‘Tell me of the man, Muse, who was turned every which way’. Homer is not relating the story of the shipwrecked Odysseus on his own; he needs the assistance of a Muse. If she doesn’t tell him the story first, he can’t share it with us, his audience. So although this line may sound rather peremptory, there is real concern underpinning it. Poets need Muses or they can’t compose anything. As Homer says in the Iliad,9 these goddesses are always present and know everything. No poet could hope to have witnessed all these events that span across vast reaches of time and space, mortal and immortal
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