Virgil's Aeneid and Homer's Odyssey share several structures such as the epic Exordium and Homeric epithets, but the movement and Time organization ties them together by grounding the stories in the real world as much as possible. This use of time allows Virgil and Homer to appeal to their ordinary audience while reading about various fantastical elements such as gods and supernatural powers that they do not witness in everyday life. Even in flashbacks, both stories take place in linear time, allowing ordinary audiences to follow the story even if they cannot relate to the magical aspects. Both writers use nature to mark time, which shows that this is an everyday practice of the audience, thus allowing them to relate to the audience by giving it an aspect that they can understand without effort. Using nature to reference the passage of time is an observance that listeners or readers could identify with, thus allowing for an accessibility that non-linear narratives could not since they would not make such use of linear movement with nature involved . Furthermore, this way of passing time parallels the passage of generations, which is linear in nature, but which in both works presents a unique organization by emphasizing a succession of fame, importance and relativity - as when Orestes became famous and well known only after his father Agamemnon was famous and had died, although death was not a requirement. Homer and Virgil use this organizational structure to allow comprehensible use of flashbacks or digressions that make sense and to help readers or listeners easily follow the succession of time and the progression of personalities or internal struggles. The Odyssey and Aeneid can sometimes seem surreal to readers due to the alien and fantastical settings, the superhuman attributes of the characters and the gods - but the organization of time and the references used to mark them help to anchor the stories in the real life and connect them to the audience while allowing a fluid narrative that the audience can follow. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get the original essay Linear time is an important tool for Homer because it is used in the Odyssey to make the three main stories converge towards the end , when Odysseus returns to Ithaca. . Although the story begins in the media and much of the action has already occurred, there is a clear inciting event: when Zeus decides to intervene and order that Odysseus be freed from the Calypso Island, triggering the first and main series of events. The second start of a main series occurs when Athena, disguised as a mentor, comes to Telemakhos telling him to go in search of information about the whereabouts of his father or the place of his death. The final chain is Penelope's struggle with the suitors of the house who wish to marry her, but in this story there is no clear beginning as it is a continuous event with no defined triggering event. Homer cleverly structured his work in such a way that these main strings occur in parallel time so that they can converge easily at the end. Another important factor in working with linear motion is being able to move from one story to another without losing real time or moving forward by telling the reader they are going back in time. After Telemakhos and Menelaus finished their speech and Telemakhos accepted an alternative gift to the horses, Homersays in particular: “At that same hour, / in front of the distant mansion of Ulysses, / the suitors competed in throwing the discus / and the javelin, on a measured field that they used” (Od. 4. 654-657 ). Real time is an important setting for structure and for the audience to follow the story given the enormous task of remembering the different characters and the stories about them. Odysseus' final adventure in the land of the Phaeacians is where readers learn about past adventures, and then his return to Ithaca marks the crucial convergence of the three main stories and, more importantly, the three main characters. One aspect of the epic that Virgil incorporates into the Aeneid is the linear movement of time and its organization that Virgil used to mark the progress of Aeneas' understanding of his destiny and the various moving parts surrounding his destiny and which he meets. Linear movement is important in the Aeneid because Virgil would not be able to take advantage of Aeneas' different attitudes toward his fate if he were to jump from one story to another losing real time or jumping forward. Virgil is working with one main story, that of Aeneas, therefore various stories are not as available to him as to Homer up to this point, and Virgil uses the forward movement of time to easily include flashbacks of memories of Aeneas that Aeneas recounts in book two. In the flashbacks, time is also linear and they are used, in part, to establish a precedent of obstacles for Aeneas throughout his journey toward his destiny. On the night the Trojans introduced the Trojan Horse, while the people were sleeping, Virgil uses the night to inform readers of an important inciting event: "In sleep, before my eyes, I seemed to see/Hector , the saddest, black with bloody dust…/ “Alas, O goddess-born! Take flight/Escape these flames! The enemy has the walls” (An. 2.296-313). After this, readers follow Aeneas until he escapes Troy with his fractured family. Forward action plays a prominent role for Virgil in illustrating not only Aeneas' journey but also his internal progression toward his destiny while using time marked by nature to ground the story in real time. The linear movement with time marked by references to nature works for both the authors and the different audiences, because it is important that the audience can follow the stories as they listen, tell or read them. Due to the various fantastical elements the audience is exposed to, grounding the stories in real life is crucial to building relationships with the audience while keeping the story moving in a way that allows for digressions, flashbacks, or interludes. Although elements such as traveling across the sea while a god tries to delay you are most likely foreign to ordinary audiences, references to nature such as Eos, the goddess of dawn, the sun or the passing of the seasons , are not. They mark time and seem to be practices that the audience can understand and identify with because Virgil kept it as a characteristic and Homer used it constantly. Illustrating a clear movement of time is easy to follow and allows Homer and Virgil to include magical elements that are not grounded in real life and do not exist in a way that ordinary audiences can relate to . Epic conventions establish rules for epics, just as linear movement establishes rules or precedents for events, deviations from a main story, and various character meanings or goals. According to Steve Nallon and his analysis of the Odyssey in the article “.