Henry Abbott

“To make the ancients speak, we must feed them with our own blood.”

I don’t know who first wrote this. I could find out—likely by googling (though I’d use Safari, to be honest) that phrase to uncover which long-dead classicist, probably German or French, penned one of the most metal quotes I’ve ever encountered. But does it matter? The power of that line lies not in its origin but in its audacity. It demands something of us—something visceral—and that challenge has lingered with me ever since I first read it.

I was 12, in a seventh-grade Latin classroom, when I heard those words for the first time. My teacher, a man whose love of the ancient world radiated through every conjugation and declension, would later tell me about Bowdoin College, a place I had never considered but now call home. For a native Phoenician (yes, people from Phoenix are called that), New England was not really a “sane” choice. But that quote, though brief and tossed off almost as an aside, stuck with me.

What I remember most isn’t the moment itself but the feeling: insignificance. I would later learn there’s a Greek word for it: “ataxia,” which means the disorientation of being overwhelmed by something far greater than yourself. Reading ancient texts for the first time, I felt connected to something vast, something bigger than my awkward preteen self. It was as if these words, preserved for millennia, had reached across time and found me, emo hair and all, sitting in the corner of a classroom in Phoenix, Ariz.

That quote isn’t from Homer, though it points us to him. It’s an allusion to “The Odyssey,” the epic you might remember skimming—or ignoring—sometime in high school. Specifically, it refers to a moment when Odysseus, after years of wandering, descends into the underworld in search of guidance. To speak with the dead, he must offer his blood. Surrounded by the shades of heroes and prophets, Odysseus does not seek wisdom from a mighty warrior or a divine oracle. Instead, he turns to the figure that pulls most at his heart—his mother, who he left alive but now finds among the dead.

“I left you there alive, and now—tell me, dear mother, how you died.”

For a moment, the sweeping epic of Odysseus’ return pauses. Ithaca, Penelope, even survival itself fades into the background, eclipsed by one desperate, fleeting need: for Odysseus to speak, one final time, with his mother. It is, to me, one of the most achingly human moments in all of literature.

This is why I want you to read “The Odyssey.” Let me be clear: This column is a plea. These texts may seem distant or irrelevant, their language strange, their heroes flawed. But they offer something no other stories can—an unbroken thread that ties us to the deepest parts of ourselves.

Very little has changed in the 2,700 years since Homer composed his epic. Like Odysseus, we long for home, make mistakes and grieve the time we’ve lost. “The Odyssey” begins with a line asking the Muse to tell the story of a man who is brilliant but broken, resilient yet fallible. In other words, us.

The story isn’t flawless. Its language is dense, its plot winding and its characters often lack the depth we’ve come to expect. Odysseus is no saint—he plunders, deceives and lets his pride lead to disaster. Yet his humanity cuts through the centuries. He revels as we do (yes, with alcohol), mourns as we do and bleeds as we do. And when he sees his mother among the dead, the weight of his journey collapses into one unbearable truth: He took too long.

“Mother, why do you not stay still when I would embrace you? If we could throw our arms around one another we might find sad comfort in the sharing of our sorrows even in the house of Hades.”

His grief is ours—the grief of realizing too late what truly matters. Perhaps you, too, know the ache of returning home only to find it changed. Perhaps you have felt unrecognizable to those you once held dear. In those moments, an ancient, sprawling epic you probably wrote off reminds us: “endure, my heart, you have suffered worse than this.”

In a world that often feels overwhelming, “The Odyssey” reminds us that our struggles are not new. Our longings and fears have been shared by countless others, across centuries and continents. And there is comfort in knowing that we are not alone. This is why I ask you to give Homer a try—not because it’s required reading, but because it’s a mirror, reflecting our humanity in all its complexity.