With the recent news that Christopher Nolan is bringing us a big budget adaptation of The Odyssey next year, it’s high time to pick up a copy of Homer’s masterpiece, especially if your last read was a forced slog back in high school.

And while there’s plenty to recommend The Odyssey to the general reader, what is there to recommend it to the AEC marketer?

Plenty, as it turns out! In fact, you don’t need to look much further than one of the main themes of the poem.

But we’ll get to that in a moment. First, a brief refresher.

The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus—mythic hero, King of Ithaca, man of twists, and turns, master strategist of the Trojan War—the man credited with the idea for the wooden horse that brought the 10-year conflict to a close.

But the end of the Trojan War did not spell the end of trouble for Odysseus. The Odyssey recounts the next decade of his life, as he struggles to return to his home in Ithaca, facing fantastical incident after incident—from the sorceress Circe to sirens, the Cyclops Polythemus to sea monsters, shipwrecks to lovestruck nymphs.

But the Odyssey is as much a tale of wandering and adventure as it is of hospitality.

For the poem wrestles with a pair of questions essential to Greek culture in Homer’s time: What does it mean to be a good host? What does it mean to be a good guest?

These questions are at the heart of xenia, which we sometimes translate in English as “guest-friendship.” Far more than hospitality, xenia is the sacred bond between host and guest—the former called upon to provide not only warm welcome, food, and shelter, but also gifts to their guests. Guests were to respond with courteousness and share news from the outside world. And then guests, once back home and welcoming their former hosts as guests in turn, were to reciprocate with the same treatment.

And this gracious treatment was not reserved just for those guests you knew; it was for any stranger who found their way to your doorstep. (In fact, xenia dictated that you feed your guest a meal before asking them any questions about who they were, where they were coming from, or the reason for their travel!)

Why be so hospitable to complete strangers?

Well, for one, you never knew if a stranger might actually be a god in disguise! This may sound silly, but it happens with some frequency in Greek mythology—with bad hosts receiving their comeuppance and good hosts receiving their godly rewards from a Zeus in rags.

So, yes, punishment at the hands of a god is on the table—but what else? Why would a culture come up with such myths in the first place?

One answer lies in the political structure of Homer’s Greece. This being before Athens and Sparta rose to prominence, Greece was a collection of city-states and settlements, often in conflict with one another, spread across the fragmented geography of the northeastern Mediterranean. Guest-friendship offered a way to navigate this political instability, leveraging the power of reciprocity to forge alliances and connections across a vast and complex territory.

That collection of city-states and settlements looks a lot like an industry I know…

And while AEC marketers may not have the guest-host encounters described in The Odyssey, we are familiar with other encounters: the last-minute subconsultant request, the cold email to set up a meeting between firm partners. We know the importance of taking these connections seriously. We understand our critical role in building new relationships (alliances!) between our respective companies.

But it’s worth considering that mythological angle, too. Because your new connection may be a god in disguise influential in ways you can’t even imagine! After all, people in our industry move around. Be rude at your own risk: just because someone’s current role is irrelevant to you, doesn’t mean that you won’t, one future day, suit up for a job interview and find yourself shaking that person’s hand.

So far, this is all very practical. But it’s not just about self-preservation and survival. There’s pleasure here, too—in being a good host and a good guest. You can’t get far in The Odyssey without encountering pleasure: delicious feasts eaten, thrilling tales told till the early hours of the morning, the delight of a warm and safe place to take rest.

Yes, there’s no need to give each other gold chalices, but we can still take a page out of Homer’s epic, and find the pleasure in our connections: laughter in a scope negotiation meeting, a shared East Coast origin story, even the simple satisfaction of a deadline cleanly met.