![]() ![]() Only now does Odysseus reveal and prove his true identity to his wife and to his old father, Laertes. With more help from Athena, an archery competition is arranged by Penelope for the suitors, which the disguised Odysseus easily wins, and he then promptly slaughters all the other suitors. Through Athena’s machinations, he meets up with his own son, Telemachus, just returning from Sparta, and they agree together that the insolent and increasingly impatient suitors must be killed. Disguised as a wandering beggar and telling a fictitious tale of himself, Odysseus learns from a local swineherd how things stand in his household. Having listened with rapt attention to his story, the Phaeacians agree to help Odysseus get home, and they finally deliver him one night to a hidden harbour on his home island of Ithaca. He was washed ashore on Calypso’s island, where she compelled him to remain as her lover.īy this point, Homer has brought us up to date, and the remainder of the story is told straightforwardly in chronological order. ![]() For this sacrilege, they were punished by a shipwreck in which all but Odysseus himself drowned. Odysseus made a sacrifice to the dead and summoned the spirit of the old prophet Tiresias to advise him, as well as the spirits of several other famous men and women and that of his own mother, who had died of grief at his long absence and who gave him disturbing news of the situation in his own household.Īdvised once more by Circe on the remaining stages of their journey, they skirted the land of the Sirens, passed between the many-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis, and, blithely ignoring the warnings of Tiresias and Circe, hunted down the sacred cattle of the sun god Helios. Circe turned half of his men into swine, but Odysseus had been pre-warned by Hermes and made resistant to Circe’s magic.Īfter a year of feasting and drinking on Circe’s island, the Greeks again set off, reaching the western edge of the world. They narrowly escaped from the cannibal Laestrygones, only to encounter the witch-goddess Circe soon after. Despite the help of Aeolus, King of the Winds, Odysseus and his crew were blown off course again just as home was almost in sight. Odysseus tells how he and his twelve ships were driven off course by storms, and how they visited the lethargic Lotus-Eaters with their memory-erasing food, before being captured by the giant one-eyed cyclops Polyphemus (Poseidon’s son), only escaping after he blinded the giant with a wooden stake. He is found by the young Nausicaa and her handmaidens and is made welcome by King Alcinous and Queen Arete of the Phaeacians, and begins to tell the amazing story of his return from Troy. Calypso is finally persuaded to release him by Hermes and Zeus, but Odysseus’ makeshift boat is wrecked by his nemesis Poseidon, and he swims ashore onto an island. The scene then changes to Calypso’s island, where Odysseus has spent seven years in captivity. Menelaus tells Telemachus that he has heard that Odysseus is being held captive by the nymph Calypso. They receive him sumptuously and recount the ending of the Trojan War, including the story of the wooden horse. Ten years after the Fall of Troy, and twenty years after the Greek hero Odysseus first set out from his home in Ithaca to fight with the other Greeks against the Trojans, Odysseus’ son Telemachus and his wife Penelope are beset with over a hundred suitors who are trying to persuade Penelope that her husband is dead and that she should marry one of them.Įncouraged by the goddess Athena (always Odysseus’ protector), Telemachus sets out to look for his father, visiting some of Odysseus’ erstwhile companions such as Nestor, Menelaus and Helen, who have long since arrived home. His adventure-filled ten year journey took him through the Ionian Islands and the Peloponnese and as far away as Egypt and North Africa and the western Mediteranean, as the displeased sea-god Poseidon prevented him from reaching his home. ![]() The poem focuses on the Greek hero Odysseus ( or Ulysses, as he was known in Roman myths) and his long journey home to Ithaca following the fall of Troy. It is widely recognized as one of the great stories of all time, and has been a strong influence on later European, especially Renaissance, literature. It was probably composed near the end of the 8th Century BCE and is, in part, a sequel to “The Iliad”. “The Odyssey” (Gr: “Odysseia”) is the second of the two epic poems attributed to the ancient Greek poet Homer (the first being “The Iliad”), and usually considered the second extant work of Western literature. ![]() Introduction | Synopsis | Analysis | Resources Introduction ![]()
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