Epic narrative characteristically announces the point in the story at which it begins and then proceeds in chronological order to its end. The Iliad opens with the poet's request to the Muse: “Rage —Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles”; he then tells her where to start: “Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed, / Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles” (1.1–8). She does, and the story is told in strict chronological order until its end: “And so the Trojans buried Hector breaker of horses” (24.944). In the Odyssey, when Odysseus asks the Phaeacian bard Demodocus to “Sing of the wooden horse / Epeus built with Athena's help,” the bard “launched out / in a fine blaze of song, starting at just the point / where the main Achaean force, setting their camps afire . . .” (ref), and carries the story on until Troy falls. But the prologue to the Odyssey abandons this traditional request to the Muse or the singer to begin at a certain point. It begins, like the Iliad, with a request to the Muse to sound a theme —the wrath of Achilles, the wanderings of Odysseus —but instead of telling her where to start —“Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed” —it leaves the choice to her. “Launch out on his story, Muse, daughter of Zeus, / start from where you will” (ref). And she does. She begins, not with Odysseus' departure from Troy (which is where he begins when he tells his story to the Phaeacians), but in the twentieth year of his absence from home, as Athena starts Telemachus on his journey to Pylos and Sparta and arranges Odysseus' escape from his seven-year captivity on Calypso's island.

Unknown, Homer, Robert Fagles_ Knox,…, loc. 19