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Modern Odysseys: Travels, dreams and goals in the Mediterranean sea (MOODS)
Palaiopolis Museum
The objective of the project
The purpose of this educational programme is to allow the educators and the students to study the ten-year adventurous journey of Odysseus’ return to the homeland of Ithaca, through the overcoming of twelve obstacle-stations and to highlight the timeless value of the Homer’s Odyssey. The Odyssey, the epic masterpiece of Homer has been characterized as the uppermost story for shaping modern human beings and their ideals. The reason is that it describes courage, persistence and devotion to Odysseus’ target of returning back to his homeland, Ithaca.
On his long, return trip home to Ithaca, Odysseus tries to accomplish his goal (return to his homeland) through a constant struggle full of adventures. Odysseus by his example helps us understand that all of us, as travelers of this life, from the first moment of our existence we enter into a continuous struggle to regulate our environment, to resist the various temptations, to gain knowledge, to gain self-awareness, to steel our existence, to discover new places, to broaden our horizons, to create communities based on the rule of law and in general to fight the perversity of our existence.
Studying the ten-year adventurous journey of Odysseus’ return to the homeland of Ithaca, through the overcoming of twelve obstacle-stations, which the students will be called to decode, and to update they will realize the timelessness of obstacles and temptations. We will get to know some of the places he visited. Specifically we will deal with four important and particularly dangerous stations, their symbolism and their timeliness.
We intend with the example of Odysseus to highlight the issue of self-awareness/ self-realization, the importance of creating fairly governed societies, interculturalism as a necessary precondition for the development and improvement of human culture and the important role of the Mediterranean Sea in human action over centuries (travel, knowledge, experiences, culture, values, a safe refuge for those suffering from poverty, hunger, war).