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Robert Graves said The Odyssey lies about as far away from The Iliad in time and provenance as Le Morte d’Arthur does from Charlotte Brontë’s The Spell. Roughly three and a half centuries separate the original 'Wrath of Achilles' Iliad from the Odyssey. One was written by an old, unhappy knight who drew on heroic legends of an earlier day, the other by a lively, well-brought-up country girl with literary ambitions and a keen sense of humour.

T. E. Lawrence, in his translation, wrote that 'epic belongs to early man, and this Homer lived too long after the heroic age to feel assured and large.'