When imagining the Italic reworking of epic poetry, we also find it useful to think in terms of oral performance. However, epic texts based on Homer, along the lines of those used in Greek writing classes, may also have been used as school textbooks from the very beginning. We have good reasons to believe that Livius Andronicus’s Latin translation of the Odyssey, the oldest Latin epic, from the middle of the third century BCE, may well fall into this category.
