"Odysseus' Scar" is the first chapter of Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, a collection of essays by German-Jewish philologist Erich Auerbach charting out the development of representations of reality in literature. It examines the differences between the two types of writing about reality as embodied by Homer's Odyssey and the Old Testament. In the essay, Auerbach introduces his anti-rhetorical position, a position developed further in the companion essay "Fortunata" (ch. 2) which compares the Roman tradition of Tacitus and Petronius with the New Testament, as anathema to a true representation of everyday life. Auerbach proceeds with this comparative approach until the triumph of Flaubert, Balzac and "modern realism" (ch. 18).