57: Watership Down and the Classics Written by Andrew Stevens Full references: Richard Adam’s biographical note in the Puffin edition of Watership Down describes him as having “more than a passing acquaintance with the giants of English literature”(1)… ...The three great epics...Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid do seem to feature throughout the novel, as does the wider Greek Epic cycle...There are...scholarly works on structural similarities and narrative technique between the poems and the novel, Chapter 2 of Dr Hannah Parry’s 2016 thesis “The Aeneid with Rabbits: Children's Fantasy as Modern Epic”(2) is one fine example.... Chapter 1 opens with a quote from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, the story of the Greek king’s...homecoming after the sack of Troy...the destruction of a former home also matches how Aeneas tells his story to Que ...