The history of understanding structure in our Universe is older than the story of Odysseus, and has as many twists and turns. Few of these paths remain familiar to most astronomers today, so in the early chapters I have simply collected some essential developments along the way. They are not without surprises. One of which is that many ideas now thought to be novel have really been known for tens, or hundreds, of years. Often they were no more than speculations, but sometimes they captured reality's core.