 The concept of the hero has invited comparisons between Watership Down 's characters and those in Homer 's Odyssey and Virgil 's Aeneid . Hazel 's courage , Bigwig 's strength , Blackberry 's ingenuity and craftiness , and Dandelion 's and Bluebell 's poetry and storytelling all have parallels in the epic poem Odyssey . Kenneth <unk> declared , " Hazel stands in the tradition of Odysseus , Aeneas , and others " . Tolkien scholar John Rateliff calls Adams 's novel an Aeneid " what @-@ if " book : what if the seer Cassandra ( Fiver ) had been believed and she and a company had fled Troy ( Sandleford Warren ) before its destruction ? What if Hazel and his companions , like Odysseus , encounter a seductive home at Cowslip 's Warren ( Land of the Lotus Eaters ) ? Rateliff goes on to compare the rabbits ' battle with Woundwort 's <unk> to Aeneas 's fight with Turnus 's Latins . " By basing his story on one of the most popular books of the Middle Ages and Renaissance , Adams taps into a very old myth : the flight from disaster , the heroic refugee in search of a new home , a story that was already over a thousand years old when Virgil told it in 19 BC . " 
