The Odyssey

Tell me, Muse, of the man of many turns, who wandered far after he sacked the sacred city of Troy… The Odyssey is the story of a homecoming. Ten years after the fall of Troy, every surviving Greek hero has returned home — except Odysseus, king of the small rocky island of Ithaca. His wife Penelope is besieged by over a hundred arrogant young suitors who are eating up his estate while demanding she choose one of them. His son Telemachus, now grown, does not know whether his father is alive. And Odysseus himself is held captive on a remote island by a goddess who loves him.

What follows is the archetype of every adventure story — monsters, witches, shipwrecks, a journey to the land of the dead — and of every story of return: a man coming home in disguise, testing who has been faithful, and taking back his house. It is also one of the great poems about identity, intelligence, hospitality, marriage and the choice of a mortal life over immortality.

Background

The Odyssey is traditionally attributed to Homer and is usually thought to be slightly later than the The Iliad, perhaps composed toward the end of the eighth or in the seventh century BCE. Ancient critics already debated whether the same poet wrote both; “Longinus” suggested the Odyssey was the work of Homer’s old age — the setting sun, still great but less intense. It presupposes the Trojan War and refers to other “homecoming” stories (nostoi) of the Greek heroes — above all Agamemnon, murdered on his return by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, whose story runs through the poem as a dark counterpoint to Odysseus’s.

Synopsis

On Olympus, while Poseidon — Odysseus’s enemy — is away visiting the Ethiopians, Athena pleads with Zeus for Odysseus, held for seven years on the island of Ogygia by the nymph Calypso. Zeus agrees he should go home. Athena, disguised as an old family friend, Mentes, goes to Ithaca and finds Telemachus sitting among the suitors, dreaming of his father. She urges him to call an assembly and then to travel in search of news of Odysseus.

On Ithaca, the suitors — led by the arrogant Antinous and the smooth Eurymachus — feast every day in Odysseus’s hall, slaughtering his cattle and drinking his wine. Penelope has held them off for years by a trick: she promised to choose a husband when she finished weaving a shroud for Odysseus’s old father Laertes — and every night she unpicked what she had woven during the day, until a maid betrayed her. At the assembly, Telemachus denounces the suitors, who mock him. Athena, now in the form of Mentor, an old friend of Odysseus, helps him secretly sail away.

Telemachus visits old Nestor at Pylos, who tells of the Greeks’ troubled homecomings and the murder of Agamemnon, and then Menelaus and Helen at Sparta, reconciled and living in splendour. Helen drugs the wine with an Egyptian potion against grief and tells how she once recognized Odysseus when he entered Troy disguised as a beggar. Menelaus tells how he captured the shape-shifting sea-god Proteus in Egypt, who revealed that Odysseus was alive, held by Calypso. Meanwhile the suitors plot to ambush and kill Telemachus on his return.

At last we meet Odysseus: sitting on the shore of Calypso’s island, weeping, gazing at the sea. Hermes brings Zeus’s command; Calypso, protesting the gods’ jealousy of goddesses who love mortal men, obeys. She offers him immortality if he stays — and asks how his wife can compare with her. Odysseus answers with tact: Penelope is mortal and less beautiful, “yet even so I long to go home and see the day of my return”. He builds a raft and sails for seventeen days. Poseidon, returning, sees him and wrecks the raft in a storm; the sea-nymph Ino gives him a veil to keep him afloat, and after two days in the sea he crawls ashore, naked and half-dead, on the island of Scheria, home of the seafaring Phaeacians, and sleeps in a pile of leaves.

He is woken by the shrieks of girls playing ball: the princess Nausicaa and her maids, who have come to wash clothes at the river. Covering himself with a leafy branch, Odysseus addresses her with masterly flattery — is she a goddess? — and she guides him to the palace of her parents, King Alcinous and Queen Arete. He is welcomed as a guest. At a feast, the blind bard Demodocus sings of the Trojan War — the quarrel of Odysseus and Achilles, the Wooden Horse — and Odysseus hides his face in his cloak and weeps. Asked at last who he is, he reveals himself: “I am Odysseus, son of Laertes, known to all men for my wiles.” And he tells the story of his wanderings — the most famous part of the poem, told in his own voice.

After Troy, he says, his twelve ships raided the city of the Cicones, but his men, lingering to feast, were counter-attacked. Storms drove them to the land of the Lotus-Eaters, where those who tasted the honey-sweet lotus lost all desire to go home; Odysseus dragged them weeping back to the ships.

Then the island of the Cyclopes — one-eyed giants without laws or assemblies. Odysseus took twelve men to explore a cave, full of cheeses and lambs, and waited, against his men’s advice, to see its owner and receive a guest-gift. The owner was Polyphemus, son of Poseidon, who rolled a huge boulder across the entrance and ate two of the men for supper, and two more for breakfast. Odysseus could not kill him while he slept, or they would be trapped behind the stone. So he made the giant drunk on strong wine and told him his name was “Nobody” (Outis). Polyphemus promised, as his guest-gift, to eat Nobody last. When he fell asleep, the Greeks heated a sharpened olive stake in the fire and drove it into his eye. The other Cyclopes, hearing his screams, asked who was hurting him: “Nobody is killing me!” — and went away. In the morning the blinded giant felt the backs of his sheep as they left the cave to graze; the Greeks escaped clinging beneath their bellies. But as he sailed away, Odysseus could not resist shouting his real name across the water: “Cyclops, if anyone asks who blinded you, tell him it was Odysseus, sacker of cities, son of Laertes, of Ithaca!” Polyphemus prayed to his father Poseidon for revenge — that Odysseus come home late, alone, on a foreign ship, to find trouble in his house. The prayer would be granted.

Aeolus, keeper of the winds, gave Odysseus all the adverse winds tied up in a leather bag, leaving only the west wind to blow him home. They came within sight of Ithaca — and as Odysseus slept, his crew, thinking the bag held treasure, opened it; the winds blew them all the way back. Next, the cannibal Laestrygonians destroyed eleven of the twelve ships with boulders and speared the sailors like fish.

The one remaining ship reached the island of Circe, a beautiful witch who turned the scouting party into pigs. Hermes gave Odysseus a magic herb, moly, to protect him; he resisted her drugs, forced her to restore his men, and then lived with her as her lover for a whole year, until his crew reminded him of home. Circe told him he must first visit the land of the dead to consult the prophet Tiresias.

At the edge of the world, Odysseus dug a trench and poured the blood of sacrificed sheep; the shades of the dead gathered, thirsting to drink. Tiresias foretold his future: he would come home late and alone, find suitors in his house, and kill them; and later he must travel inland until he met people who mistook an oar for a winnowing fan, and there make peace with Poseidon; his death would come gently, “from the sea”, in sleek old age. He saw his mother Anticleia, who had died of grief longing for him; three times he tried to embrace her, and three times she slipped through his arms like a shadow. He saw a parade of famous women; Agamemnon, who warned him never to trust a wife; and Achilles, whom he tried to console with his glory among the dead. Achilles answered: “Do not try to make light of death to me. I would rather be a labourer on earth for a poor man than be king over all the dead.” He saw Ajax, still angry over the armour of Achilles, who turned away in silence; and the great sinners — Tantalus forever reaching for fruit and water, Sisyphus forever pushing his rock uphill.

Returning to Circe, Odysseus received her instructions for the dangers ahead. He sailed past the Sirens, whose song lures sailors to their deaths: he plugged his men’s ears with wax and had himself tied to the mast, ordering them to tie him tighter if he begged to be released — and heard the song, which promised him knowledge of everything that happens on earth. He passed between Scylla, a six-headed monster who snatched six of his men from the deck, and Charybdis, a whirlpool that swallows the sea three times a day. On the island of Thrinacia, where the Sun-god’s sacred cattle graze, his starving men, while he slept, slaughtered some of the cattle despite his warnings and those of Tiresias and Circe. When they set sail, Zeus destroyed the ship with a thunderbolt. All drowned but Odysseus, who clung to the wreckage, drifted back past Charybdis, and floated for nine days to Calypso’s island.

So ends his story. The Phaeacians, moved, carry him home on one of their magic ships while he sleeps, and leave him on the shore of Ithaca with heaps of gifts. (Poseidon, angry, turns their ship to stone as it returns.)

Odysseus wakes and does not recognize his own island. Athena appears, first disguised as a shepherd boy; Odysseus, at once, tells her an elaborate lie about who he is; Athena, delighted, reveals herself — “you would deceive even a god” — and the two clever ones plan together. She disguises him as an aged beggar, and he goes to the hut of his loyal swineherd Eumaeus, who does not recognize him but treats the stranger with generous hospitality, as Zeus commands.

Athena brings Telemachus home, avoiding the suitors’ ambush. At Eumaeus’s hut, father and son meet; Athena briefly restores Odysseus’s true appearance, and he reveals himself to Telemachus. They weep, and plan the suitors’ destruction.

Odysseus goes to his own palace as a beggar. On the way, the goatherd Melanthius insults and kicks him. At the gate lies his old hunting dog Argos, neglected and covered with ticks on a dung heap; seeing his master after twenty years, he wags his tail and drops his ears, too weak to come to him — and dies. Odysseus wipes away a tear without being seen.

In the hall, the suitors mock the beggar; Antinous throws a footstool at him. A real beggar, Irus, picks a fight, and Odysseus, revealing powerful muscles, knocks him flat. Penelope, still unaware, comes down and extracts gifts from the suitors. That night she talks with the beggar by the fire. He tells her a false story of having met Odysseus, and assures her he will be home within the month. She orders the old nurse Eurycleia to wash his feet — and Eurycleia, touching an old scar on his thigh, from a boar-hunt in his youth, recognizes him. He grips her throat to silence her. Penelope tells the beggar of a dream — an eagle killing her twenty geese — and announces a test: tomorrow she will marry whichever suitor can string Odysseus’s great bow and shoot an arrow through the holes of twelve axe-heads set in a row.

The next day, portents gather. Penelope brings out the bow. The suitors try, and none can even string it. The beggar asks to try. The suitors protest; Telemachus insists. Odysseus strings the bow as easily as a musician strings a lyre, plucks the string — it sings like a swallow — and shoots the arrow cleanly through all twelve axes. Then he throws off his rags, leaps to the threshold, and shoots Antinous through the throat as he lifts his wine cup. He reveals himself: “You dogs, you thought I would never come home.” With Telemachus, Eumaeus and the cowherd Philoetius, and Athena’s help, he kills every one of the suitors in a long, brutal battle in the hall. He spares only the bard Phemius and the herald Medon. Then he has the twelve maids who slept with the suitors clean the hall of blood — and Telemachus hangs them in a row in the courtyard. Melanthius is mutilated and killed.

Eurycleia wakes Penelope with the news. She does not believe it; she comes down and sits across from him in silence. Telemachus rebukes her coldness. Odysseus, bathed and restored by Athena, waits. Penelope tests him: she orders Eurycleia to move their bed out of the bedroom. Odysseus is furious — who could move his bed? He built it himself around the trunk of a living olive tree, and built the bedroom around it. This is the secret only the two of them know. Penelope’s knees give way; she runs to him and throws her arms around his neck. Athena holds back the dawn so that their night can be longer. They make love, and tell each other their stories.

In the morning, Odysseus goes to the country to see his old father Laertes, who, ragged with grief, is digging in his orchard. Odysseus first tests him with a false story — then, seeing his grief, reveals himself, proving it with the scar and by naming the fruit trees his father gave him as a child. The suitors’ families come for vengeance; a battle begins; Laertes kills Eupeithes, Antinous’s father. Then Athena, with Zeus’s thunderbolt, commands both sides to stop, and makes peace.

Characters

• Odysseus — king of Ithaca, “of many turns” (polytropos), “of many wiles”, “much-enduring”; a brilliant liar, strategist and survivor — and a man who weeps often.
• Penelope — his wife, as clever and as patient as he; faithful through twenty years, outwitting the suitors with the shroud and the bow.
• Telemachus — their son, who grows from a passive young man into an active one in the course of the poem (the “Telemachy”, the first four books).
• Athena — Odysseus’s protector, goddess of wisdom and craft, who delights in his cleverness and appears in many disguises.
• Poseidon — god of the sea, Odysseus’s enemy since the blinding of his son Polyphemus.
• Calypso — the nymph who loves him and offers him immortality.
• Circe — the witch-goddess who turns men into pigs, then becomes his lover and guide.
• Nausicaa — the Phaeacian princess who finds him on the shore.
• Polyphemus — the Cyclops.
• Eumaeus — the loyal swineherd; Eurycleia — the old nurse; Argos — the dog.
• Antinous and Eurymachus — the leading suitors.
• Laertes — Odysseus’s aged father; Anticleia — his mother, among the dead.

Themes

Homecoming

Nostos — return home — is the poem’s subject. Home is not a place but a web of relationships: a wife, a son, a father, servants, a dog, a bed built around a living tree. Odysseus must reclaim all of them, one recognition at a time. (The word “nostalgia” — nostos + algos, the pain of return — was coined in 1688 by a Swiss doctor describing homesick soldiers.)

Mortality chosen

Calypso offers Odysseus immortality and eternal youth with her; he chooses to go home to an ageing wife and a mortal death. The shade of Achilles in the underworld confirms the choice: life on earth, however humble, is better than glory among the dead. The poem is a hymn to mortal life — in contrast to the The Iliad‘s hero, who chose a short life for undying fame. See Death.

Cunning intelligence

The Iliad exalts strength; the Odyssey exalts mētis — cunning, resourcefulness, the ability to lie, disguise, wait and plan. Odysseus survives by intelligence (the Cyclops, the Sirens, the bow). But the poem also shows its dangers: his boastful revelation of his name to the Cyclops brings Poseidon’s curse; his curiosity in the cave costs six men their lives.

Hospitality

Xenia, guest-friendship, protected by Zeus, governs the whole poem. Good hosts — Nestor, Menelaus, the Phaeacians, Eumaeus — receive strangers with food, a bath and gifts before even asking their names. Bad hosts — the Cyclops, the Laestrygonians — devour their guests. The suitors are the ultimate violators of xenia: guests who consume their host’s house. Their punishment is the poem’s moral climax.

Identity and recognition

Odysseus is constantly concealing and revealing who he is: “Nobody” to the Cyclops, a beggar in his own house, a Cretan in his lies. The poem is built of recognition scenes (anagnōrisis) — by Telemachus, Argos, Eurycleia (the scar), the suitors, Penelope (the bed), Laertes (the trees) — each with its own test and token. Who you are is what others know of you, and what you can prove.

Fidelity and gender

Penelope is the poem’s counterweight to Clytemnestra, who murdered Agamemnon: faithful, intelligent, a match for her husband. Yet the poem’s double standard is stark — Odysseus sleeps with Circe and Calypso, while the maids who slept with the suitors are hanged. Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad (2005) retells the story from Penelope’s and the hanged maids’ perspective.

Justice and the gods

Unlike the Iliad’s capricious gods, the Odyssey’s Zeus begins with a complaint: mortals blame the gods for their troubles, but bring suffering on themselves “beyond what is fated” by their own recklessness — as Aegisthus did, and as the suitors and Odysseus’s crew will. It is a more moral universe, in which wrongdoing is punished.

Form and style

The Odyssey’s structure is far more complex than the Iliad’s. It begins in medias res — in the middle of things — with Telemachus, then Odysseus on Calypso’s island, then flashes back through Odysseus’s own first-person narrative of his wanderings, told at the Phaeacian court, before moving forward to the return. This structure — beginning in the middle, embedded storytelling, an unreliable narrator who is a known liar — influenced storytelling ever after.

It shares the Iliad’s hexameter, formulas and epithets (“rosy-fingered Dawn”, “the wine-dark sea”), but has a wider range of tone: fairy-tale adventure, domestic realism, comedy (the beggar Irus), suspense, and brutal violence.

Interpretations

• Allegorical: ancient Stoics and Neoplatonists read the voyage as the soul’s journey through the temptations of the body — Circe’s pigs as sensuality, the Sirens as the lure of pleasure or false knowledge — back to its true home in the divine.
• Dante (Inferno 26) imagined a different end: Ulysses, unable to rest at home, sets out again beyond the Pillars of Hercules “to follow virtue and knowledge”, and drowns — the restless intellect as hubris.
• Tennyson’s “Ulysses” (1842) — “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield” — made Odysseus a Victorian hero of endless striving.
• Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944): Odysseus tied to the mast is the prototype of Enlightenment reason — self-mastery and domination of nature, at the price of renunciation; the oarsmen with wax in their ears are the labouring classes, who may not hear the song.
• Joyce’s Ulysses (1922): Leopold Bloom’s single day in Dublin, 16 June 1904, mapped onto the episodes — the everyday man as epic hero.
• Cavafy’s “Ithaka” (1911): “Keep Ithaka always in your mind… But do not hurry the journey at all… Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.”

Legacy

“Odyssey”, “mentor”, “siren song”, “between Scylla and Charybdis”, “lotus-eater”, “Trojan horse” and “Achilles’ heel” come from Homer’s world. The Odyssey is the ancestor of the adventure story, the road novel, the quest and the homecoming tale — from Virgil’s Aeneid and Dante to Joyce, the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), and science fiction (Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey). Derek Walcott’s Omeros (1990) brought it to the Caribbean; Emily Wilson’s translation (2017) opened with “Tell me about a complicated man.”

Lines to carry

• “Tell me, Muse, of the man of many turns.” (1.1)
• “Nobody is killing me!” — the Cyclops (9.408)
• “I would rather be a labourer on earth for a poor man than king over all the dead.” — Achilles in the underworld (11.489–91)
• “Bear up, my heart; you have borne worse than this.” — Odysseus (20.18)
• Penelope’s test of the bed, built around a living olive tree (23)

Keywords

Nostos

Homecoming — the subject of the poem.

Polytropos

"Of many turns" — the first epithet of Odysseus: versatile, much-travelled, devious.

Mētis

Cunning intelligence.

Xenia

The sacred bond of guest-friendship.

Telemachy

The first four books, following Telemachus's journey.

Nekyia

The journey to consult the dead (Book 11).

Anagnōrisis

Recognition — the poem's chain of recognition scenes.

In medias res

Beginning in the middle of the story.

Using the Odyssey in conversation

• On temptation and self-binding: Odysseus tied to the mast — make commitments before temptation arrives (behavioural economists call this “precommitment”).
• On impossible choices: between Scylla and Charybdis.
• On distraction and forgetting: the Lotus-Eaters.
• On pride: shouting your name to the Cyclops.