The telling of The Odyssey opens with the gods, particularly Athena and Zeus, discussing Odysseus. Athena eventually sets out for Odysseus’ son, Telemachus, and suggests that Zeus send Hermes to the nymph Calypso, whose island the hero has landed on.
Telemachus has his hands full with the suitors who have recently been courting his mother, Penelope, as it has been 20 years since Odysseus left and they assume him dead, but it doesn’t take much for Athena to convince him to journey out and look for his father. His search leads him to Nestor, who was 90 when he led a contingent in the Trojan War. He informs the young man that Menelaus is the man to ask. From him, Telemachus learns that Odysseus is marooned with no crew, but is not dead.
Athena returns to Olympus to find that Zeus has not yet sent Hermes to Calypso, so she convinces him to do so. Hermes finds that Odysseus has spent the last seven years on a rock by the sea, weeping for his wife and home. Glad to finally be on his way home, Odysseus turns down the nymph’s offers of immortality and ever-lasting youth and sails off in a crudely made ship.
This comes to the attention of Poseidon whom Odysseus had angered in the past. The sea god uses his triton to create a squall, which tosses our hero overboard. The sea nymph Leucothea, disguised as a bird, gives him her veil to protect him from drowning. He swims for two days, at which time he washes up in the land of the Phaeacians. After befriending the princess Nausicaa but never revealing his name, Odysseus enters the city.
King Alcinous entertains this stranger with a feast, singing, and a day of discus and other such sports, then agrees to help him on his way home on one condition: he must tell the citizens who he is. At this point, the hero launches into a rather longwinded flashback in which he tells of his adventures with the Lotus-eaters, Polyphemus, the Laestrygonians, Circe, Tiresias (the blind prophet who warned him of the remainder of his journey), the Sirens, Charybdis, Scylla, and the land of the Sun. This last challenge was the cause of his being stranded on Calypso’s island. His men had apparently insisted on sacrificing the cattle there, so Zeus sent a lightening bolt to smash the ship. Odysseus is the only survivor.
The weary traveler sleeps the entire way back to his home. When he wakes, Athena, who is back in the action again, disguises him as an old man and he sets out to find his goatherd Eumaeus. While he spends the night in Eumaeus’ home, Athena summons Telemachus back to Ithica and informs him how to avoid the suitors have set up for him.
When his son arrives, Odysseus is reunited with him and they plot to destroy the suitors. Disguised as a beggar, Odysseus asks the suitors for some food. Instead of simply declining, the head suitor, Antinous, hurls a footstool at him. After breaking a real beggar, Irus’, jaw in a fight over which man should be allowed to beg in the area, Odysseus has another stool chunked in his general direction, this time by a charming fellow by the name of Eurymachus.
After this exciting interlude, the walking footstool target goes to the palace to talk with his wife, again disguised. Penelope tells Eurycleia, who was Odysseus’ childhood nurse, to wash the stranger’s feet. The servant recognizes him by the scar above his knee, and he tells her not to blow his cover, but not in so many words.
Meanwhile, a prophet, who happens to be a murderer, informs the suitors that he sees the walls dripping with their blood, but they merely laugh at him.
The next day, Penelope, who has conveniently been putting off talking with the suitors and still does not realize that her long departed husband is back, issues a challenge: he who can string a bow and then shoot an arrow through the sockets of twelve ax heads lined up in a row may have her hand in marriage. Anyone who has not yet figured out that no one can complete the task until Odysseus tries his hand at it needs to brush up on his or her fantasy.
In a stunning display of extreme macho-ness, Odysseus and Telemachus, with a little help from Athena, slaughter the suitors and hang their accomplices, Antinous being the first to die. Odysseus finally reveals himself to Penelope, but she doesn’t believe it until he proves that he knows what the bed he built is made of.
Finally, after reuniting with his father, King Laertes, Odysseus leads a battle against the kinsmen of the suitors. Zeus insists on peace after, darn it, only one man is killed.
Further reading:
Calypso
Charybdis
Circe
Laestrygonians
Lotus-eaters
Polyphemus
Scylla
Sirens
Greek Mythology: Odysseus
Homer's Iliad and Odyssey
The Role of Women in the Iliad and Odyssey
Encyclopedia Mythica
Bernard Evslin's Gods, Demigods, & Demons: An Encyclopedia of Greek Mythology
(kuh LIHP soh)
The nymph who saved Odysseus after Zeus destroyed his ship, Calypso accompanied him on her island for 7 years. (back)
(kuh RIB dihss)
Once an excessively greedy woman, Zeus threw Charybdis into the sea off the coast of Sicily. She there became a whirlpool; drinking the water at such an alarming rate that everything that came too close was devoured. Coupled with Scylla, they two made up what has been called the most perilous challenge in navigating the coasts of the Inner Sea. (back)
(SUR see)
A most beautiful enchantress, Circe hardly needed sorcery to lure men onto her island. When she tired of one man, she would transform him into the animal which best represented his personality. When Odysseus’ ship landed on her island, she turned half of his crew into pigs in order to get to him. He was spared only by the counter-spell Hermes had provided. After remaining on the island for three years, during which time the witch gave birth to his son, Telegonus, Odysseus made her return his crew to their former state and she told him that going straight home would mean certain death. He should first visit Tiresias, the blind prophet, in the land of Death. (back)
(less TRIG oh nee ahns)
These giants inhabited an island off Sicily where the sun never set. Delighting in human suffering, their favorite food was human flesh. The two ships accompanying Odysseus were destroyed by the Laestrygonians and the crews eaten alive, and it is said that this was the most disheartening leg of his journey.(back)
These inhabitants of the elbow of the Libyan coast ate only the delicious lotus flower. Consequently, immediately after eating, they would into a deep sleep, waking only to eat, and so the cycle continued. Odysseus’ crew fell into this way of life and were saved only when (surprise, surprise!) Odysseus figured out what was happening and got them all off the island. (back)
(pahl ih FEE muhs)
The Cyclops whose cave Odysseus had the misfortune of being trapped in devoured several of his crew. To escape, Odysseus waited until the giant had the enormous boulder moved away from the door and gouged his eye out. His men then strapped themselves to the bottom of Polyphemus’ goats so that he would not be able to find them while groping around and escaped. Poseidon, who happened to be the father of the Cyclopes, was enraged, which was the cause of much of Odysseus’ ill fortune. (back)
(SIHL uh)
Now a horrible monstrosity, Scylla was once a beautiful sea nymph who was loved by Glaucus. Unfortunately, Circe was in love with Glaucus and so poisoned the tidal pool in which Scylla bathed. The ill-fated girl was transformed into a creature that remained nymph from the waste up but became six ravening dogs below. Odysseus lost six men to Scylla, but managed to cut off two of the heads. (back)
The Sirens were three sisters who had beautiful voices and were each half bird, half woman. Tiresias had warned Odysseus that their beautiful voices would lure anyone who heard them to certain death on the rocks surrounding their island, so he had his men seal their ears with wax and had himself tied to the mast so that he would not be able to alter the ship’s course. When he heard their song, he tore the mast off and attempted to jump overboard, but his crew subdued him and prevented the tragedy. The Sirens are said to have thrown themselves into the sea because of their failure. (back)
