A HERO'S WISH: WHAT HOMER BELIEVED ABOUT HAPPINESS AND THE GOOD LIFE does what no other work has done until now-it thoroughly explores the earliest Greek thinking about happiness. And while happiness was doubtlessly a matter of luck, fate, and fortune for Homeric Greeks, it was far more than that as Zeus warns early on in the ODYSSEY. Homer ties the good life to human behavior-to the thoughts, words, and actions of individual men and women. Understanding Homer is essential to understanding later Greek ethical thinking about happiness and human flourishing. A HERO'S WISH is Volume 1 in The Origins, Nature, and Practice of Happiness and Human Flourishing in the Ancient World.