There are a few things to be done before the stories can begin. A slave must fetch a jug of water and pour it into a silver basin. The visitors shall wash their hands. A table is to be pulled up beside them and laid with bread and meat. Everyone shall eat and drink until they’re full. Then, and only then, will the hosts ask the guests about themselves. Who are they? Where have they come from? What is their story?

When I read Homer’s Odyssey for the first time, more than twenty years ago, what struck me most was how trusting people could be. The most civilized characters in the poem welcome strangers into their homes before they know so much as their names. As a child I found this extremely worrying. What if they were thieves? What if they were murderers? What if they ate all the bread and left their hosts wanting? Students of Homer are taught that such generosity is in keeping with established laws of hospitality: treat strangers as if they are your friends. But over the years I’ve come to see these acts as also redolent of the fact that the Greeks considered a good story worth waiting for. The bread-and-basin rituals outlined above usually serve as a prelude to storytelling. Odysseus, tossed across the sea after his raft is shattered in a sea-storm, washes up on an island called Scheria, where he is welcomed into a royal palace, fed, and prompted to speak. Relieved that he has finally reached civilization, he settles in to tell his hosts of the terrifying beings he has encountered on his journey home from Troy: one-eyed Cyclopes and singing Sirens, sleepy Lotus-Eaters and cannibalistic Laestrygonians, tricksy temptresses Circe and Calypso, the whims of tempestuous gods.

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are at once products and celebrations of a history of storytelling. Two of the oldest works of literature from the Western world, they were passed down orally before being written down in the late eighth or early seventh century BC, and continued to be performed down the centuries. It was in the course of assembling this anthology that I came to appreciate just how richly layered with stories they are. The Odyssey gives us stories as told by Odysseus, stories sung to Odysseus, stories told of Odysseus as he wends his way home to Ithaca. Many of the men who fight at Troy in the Iliad are skilled tellers of tales, not least of all Achilles, the mightiest fighter for the Greeks.