The following is a gargantuan caveat:
&gt;&gt;you must take for granted that the individual books of the Odyssey and the New Testament Gospels (as they exist in translation from Project Gutenberg) represent adequately the texts Auerbach was thinking about in the “Fortunata” chapter.<p>As someone who got a degree in liguistic textual analysis (specifically ancient Semitic languages, though I took 4 years of Ancient Greek as well) this presupposition bugs me, kudos to the author for at least including it, but he&#x27;s putting an asterisk next to an entire field of study. 
Translations are very tricky things and I cringe every time someone assumes that they must understand the original meaning of a text based off of one translation that they read.<p>What texts are usually the chief victims, you might ask? Take a wild guess!