Students in 20-hour reading of Odyssey

(ANSA)- Massa Carrara, June 8 - Students at a classics high school in the Tuscan city of Massa will stage a 20-hour oceanside reading of the Odyssey, beginning Friday June 12.
    The marathon reading by 80 students as well as high school alumnae and professors kicks off at 8p.m. on a stage built on Marina di Massa beach and will continue uninterrupted until 5p.m. on Saturday, June 30.
    The reading is being held with the patronage of Massa municipality and Mondi Possibili (Possible Worlds) cultural association.
    The 80 student participants have been studying Homer's epic poem for the entire year, in a translation by Franco Ferrari. The poem narrating the seafaring adventures of Ulysses as he returned home after the fall of Troy is the second oldest extant work of Western literature after the Iliad. Scholars believe it was composed near the end of the 8th century BC, somewhere in Ionia, the Greek coastal region of Anatolia.