciting but also essential for cultural literacy, since images and ideas such as the Trojan horse, an Achilles’ heel, and the Sirens appear throughout our culture.
Readers of all ages enjoy sequels, and Virgil, a poet in the early Roman Empire under Caesar Augustus, followed that instinct when he wrote a sequel of sorts to Homer’s works. He chose Aeneas, a minor character from the Iliad, and created a sweeping tale of his wanderings and eventual settlement in Italy in the epic poem The Aeneid. Alfred J. Church also translated and adapted this poem for young readers in The Aeneid for Boys and Girls. The Aeneid has had a deep and lasting influence on Western civilization through the Roman Empire—shaping language, culture, and history, from the names of the months to Biblical contexts and the development of Latin and the Romance languages. Reading the Aeneid is therefore another important part of cultural literacy. Notably, Dante even chose Virgil to guide him through The Inferno, an epic poem Dante wrote in the 1300s.