Homer’s Odyssey is the second of the two great epics of Greek literature and the most influential story of homecoming in Western tradition. The poem is divided into twenty-four books and tells two parallel stories: the Telemachy (Books 1–4), in which Odysseus’s son Telemachus sets out to find news of his father, and the Nostos (Books 5–24), in which Odysseus is released from Calypso’s island and brought home to Ithaca to kill the suitors and be reunited with his wife Penelope. The summary below is a chronological tour of Odysseus’s decade-long journey, as he himself tells it to the Phaeacians in Books 9–12.
Troy and the First Disasters
The fall of Troy was Odysseus’s own stratagem — the famous Trojan Horse he devised, built by Epeius. After the sack, the Greek coalition dispersed. Agamemnon was murdered on his return. Ajax the Lesser was shipwrecked. Menelaus spent eight years stranded in Egypt. Odysseus’s voyage, the longest of all, would last ten years.
Cicones, Lotus-Eaters, and the Cyclops
Odysseus sacked the Cicones of Ismarus, but stayed too long and was driven off with losses. A storm drove him next to the land of the Lotus-Eaters, whose fruit made the eater forget home, family, and self. Several of his men had to be dragged back to the ships weeping — the first test of the Greek quality of nostos, the longing for home that drives the whole poem.
The most famous of Odysseus’s adventures is the encounter with the Cyclops Polyphemus on the island of the Cyclopes (traditionally Sicily). Polyphemus, son of Poseidon, was a man-eating giant with a single eye. He trapped Odysseus and twelve of his men in his cave and began devouring them two by two. Odysseus told him his name was “Nobody” (Outis), got him drunk on the strong wine of Maron, and drove a heated stake into his one eye. The next morning the blinded Cyclops sat at the entrance, feeling the backs of his sheep as they filed out — but Odysseus had lashed his men beneath the bellies of the rams, and himself clung to the underside of the largest ram.
As they sailed away, Odysseus, in a fatal act of hubris, shouted back his real name. Polyphemus prayed to his father Poseidon, and from that moment the sea-god became Odysseus’s chief antagonist, ensuring the rest of the voyage would be a long disaster.
Aeolus, the Laestrygonians, and Circe
The master of the winds, Aeolus, gave Odysseus a leather bag containing all the winds except the gentle west wind that would carry him home. For nine days the fleet sailed within sight of Ithaca. On the tenth day Odysseus fell asleep; his men, suspecting treasure, opened the bag — and the winds burst out, blowing them all the way back. Aeolus, taking this as a sign that the gods hated Odysseus, refused to help him again.
The Laestrygonians were cannibals in the far north, giants who hurled boulders from the cliffs and sank all but Odysseus’s own ship. The survivors landed on the island of Circe, the enchantress daughter of the sun. She turned his men into swine, but Odysseus was protected by a magical herb (moly) given by Hermes, and he forced her to free them. The crew stayed with her for a year.
The Descent into Hades
On Circe’s advice, Odysseus sailed to the mouth of the underworld. He sacrificed a ram and a black ewe, and the dead came up to drink. He saw his mother Anticleia and learned of the grief at home. He saw the ancient heroes and the great women of the past. Most importantly, he consulted the seer Tiresias, who foretold the rest of the voyage: home, the killing of the suitors, and a final, peaceful death inland in old age.
He also saw the ghost of Ajax, still sulking in death over the arms of Achilles, and refused to speak to him.
The Sirens, Scylla, and Charybdis
Leaving Hades, Odysseus sailed past the Sirens, bird-women whose songs made sailors forget everything and steer onto the rocks. He plugged his men’s ears with beeswax and had himself bound to the mast, so that he could hear the song and yet survive. He begged to be released; his men, hearing nothing, kept their course.
The ship then passed through the narrow strait between Scylla, the six-headed monster who snatched sailors from the deck, and Charybdis, the great whirlpool that swallowed ships whole. There was no avoiding both. Odysseus chose to lose six men to Scylla rather than the whole ship to Charybdis — a choice that haunted him the rest of the way.
Helios’s Cattle and Calypso
At the island of Thrinacia, the cattle of the sun god Helios pastured. Tiresias and Circe had both warned him not to harm them, but his starving men — and Odysseus asleep — slaughtered some of the herd. As they sailed away, Zeus struck the ship with a thunderbolt. The ship broke up; only Odysseus survived, clinging to wreckage for nine days before washing up on the island of Ogygia, home of the nymph Calypso.
Calypso took Odysseus as her lover and, over seven years, offered him immortality and eternal youth if he would stay. He refused, spending his days on the shore, weeping for home — Homer’s most famous image of the hero. At last Athena prevailed on Zeus to send Hermes to order Calypso to release him. She helped him build a raft, but Poseidon sent a storm that wrecked him on the island of Scheria, home of the Phaeacians.
The Phaeacians and the Return to Ithaca
The Phaeacians, led by King Alcinous and Queen Arete, gave Odysseus lavish hospitality. He told them the long story of his wanderings, and they were so charmed that they gave him gifts and sailed him home in a single night in their magical ship, while he slept. He awoke on Ithaca, not recognizing it — Athena had hidden the island in a mist — and learned from her the situation at home.
His palace was filled with suitors of Penelope, a hundred and eight of them, eating his cattle, drinking his wine, and pressing his wife to choose one. Penelope had held them off for years with the trick of saying she must finish a burial shroud for Laertes, unweaving it by night, but the trick had been discovered.
The Bow, the Slaughter, and the Reunion
Odysseus, disguised as a beggar by Athena, took refuge with his loyal swineherd Eumaeus. Telemachus, returning from his own travels, joined him there, and father and son met, recognized each other, and planned the killing of the suitors.
The test came when Penelope announced she would marry whoever could string the great bow of Odysseus and shoot an arrow through the line of twelve axe-heads. The suitors one by one failed. Odysseus, still in rags, took the bow, strung it, and sent the arrow through the line. He then turned and shot the suitors where they sat, and with Telemachus, Eumaeus, and the cowherd Philoetius, killed every one of the hundred and eight. The singer Phemius and the herald Medon were spared.
Penelope, wary of impostors, tested him by describing a secret only the real Odysseus knew: that their marriage bed was carved from a single olive tree still rooted in the floor of the house. Odysseus told her the secret. She fell into his arms. The Odyssey ends with the suitors’ kin demanding blood, Athena and Zeus making peace, and Odysseus, at last, king in Ithaca.
Legacy
The Odyssey is the founding text of the long-voyage literature of the West. Its episodes — the Cyclops, the Sirens, the witch, the return to a home that has been compromised — are the basic materials from which later stories have been built, and its idioms — “between Scylla and Charybdis,” “the lotus-eater,” “the Trojan Horse,” “the long journey home” — are part of the everyday vocabulary of English. From Virgil to Tennyson to James Joyce, the figure of Odysseus has been the model of the wanderer, the trickster, and the man who finally comes home.
Last reviewed: June 2026.