Doubtless the hero’s journey was invented long before the Middle Ages. But, at least since The Odyssey, the theme was certainly popular, “back in the day.” Like some modern-day super hero, Appolin (Apollonius) encounters, during his own odyssey, an endless array
of life-bending adventures. The list seems endless: an incest episode, a shipwreck, an encounter with a dragon as well a virgin in a brothel, and so forth, all occurring within some thirty chapter-like narrative sequences of about sixty lines each.