The Greatest Adventure Ever Told

The Odyssey, attributed to the poet Homer, is the story of Odysseus's harrowing ten-year journey home to Ithaca after the fall of Troy. While the Iliad is a tale of war, the Odyssey is a tale of survival, cunning, and the unbreakable human desire to return home. It is perhaps the most influential adventure story ever written — the template for every hero's journey that followed, from Virgil's Aeneid to Star Wars.

After fighting for ten years at Troy, Odysseus — the cleverest of the Greek heroes — set sail with his fleet of twelve ships and his loyal crew. But the gods had other plans. Poseidon, enraged by Odysseus's blinding of his son the Cyclops Polyphemus, cursed the hero to wander the seas for a decade before reaching home. What followed was an odyssey through the most dangerous and wondrous places in the mythological world.

The Cyclops

One of Odysseus's first encounters was with Polyphemus, a one-eyed giant Cyclops and son of Poseidon. Trapped in the monster's cave with his men, Odysseus watched in horror as Polyphemus devoured several of his companions. Using his legendary cunning, Odysseus got the Cyclops drunk on wine, told him his name was 'Nobody,' and then drove a sharpened stake into his single eye while he slept. When Polyphemus screamed for help, his fellow Cyclopes asked who was hurting him — and when he cried 'Nobody!', they went away. Odysseus escaped by clinging to the belly of a ram. But his fatal mistake was shouting his real name as he sailed away, allowing Polyphemus to pray to his father Poseidon for vengeance.

Circe and the Underworld

On the island of Aeaea, Odysseus encountered Circe, a powerful sorceress who turned his men into pigs with her enchanted food. Protected by the herb moly, given to him by Hermes, Odysseus resisted her magic and won her respect. He remained on her island for a year as her lover before Circe directed him to the Underworld to seek guidance from the prophet Tiresias. In the land of the dead, Odysseus spoke with the shades of his mother, Achilles, Agamemnon, and Ajax — learning bitter truths about the cost of war and the fragility of glory.

The Sirens, Scylla, and Charybdis

Odysseus navigated past the Sirens — creatures whose irresistible singing lured sailors to their deaths on the rocks. He ordered his men to plug their ears with wax while he himself was tied to the mast, allowing him to hear the Sirens' song without being destroyed by it. He then faced the impossible choice between Scylla, a six-headed monster who would devour six of his men, and Charybdis, a massive whirlpool that could swallow his entire ship. Choosing the lesser evil, he sailed past Scylla and lost six companions — a devastating but calculated sacrifice.

Return to Ithaca

After twenty years away — ten at war, ten wandering — Odysseus finally returned to Ithaca. But his palace had been overrun by suitors competing for his wife Penelope's hand, assuming Odysseus was dead. Disguised as a beggar by Athena, Odysseus entered his own home unrecognized. Only his ancient dog Argos — who had waited twenty years for his master — recognized him, wagging his tail one last time before dying.

Penelope, who had faithfully resisted the suitors for years, devised a contest: whoever could string Odysseus's great bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axe heads would win her hand. None of the suitors could even bend the bow. Then the disguised beggar stepped forward, strung the bow effortlessly, and shot the arrow true. In the bloodbath that followed, Odysseus and his son Telemachus slaughtered every last suitor, reclaiming his home, his wife, and his kingdom. The greatest journey in literature had reached its end.

Classical Sources

This myth is recorded in multiple ancient sources:

  • 📜 Homer, Iliad & Odyssey (c. 750 BC)
  • 📜 Hesiod, Theogony & Works and Days (c. 700 BC)
  • 📜 Apollodorus, Bibliotheca (c. 1st–2nd century AD)
  • 📜 Ovid, Metamorphoses (8 AD)
  • 📜 Greek Tragedians — Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides (5th century BC)

Cross-referenced with multiple classical sources for accuracy.

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How the story is actually told

The Odyssey does not start at Troy. It opens in the twentieth year, with Odysseus trapped on Calypso's island and the gods meeting while Poseidon is away among the Ethiopians. The twenty-four books fall into four movements:

  • Books 1–4, the Telemachy. Athena, disguised as the family friend Mentes, urges young Telemachus to stand up to the suitors and go looking for news of his father. He visits Nestor at Pylos and then Menelaus and Helen at Sparta. Menelaus tells how he wrestled the shape-changing sea god Proteus in Egypt and learned that Odysseus was alive and held by Calypso. Meanwhile the suitors plot to ambush Telemachus on his way home.
  • Books 5–8, Calypso and the Phaeacians. Hermes brings Calypso the order to let Odysseus go. Odysseus builds a raft, and Poseidon wrecks it. The sea goddess Ino gives him a veil that keeps him afloat. He washes up on Scheria, where the princess Nausicaa finds him. At King Alcinous's court the bard Demodocus sings of the quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles, of Ares and Aphrodite caught in Hephaestus's net, and of the wooden horse. Odysseus weeps, and that leads to him revealing who he is.
  • Books 9–12, the wanderings. Every famous adventure is told by Odysseus himself, in the first person, at the Phaeacian banquet. Besides the episodes above there are the raid on the Cicones, the Lotus-Eaters, Aeolus and his bag of winds, which the crew opens within sight of Ithaca, and the cannibal Laestrygonians, who destroy eleven of the twelve ships. Last comes Thrinacia, where the starving crew kill the cattle of Helios. Zeus wrecks the last ship and Odysseus alone survives.
  • Books 13–24, Ithaca. The Phaeacians leave Odysseus asleep on the shore. Disguised by Athena, he stays with the loyal swineherd Eumaeus, reveals himself to Telemachus, and is recognised in his own house by the nurse Eurycleia, who knows the scar on his leg from a boar hunt in his youth.

Details that are often misremembered

The ten years. Most of the voyage is not spent sailing. Odysseus stays a year with Circe and seven years with Calypso, so the adventures themselves take up only a small part of the decade. See Calypso and Odysseus for those seven years.

The bow contest. The test is not to shoot through the axe blades. Twelve axe heads were set up in a line, and the archer had to send an arrow through the row of holes or loops, though scholars still argue about exactly how the axes were arranged. It is Penelope who announces the contest, telling her plan to the disguised beggar himself just after describing to him a dream that seems to foretell the suitors' deaths.

The recognition. Penelope is not won over by the massacre. She tests Odysseus by telling the maid to move their bed out of the bedroom. He bursts out angrily that it cannot be moved, because he built it himself around the trunk of a living olive tree. Only a secret that the two of them share finally convinces her.

Who is to blame. The opening lines say that the crew died through their own recklessness in eating the Sun's cattle. In the first divine assembly, Zeus complains that mortals blame the gods for troubles they bring on themselves. Poseidon's anger delays Odysseus, but the poem lays the deaths on human choices.

The ending and beyond

After the slaughter, the suitors' ghosts are led down to the underworld by Hermes, where they meet Achilles and Agamemnon. Odysseus visits his old father Laertes on his farm, and the suitors' relatives take up arms for revenge before Athena calls a halt and makes peace. The Alexandrian scholars Aristarchus and Aristophanes of Byzantium are reported to have said the poem's "end" came at the reunion in Book 23. Whether they meant its conclusion or its goal is still debated. Tiresias's prophecy in Book 11 also looks past the poem. Odysseus must carry an oar inland until someone mistakes it for a winnowing fan, sacrifice to Poseidon there, and later die a gentle death "away from the sea". A lost sequel, the Telegony, told of his death at the hands of Telegonus, his son by Circe. Study notes on themes and characters are in the Odyssey study guide, and the hero's wider story is on the Odysseus page.

Ancient sources

  • Homer, Odyssey: the twenty-four-book epic itself, with the wanderings narrated by Odysseus in Books 9–12.
  • Proclus, Chrestomathy: summaries of the lost Nostoi (the returns of the other Greek heroes) and the Telegony, which continued Odysseus's story.
  • Apollodorus, Epitome 7: a condensed version of the wanderings and return, with some variants not found in Homer.
  • Euripides, Cyclops: the only complete surviving satyr play, a comic retelling of the Polyphemus episode.
  • Virgil, Aeneid 3: revisits the Cyclops episode through Achaemenides, a crewman Odysseus left behind in Sicily.

Frequently asked questions

How many of Odysseus's men survive?

None. He leaves Troy with twelve ships, loses eleven to the Laestrygonians, and the last crew drowns after eating the cattle of Helios. Odysseus reaches Ithaca alone on a Phaeacian ship.

How long was Odysseus away from Ithaca?

Twenty years in total: ten fighting at Troy and ten travelling home, seven of those on Calypso's island.

Why is Poseidon angry with Odysseus?

Because Odysseus blinded Poseidon's son Polyphemus and then boasted his real name. Polyphemus then asked his father to curse him by name.

Is the Odyssey a sequel to the Iliad?

It is set after the Iliad and refers to events in between, such as Achilles' death and the wooden horse. But it was composed as a separate poem, and ancient as well as modern critics have debated whether the same poet wrote both.

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