re: IYO what is the greatest story ever told?

I'm gonna be unpopular and say the Odyssey isn't that great of a story. For such a long journey home, most of it is spent in one place, with him playing house with a nymph. I mean, good for Odysseus, but that's hardly epic. I like the IDEA of the Odyssey, but the story itself sags in the middle.

If we're going epic poems, I'm going the Iliad. And, it does not get enough love, the Song of Roland.

And considering how often the story is ripped off and repurposed, you have to give credit to Romeo and Juliet. I'm a MacBeth guy myself (or Hamlet or, if we're going for an underdog, Titus Andronicus), but Romeo and Juliet is perhaps the most told non-Biblical story in the English language. It just keeps getting adapted for modern times.