The key ideas

The Odyssey

Homer, 700 BC

Twenty years ago he sailed off to war. The war ended long ago, the survivors are long home, and he is not. In his house more than a hundred strangers eat his cattle and court his wife, while he sits on the shore of a faraway island and a goddess offers him eternal life. To get home, he will have to become Nobody.

Who it is for

For anyone who knows the Cyclops and the Sirens from retellings and wants to go through the whole poem from start to finish. For anyone moved by stories of the long road home. For students who were set “The Odyssey” for class.

I know of no land lovelier than dear Ithaca.

Tears on the Shore

An island in the middle of an empty sea. Cedar burns in a cave, and the whole island smells of its smoke. The nymph Calypso has kept a man here for close to eight years, and she promises him eternal life. But he sits on a rock by the water and looks out to sea with wet eyes. He longs to see even the smoke rising over his own shore. And then to die.

His name is Odysseus. Twenty years ago he sailed off to the war at Troy. Troy fell long ago, and every survivor is long home. But in his house on the island of Ithaca, strangers sit at his table and slaughter his cattle.

So begins the poem the ancient Greeks attributed to a blind singer named Homer. It is nearly three thousand years old.

Many people know this poem for the Cyclops and the Sirens. But what matters most in it is not the monsters. It is the long road back to his own people: to the wife, the son and the old father waiting for him at the other end of the sea.

The Cloth Unpicked at Night

In the house of Odysseus, the suitors play dice on the hides of slaughtered cattle. The master’s son, Telemachus, sits among them. His father sailed away when Telemachus was a baby, and the young man is not even sure whose son he is. When his mother comes down to the guests, Telemachus sends her back to her spinning in front of everyone, and Penelope goes upstairs to cry.

In the morning, at the assembly, Telemachus makes his complaint to the people, throws the sceptre to the ground and weeps. Antinous, one of the two ringleaders of the suitors, answers him: the suitors are not to blame, Penelope is.

For almost four years she has promised herself to each of them and chosen none. She said she would marry once she had woven a burial shroud for old Laertes, the father of Odysseus. By day she wove. By night, by torchlight, she unpicked everything she had woven that day. Three years went by like this, until a maid gave her away.

The suitors will not leave until Penelope chooses a husband. So Telemachus secretly boards a ship and sails off to look for news of his father. Only the old nurse Eurycleia knows, and he makes her swear to keep quiet, so that his mother will not spoil her face with crying.

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About the author

Almost nothing certain is known about Homer. The ancient Greeks thought of him as a blind singer and argued about where he was born, and scholars still argue about whether one man composed both the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey”. The poem is usually dated to the eighth or seventh century BC; the quotations in this book are given in plain English prose.

All books by this author: Homer

Terms from the book

  • Athena
  • Odysseus
  • Penelope
  • Ithaca
  • Troy
  • Zeus: The supreme god of the Greeks, ruler of the sky and the thunder. When the gods disagree, he has the last word.
  • Poseidon: God of the sea and of earthquakes, brother of Zeus. He hounds Odysseus for blinding his son, the Cyclops Polyphemus.
  • Hermes: Messenger of the gods and son of Zeus. He also guides the souls of the dead down to the realm of Hades.
  • Calypso: A nymph, daughter of the Titan Atlas, who lives on the faraway island of Ogygia. She kept Odysseus with her for seven years and offered him eternal life.
  • Circe: A goddess and enchantress, daughter of Helios, who lives on the island of Aeaea. She turns people into beasts.
  • Hades: God of the underworld, the kingdom of the dead. The kingdom itself goes by the same name.
  • Tiresias: A blind seer from Thebes. Persephone, queen of the underworld, let him keep his mind after death, so he alone among the shades can prophesy.
  • Helios: The sun god, who sees and hears everything. His sacred cattle graze on the island of Thrinacia.
  • Phaeacians: A fabled seafaring people from the island of Scheria. Their ships need no helmsmen: they find their own way and carry wanderers home.
  • Alcinous: King of the Phaeacians and father of Nausicaa. He welcomes Odysseus as a guest and sends him home on his own ship.
  • Nausicaa: Daughter of King Alcinous. She is the first to meet Odysseus in the land of the Phaeacians, and she shows him the way to the city.
  • Demodocus: A blind singer at the court of Alcinous. His songs about the Trojan War bring Odysseus to tears.
  • Cyclops: A one-eyed giant. In the poem the Cyclopes live in caves, with no laws and no assemblies, and they do not honour the gods.
  • Polyphemus: The strongest of the Cyclopes, son of Poseidon and the sea nymph Thoosa.
  • Aeolus: Keeper of the winds: Zeus gave him the power to rouse them and to calm them. He lives on a floating island ringed by a wall of bronze.
  • Laestrygonians: A race of man-eating giants. In their harbour every one of Odysseus’s ships is lost except one.
  • Eumaeus: Odysseus’s swineherd, the son of a king of the island of Syrie, sold into slavery as a child. He stays loyal to his master for all twenty years.
  • Eurycleia: The old nurse of Odysseus and of Telemachus, once bought by Laertes for twenty oxen. She recognises Odysseus by the scar on his leg.
  • Argos: Odysseus’s dog, which he raised himself before he left for Troy.
  • Moira: Fate. The ancient Greeks spoke of the Moirai, goddesses of destiny who set the span of a person’s life. In the poem the death of Argos is described as the touch of Moira’s hand.
  • Antinous: Son of Eupeithes and one of the two ringleaders of Penelope’s suitors.
  • Laertes: Father of Odysseus. The old man lives out in the fields, far from the town, and works in his orchard with his own hands.
  • Telemachus: Son of Odysseus and Penelope. His father sailed for Troy when Telemachus was a baby at the breast.

All terms

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