How are we humans to live, and live together? What powers, both divine and human-made, shape our lives? How do societies construct what it means to be a man or woman, and how do we live with these definitions, either accepting or challenging them? When war strips us of our humanity, why do we keep fighting? What happens to us when we leave home, and why is returning home so hard? Why, finally, do we make music, sing, and tell tales? Century after century, as ancient Greeks and Romans posed these questions they returned to the same two works for both answers and inspiration: the two epics attributed to Homer, the Iliad and Odyssey. Set during and after the mythical Trojan War, the tales of Troy recounted by Homer serve as useful guides to the biggest questions we face in our lives. Starting with selected readings from Iliad and Odyssey, this course explores answers to these questions and traces how and why later Greeks and Romans reperformed, adapted, and challenged the Homeric poems as they developed new forms of cultural production, especially drama, lyric poetry, history, rhetoric, political science, and philosophy. As a ConnCourse, this course explores how Homer has given birth to so many of the liberal arts.