The Odyssey of Homer

Welcome to a myth “in outline,” one way this course will present book-length myths in ways that preserve the story and reduce the word count. We’ll use bullet points to cover the major parts of the plot following a context section that provides points of interest and background information helpful to follow the story.

Context

• The Odyssey is a poem that is 24 books long, and it covers the journeys of Odysseus, one of the Greek generals of the Trojan War, as he tries to return home from Troy.
• Who is Odysseus?
  • He is the king of a land called Ithaca, an island off the west coast of Greece.
  • He is married to Penelope, and has a son named Telemachus.
    • Penelope is a faithful wife who puts up with a lot while Odysseus is away at war.
    • Telemachus is born just before Odysseus left for Troy. The Trojan war took ten years, and Odysseus took ten more years to get home, so Telemachus is a young man when he appears in the Odyssey.
  • He is one of the older Greek generals in Troy, and is known for his cleverness.
    • He is the mediator between Agamemnon and Achilles, who can’t stand each other; Odysseus convinces them to work together.
    • In many versions of the Iliad, he is the character who thinks of the Trojan Horse to end the war.
    • In fact, his cleverness actually started the war, because it was (in some accounts) his idea that Helen’s suitors should swear an oath to defend her husband’s claims. He had suggested this in order to win Penelope as his wife.
    • Moreover, Odysseus in The Odyssey is continually shown to be wise in contrast to his sailors and soldiers, who continually die doing foolish things that Odysseus either warns them about or manages to escape thanks to his cunning.
    • Odysseus earns everlasting fame on his return journey… we use the word odyssey from his name even today to describe a long journey.
  • What happens in the Odyssey? The book is not in chronological order, and much of it is told as flashbacks. Here’s a short version of events, not in book order but in chronological order.

From Troy to the Cyclops

• Troy falls because of the Trojan Horse, Odysseus’s idea; he’s celebrated as a genius.
• Leaving Troy with his ships, Odysseus sacks Ismarus, city of the Cicones. Some of his men die because they wouldn’t leave before reinforcements arrive.
• Storms drive his ships to the land of the Lotophagi, the Lotus Eaters, but they don’t stick around because the lotus plants there bring about forgetfulness.
• Next, he stops by the island of the Cyclops, named Polyphemus. A huge one-eyed giant, Polyphemus sees the intruders and tries to capture and eat them. Odysseus blinds him, but not before identifying himself as “Nobody,” so that Polyphemus, who is the son of Poseidon, does not know who actually blinded him initially. “Nobody blinded me!” Polyphemus tells his father Poseidon, who then figures out that Odysseus did it. Poseidon decides to do everything in his power to keep Odysseus from returning home. Having the god of the ocean against you as you sail to your island home is not a good move.

Adventures & Loss

• Odysseus escapes Polyphemus and lands on the island of Aeolus, the king/god of the winds. Aeolus gives him all the winds of the sea in a bag, all tied up, so that Odysseus can sail home. Within sight of Ithaca, though, the sailors think Odysseus is hiding treasure from them. They open the bag, and are blown back to Aeolus, who refuses to help them a second time.
• Next stop: the land of the Laestrygoni—the Man Eaters. The crews of 11 ships are killed and eaten before Odysseus escapes.
• Odysseus lands on the island where Circe lives, an enchantress who changes several sailors into pigs. Odysseus rescues them and befriends Circe in the process, who ends up being quite agreeable. She gives him instructions on how to get home, including a required trip to the underworld to see Tiresias, a prophet.
• Odysseus travels to the fog-shrouded land of the Cimmerians at the edge of the world, and descends into the underworld to meet Tiresias, a dead prophet. Tiresias prophesies the next steps to return home, and warns Odysseus that men who think he is dead are now at the king’s court in Ithaca trying to win Penelope’s hand in marriage. In doing so, they’re using up all his wealth to pay for their stay. Penelope is holding the suitors off, but it isn’t easy. Also, Odysseus sees the spirit of his mother, who says she died of grief waiting for him to come home.
• Odysseus returns to the island of Circe in order to bury one of his most beloved soldier-sailors, Elpenor. Circe warns him of the Sirens, beasts with beautiful voices who lure men to madness and death by their beautiful song.
• When sailing past the island of the Sirens, Odysseus puts wax in all the ears of his men, but binds himself to the mast. The ships pass the island by, and Odysseus gets to hear the Sirens’ song… nearly going mad in the process.
• Next came a whirlpool named Charybdis, which Odysseus navigated around quite brilliantly, but loses six men to the monster who lives near the whirlpool, named Scylla, who eats them.
• Odysseus and what’s left of his crew land on the island of Helios, the sun god, who keeps his cattle there. He’s mindful of warnings from Tiresias and Circe not to rob Helios of any cattle for food, but his men eat one to avoid dying of starvation. Immediately after setting out from the island, Zeus sends a fierce storm to shatter Odysseus’ ship on Helios’ behalf. Only Odysseus survives.
• After nine days floating at sea, Odysseus lands on the island of Ogygia, where the nymph Calypso lives. She treats him kindly, and he is waylaid there for eight years while Poseidon refuses him the ability to return home.

Meanwhile, Back Home…

• Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, Telemachus is full-grown. He rebukes Penelope’s suitors for eating up his inheritance, but they do not listen to him. Penelope decides she will weave the funeral shroud of Odysseus; when it is done she will pick a suitor and remarry. But every night, she unweaves what she wove, to slow the process down. Telemachus boards a ship and sails to see some of Odysseus’ fellow war generals, kings of other cities who have long been home, and to see what they can tell him of his father.
• Telemachus visits the city of Pylos, and sees Nestor, king of Pylos. Nestor can tell him nothing, but sends Telemachus on to the city of Sparta, to see King Menelaus.
• At Sparta, Telemachus learns from Menelaus, who heard it from a sea-god named Proteus, that Odysseus is being held hostage on Ogygia by Calypso on the gods’ orders.
• At the same time, Athena convinces the gods in an assembly (Poseidon was absent) that Odysseus should be allowed to return home. Calypso allows Odysseus to build a raft, and he is storm-tossed by a sulking Poseidon until he lands on the coast of the Phaeacians, who are friends of Ithaca.
• Odysseus visits the king of the Phaeacians, who recognizes him, hears his story, and promises to send him home the next day. On the voyage home, Odysseus falls asleep and is left alone on the beaches of Ithaca by the sailors, who were afraid he was bad luck.
• Odysseus wakes to find out that Athena has changed his form so no one will recognize him. He sneaks into his hometown and learns where things stand between Penelope and the suitors: they’ve discovered Penelope’s scheme to un-weave the funeral shroud and have demanded that she remarry at once.

The Day of Vengeance

• Telemachus returns home, narrowly missing an assassination plot from the suitors thanks to Athena’s help. Odysseus enters the court and learns that Penelope has now promised that she’ll marry the man who can string Odysseus’ bow and shoot an arrow through twelve small hoops in a row (these are hoops at the end of the handles of battleaxes, which are all arranged in a line, head down in the ground). Odysseus is recognized by one or two old servants, and he takes only a few others into confidence as he plots his revenge.
• The day of the bow-stringing has come, and the suitors cannot string the bow; it takes inhuman strength. Odysseus, when no one is looking, uses a clever trick he knows to string the bow and shoot an arrow; he immediately is changed back into his regular form. The suitors recognize him, but it is too late; with Telemachus’s help, Odysseus kills them all.
• Penelope, not believing that Odysseus is really home, makes him solve one more riddle before she believes it’s him and welcomes him. Odysseus visits his aging father. And when the families of the dead suitors come to take revenge, Athena steps in and makes them reconcile forevermore.

To cite this reading, use the following format:

“The Odyssey in Outline.” Colorado Community College System, 2023.