Die Odyssee in der spätantike

Homer?s 'Odyssey' is one of the most fascinating and popular texts of all time, inspiring not only artists and poets but also generating a massive amount of research. This book focuses for the first time on the 'Odyssey''s reception in late antiquity, the period that witnesses the transformation of classical culture into the world of the middle ages. The epic?s late antique pictorial reception was a selective one. Artists represented but a small canon of topics: Odysseus? encounter with the terrifying one-eyed Cyclops, with the dangerous sorceress Circe, with the bewitching song of the Sirens, and with Scylla the man-eater; a handful of iconographically diverse depictions can be related to the hero?s return to Ithaca that never attracted as much attention as Odysseus? adventures in the course of the wandering. In all cases, the book stresses the close relation between viewer, or context of reception, and specific form of artistic rendering. Depending on context and intended viewer, Odysseus e.g. can be characterized as a person with whom the man in the street can identify, as a problematic and ridiculous figure, or as an example of virtue. Almost all late antique depictions of Odys