ABSTRACT
Modern scholars have probably written more about Homer's epics and their reception than about any other surviving works of literature by any Classical author. The Iliad and the Odyssey are the first extant works of Greek literature, created perhaps at some point between 750 and 700 bc by a poet working against the backdrop of the oral tradition. Homer's foreshadowing is enacted on both the divine and human levels, but operates within a more confined sphere. Homer uses so many devices which are replicated and refined subsequently within the genre, even when the creative medium of oral poetry had long disappeared. The inclusion of anthropomorphic gods, who regularly involve themselves in human affairs, is perhaps one of Homer's most important legacies to the genre. Elsewhere in Greek literature, cunning women tend to signal trouble for men and, indeed, after Homer there developed 'a subordinate tradition that competed with the ''vulgate'' of a chaste and faithful Penelope'.
