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The Odyssey (Penguin Classics) [Paperback] [2006] (Author) Homer, Bernard Knox, Robert Fagles
Unknown Binding
Published January 1, 1994
About the author
Homer
5,034 books7,484 followersHomer (Greek: Όμηρος born c. 8th century BC) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history.
Homer's Iliad centers on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles during the last year of the Trojan War. The Odyssey chronicles the ten-year journey of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, back to his home after the fall of Troy. The poems are in Homeric Greek, also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic. Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally. Despite being predominantly known for its tragic and serious themes, the Homeric poems also contain instances of comedy and laughter.
Homer's epic poems shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and education, fostering ideals of heroism, glory, and honor. To Plato, Homer was simply the one who "has taught Greece" (τὴν Ἑλλάδα πεπαίδευκεν). In Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Virgil refers to Homer as "Poet sovereign", king of all poets; in the preface to his translation of the Iliad, Alexander Pope acknowledges that Homer has always been considered the "greatest of poets". From antiquity to the present day, Homeric epics have inspired many famous works of literature, music, art, and film.
The question of by whom, when, where and under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed continues to be debated. Scholars remain divided as to whether the two works are the product of a single author. It is thought that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BC. Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity; the most widespread account was that he was a blind bard from Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary.
French: Homère, Italian: Omero, Portuguese, Spanish: Homero.
Homer's Iliad centers on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles during the last year of the Trojan War. The Odyssey chronicles the ten-year journey of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, back to his home after the fall of Troy. The poems are in Homeric Greek, also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic. Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally. Despite being predominantly known for its tragic and serious themes, the Homeric poems also contain instances of comedy and laughter.
Homer's epic poems shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and education, fostering ideals of heroism, glory, and honor. To Plato, Homer was simply the one who "has taught Greece" (τὴν Ἑλλάδα πεπαίδευκεν). In Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Virgil refers to Homer as "Poet sovereign", king of all poets; in the preface to his translation of the Iliad, Alexander Pope acknowledges that Homer has always been considered the "greatest of poets". From antiquity to the present day, Homeric epics have inspired many famous works of literature, music, art, and film.
The question of by whom, when, where and under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed continues to be debated. Scholars remain divided as to whether the two works are the product of a single author. It is thought that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BC. Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity; the most widespread account was that he was a blind bard from Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary.
French: Homère, Italian: Omero, Portuguese, Spanish: Homero.
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July 2, 2026In the opening lines of The Odyssey, we are reminded that Odysseus is a 'man of twists and turns', and the description is exactly how he appeared in The Iliad as well. In that book, every time there was a need for wise counsel, the elderly warrior Nestor was consulted but if a clever or devious strategy was required, or if the troops needed to have their spirits roused, it was Odysseus who was called for. So we already had a picture of him as being shrewd and hard-headed, a 'cunning-hearted, logic-chopping, sweet-tongued courtier of the people,' as Euripides described him in his play The Trojan Women
The man of 'twists and turns' is therefore consistent between the two Homer books, and his adventures in The Odyssey are full of twists and turns too. The narrative itself, once it begins to tell of Odysseus' adventures, mirrors the twists and turns of his character: there are doubling backs, fast forwards, side-steppings, and stories within stories. So many detours in fact that I came to wonder if the story of his adventures could be the work of the same poet who'd written The Iliad—which proceeds sedately in chronological fashion with only one or two bits of back story to interrupt the straightforward rolling out of its events.
But I'm not a scholar so I won't get into discussing whether the two books were created by the same poet or not. They offered me very different reading experiences is all I can say. My enjoyment of The Iliad was so great that it took me a while to get even close to appreciating The Odyssey. I missed the images that were sprinkled through The Iliad in particular, the little moments in the action when characters and events were compared to something in the natural world, which allowed a pause from the tension of the battle scenes.
When I found the first such simile in The Odyssey, I cheered (although it has to be said, the 'rosy-fingered dawn' image was mentioned so often that it was beginning to feel like an over-laboured link with The Iliad). The first simile occurs in Book Five when the god Hermes, in his winged sandals, is described swooping low towards the sea 'like a tern that down the deadly gulfs of the barren salt swells, glides and dives for fish, dipping its beating wings in bursts of spray—so Hermes skimmed the crests on endless crests...'
Book Five is where the gods send Hermes to announce the end of Odysseus' ten year odyssey, and where he himself first enters the book as a character. The previous four Books tell of his son Telemachus, at home in Ithaca among Penelope's suitors, then in Pylos at Nestor's house, later in Sparta where Menelaus and Helen live, journeys that Telemachus has made in search of news of his long absent father, whom everyone tells him must be lost at sea.
There were reminders of many of the characters from The Iliad in those four Books and I enjoyed how the gaps in their stories were filled in. When Nestor tells Telemachus of Agamemnon's murder by his cousin Aegisthus, and Agamemnon's son Orestes' revenge on the killer, Telemachus says: "what a stroke of revenge that was! All Achaeans will spread Orestes' fame across the world, a song for those to come."
Now that I've read Euripides' version of Orestes' story, I appreciate better the parallels and contrast between Orestes and Telemachus, both sons of fathers who abandoned their families for ten years to fight the Trojans over Menelaus' wife Helen.
Helen gets an opportunity to comment on the ridiculousness of the long Trojan war when Telemachus and his friend Pisistratus arrive as strangers at hers and Menelaus' palace:
"Helen emerged from her scented, lofty chamber—
striking as Artemis with her golden shafts—
and a train of women followed…
Helen leaned back in her chair, a stool beneath her feet,
and pressed her husband at once for details:
'Do we know, my lord Menelaus, who our visitors
claim to be, our welcome arrivals?
……My heart tells me
to come right out and say I've never seen such a likeness,
neither in man nor woman—I'm amazed at the sight.
To the life he's like the son of great Odysseus,
surely he's Telemachus! The boy the hero left
a babe in arms at home when all you Achaeans
fought at Troy, launching your headlong battles
just for my sake, shameless whore that I was.'"
And later, after Telemachus has given his name, she recalls a story about Odysseus, one we weren't told in The Iliad:
"'Scarring his own body with mortifying strokes,
throwing filthy rags on his back like any slave,
he slipped into the enemy's city, roamed its streets—
all disguised, a totally different man, a beggar,
hardly the figure he cut among Achaea's ships.
That's how Odysseus infiltrated Troy,
and no one knew him at all...
My heart had changed by now.
I yearned to sail back home again!
I grieved too late for the madness Aphrodite sent me,
luring me there, far from my dear land,
forsaking my own child, my bridal bed, my husband too...'"
She goes on to say that she alone recognised him and helped him leave the city safely (In Euripides' play, The Trojan Women, Hecuba, Queen of Troy, tells a similar story, except in her version, it was she who helped the disguised Odysseus leave the city. She also told of how she had entreated Helen to leave with him and so bring an end to the war, but Helen had refused).
But back to Telemachus. He hears from Menelaus a little of the story of the wooden horse, and how that deception was the crafty Odysseus' plan entirely. This is another episode that wasn't included in The Iliad.
When it is time for Telemachus to return home to Ithaca, at the end of Book Four, Menelaus offers him a troop of fine horses as a gift but Telemachus has to refuse:
"No running-room for mares in Ithaca, no meadows.
Goat, not stallion, land, yet it means the world to me.
None of the rugged islands slanting down to sea
is good for pasture or good bridle paths,
but Ithaca, best of islands, crowns them all."
Because I come from a rugged rocky place, I really related to his words. Aren't they the essence of 'heimat' or love-of-home!
Book Five is when The Odyssey switches to being an account of how Odysseus roamed back and forth across the Mediterranean Sea during the ten years since the end of the Trojan war, and it is also when the narrative really begins to twist and turn on itself in a very sophisticated way.
And there's a slight echo of Telemachus' longing for Ithaca in the first glimpse we get of Odysseus as a living character rather than someone who is being recalled by others. It happens when the nymph Calypso, with whom he's been living for seven years, tells him of Hermes' message from the gods allowing Odysseus to finally return home:
"...she found him on the headland, sitting still,
weeping, his eyes never dry, his sweet life flowing away
with the tears he wept for his foiled journey home,
since the nymph no longer pleased him. In the nights, true,
he'd sleep with her in the arching cave—he had no choice—
unwilling lover alongside lover all too willing..."
We almost feel sorry for the famous strategist, don't we? His sharp wits were no use to him while he was under Calypso's spell in the paradise of her magical island of Ogygia. But now that she has been ordered to grant his freedom, he puts his wits to good use and builds an elaborate raft to take him back home. Scholars think Ogygia was off the coast of Malta so he has to travel north-east across part of the Mediterranean towards the western edge of Greece. It should be plain sailing but the god Poseidon, who hadn't heard about the other gods' decision (he was off partying with friends in North Africa!), sends a mighty storm which very nearly does for Odysseus and his raft. Salvation comes via the sea nymph Ino (I met her recently in Euripides' Bachantes):
"She pitied Odysseus, tossed, tormented so—
she broke from the waves like a shearwater on the wing,"
and she advises him to abandon the raft and swim to the nearest shore instead.
The mythical island he eventually reaches after much difficulty is ruled by Alcinous, king of the Phaeacians, and after Alcinous' daughter Nausicaa finds the exhausted hero along the shore (women are good to Odysseus), he is brought to the palace.
All those trials have taken us to Book Seven and in the next five Books, 'seasoned, worldly-wise' Odysseus recounts some of his adventures to Alcinous and his court. He starts with his most recent adventure, and it's interesting to hear him tell in his own words, edited to suit the hearers, of his escape from 'the dangerous nymph' Calypso's island—a tale we'd been told already. And we realise too that the crafty man hasn't told the king his real name. I wondered at that but soon realised the purpose it served in narrative terms because before Odysseus gets to tell any more of his adventures, in comes…
"....the faithful bard the Muse adored
above all others, true, but her gifts were mixed
with good and evil both: she stripped him of sight
but gave the man the power of rapturous song."
Is this a case of Homer, the blind bard, putting himself into his poem?
In any case, the bard starts to sing of the mighty feats of Agamemnon and Achilles—and of Odysseus himself—and we realise how clever it was in narrative terms that Odysseus hadn't yet revealed his identity.
Disguised Odysseus then asks the bard to sing of the wooden horse, 'the cunning trap good Odysseus brought to Troy,' and the bard launches into that story in which Odysseus comes out such a hero. But hearing the tale of his own heroic deeds moves Odysseus to such tears that Alcinous asks him to tell more of his own adventures instead.
Odysseus agrees but first he declares that sitting at a table laden with food and wine, in good company, listening to the bard's stories is 'the best that life can offer.' Is this Homer inserting a sly tribute to himself? It's a fine tribute to all bards anyway, and we readers can only agree with it!
So then Odysseus reveals his identity and begins on the long history of his journey away from the sacked city of Troy, and the many adventures he met with before he became trapped on magical Calypso's island. Some of the details he shares are to his credit, others not so much, but always there's a narrative purpose for sharing them. Take this example:
"The wind drove our ships to Ismarus...There I sacked the city, killed the men, but as for the wives and plunder, that rich haul we dragged away from the place. We shared it around so no one, not on my account, would go deprived of his fair share of the spoils."
Much later, after they'd been at sea a long while and were running low on food, they landed on an island and hunted goats to make a meal with which they had lots of wine, and in case we wondered how they still had any left since they'd been at sea so long, he reminds us of all the wine they'd taken when they sacked the city of Ismarus. The narrative, as told by wily Odysseus, never catches itself out.
And we hear of his further fearsome adventures which reduce his fleet down to a single ship and a small troop of men. That ship reaches the island of the sorceress Circe who turns some of the men into pigs. When Odysseus tricks her into turning them back, an odd detail is mentioned about a man who fell from the roof of Circe's house instead of climbing down the ladder as the others did to escape. I wondered why that little detail was included but later when Odysseus visits the underworld, he meets the spirit of the man who'd fallen from the roof who complains that Odysseus didn't stay on Circe's island to give him a proper burial. The narrative really is full of such unexpected twists, and Odysseus' account is interspersed here and there with comments he makes to his listeners in Alcinous' palace in case we forget where we are in the bigger story.
His stories from the underworld are particularly interesting because he meets characters from The Iliad, the murdered Agamemnon for example, who tells of being laid low by Aegisthus, and how Clytemnestra then killed his concubine Cassandra, the daughter of Priam whom he'd taken from Troy. And Odysseus sees his former comrades Achilles and Patrocles too. And there is this scene, with its odd sense of déjà vu for us perhaps:
"And I saw Minos there, illustrious son of Zeus,
firmly enthroned, holding his golden sceptre,
judging all the dead...
Some on their feet, others seated, all clustering
round the king of justice..."
By Book Twelve, Odysseus has left the underworld and we might expect him to try to set out for Ithaca but he doubles back to Circe's island—he hasn't forgotten about the man who fell from the roof and needs burying!
Later he tells of visiting an island belonging to the sun god Helios. While telling of that, he mentions something Zeus said to Helios, and as if his listeners in Alcinous' palace might wonder how Odysseus could knew what the gods said to one another, he adds: —"Or so I heard from the lovely nymph Calypso, who heard it herself, she said, from Hermes."
Anyway, Odysseus' stories, including how he finally lost his last ship and all his his men, impress Alcinous so much that he gives him a fine new ship and a crew plus heaps of treasures and sends him on his way to Ithaca. The remaining Books tell of the ruses Odysseus employs to defeat Penelope's suitors who'd been camped in his 'grand high-roofed house' eating his food and drinking his wine for years, waiting for her to choose one of them as a husband. We are not surprised that some of his wily methods involve hiding the treasures he'd been given by Alcinous and adopting the disguise of a beggar. It's a long time before he reveals himself to Penelope and there's a lot of murder and mayhem before that happens, but a lot of ingenious doings at the same time. We alternately cheer and boo him. As the goddess Athena, herself in disguise, says to him at one point:
"Any man—any god who met you—would have to be
some champion lying cheat to get past you
for all-round craft and guile! You terrible man,
foxy, ingenious, never tired of twists and tricks...
That's why I can't forsake you in your troubles—
you are so winning, so worldly-wise, so self-possessed!"
And there is a certain honesty in the following description Odysseus gives of himself and his life, though the irony is that he's telling this truth to an old retainer to whom he hasn't yet revealed his identity:
"…but I had no love
for working the land, the chores of households either,
the labour that raises crops of shining children. No,
it was always oarswept ships that thrilled my heart,
and wars, and the long polished spears and arrows,
dreadful gear that makes the next man cringe.
I loved them all—god planted that love in me.
Each man delights in the work that suits him best."
The fact that Odysseus hasn't revealed himself, especially to his very elderly father Laertes, seems cruel, but it serves Odysseus well in his attack on the suitors, and it serves as an excellent narrative strategy too since the reader knows more than the other characters. There are some unexpectedly moving moments amongst all this deception, as when his old dog Argos who'd waited for Odysseus' return for twenty years, pricks up his ears at his approach, but hasn't the strength to run to him—and so keeps the secret of his identity.
Through all the final episodes of revenge on the suitors, the story-telling skill never falters. I think that's what impressed me the most in this book, how it never slips up. For example, when Telemachus is asked to lay out a row of axes, just as Odysseus used to do, in such a way that a crossbow could be fired through them in a contest of skill, Telemachus manages to lay them out just right, but in case we might wonder at that since we know he was just a baby when Odysseus left, that fact is mentioned: 'though he'd never seen the axes ranged before'.
Once the suitors have been vanquished, Odysseus reveals himself to everyone bit by bit until his elderly father Laertes, who lives far from the palace, is the only person who remains in the dark. When Laertes asks where the stranger has come from, Odysseus, the master of tricks and illusions, can't resist indulging in one last riddle:
"The whole tale I'll tell from start to finish.
I come from Roamer-Town, my home's a famous place,
my father's Unsparing, son of old King Pain,
and my name is Man of Strife..."
So eventually the Man of Strife from Roamer-Town reveals himself to Unsparing, son of old King Pain in ever famous Ithaca, and some kind of harmony is restored to life on the island—though we wonder how peace and harmony can coexist with that incorrigible Man of Strife.
The man of 'twists and turns' is therefore consistent between the two Homer books, and his adventures in The Odyssey are full of twists and turns too. The narrative itself, once it begins to tell of Odysseus' adventures, mirrors the twists and turns of his character: there are doubling backs, fast forwards, side-steppings, and stories within stories. So many detours in fact that I came to wonder if the story of his adventures could be the work of the same poet who'd written The Iliad—which proceeds sedately in chronological fashion with only one or two bits of back story to interrupt the straightforward rolling out of its events.
But I'm not a scholar so I won't get into discussing whether the two books were created by the same poet or not. They offered me very different reading experiences is all I can say. My enjoyment of The Iliad was so great that it took me a while to get even close to appreciating The Odyssey. I missed the images that were sprinkled through The Iliad in particular, the little moments in the action when characters and events were compared to something in the natural world, which allowed a pause from the tension of the battle scenes.
When I found the first such simile in The Odyssey, I cheered (although it has to be said, the 'rosy-fingered dawn' image was mentioned so often that it was beginning to feel like an over-laboured link with The Iliad). The first simile occurs in Book Five when the god Hermes, in his winged sandals, is described swooping low towards the sea 'like a tern that down the deadly gulfs of the barren salt swells, glides and dives for fish, dipping its beating wings in bursts of spray—so Hermes skimmed the crests on endless crests...'
Book Five is where the gods send Hermes to announce the end of Odysseus' ten year odyssey, and where he himself first enters the book as a character. The previous four Books tell of his son Telemachus, at home in Ithaca among Penelope's suitors, then in Pylos at Nestor's house, later in Sparta where Menelaus and Helen live, journeys that Telemachus has made in search of news of his long absent father, whom everyone tells him must be lost at sea.
There were reminders of many of the characters from The Iliad in those four Books and I enjoyed how the gaps in their stories were filled in. When Nestor tells Telemachus of Agamemnon's murder by his cousin Aegisthus, and Agamemnon's son Orestes' revenge on the killer, Telemachus says: "what a stroke of revenge that was! All Achaeans will spread Orestes' fame across the world, a song for those to come."
Now that I've read Euripides' version of Orestes' story, I appreciate better the parallels and contrast between Orestes and Telemachus, both sons of fathers who abandoned their families for ten years to fight the Trojans over Menelaus' wife Helen.
Helen gets an opportunity to comment on the ridiculousness of the long Trojan war when Telemachus and his friend Pisistratus arrive as strangers at hers and Menelaus' palace:
"Helen emerged from her scented, lofty chamber—
striking as Artemis with her golden shafts—
and a train of women followed…
Helen leaned back in her chair, a stool beneath her feet,
and pressed her husband at once for details:
'Do we know, my lord Menelaus, who our visitors
claim to be, our welcome arrivals?
……My heart tells me
to come right out and say I've never seen such a likeness,
neither in man nor woman—I'm amazed at the sight.
To the life he's like the son of great Odysseus,
surely he's Telemachus! The boy the hero left
a babe in arms at home when all you Achaeans
fought at Troy, launching your headlong battles
just for my sake, shameless whore that I was.'"
And later, after Telemachus has given his name, she recalls a story about Odysseus, one we weren't told in The Iliad:
"'Scarring his own body with mortifying strokes,
throwing filthy rags on his back like any slave,
he slipped into the enemy's city, roamed its streets—
all disguised, a totally different man, a beggar,
hardly the figure he cut among Achaea's ships.
That's how Odysseus infiltrated Troy,
and no one knew him at all...
My heart had changed by now.
I yearned to sail back home again!
I grieved too late for the madness Aphrodite sent me,
luring me there, far from my dear land,
forsaking my own child, my bridal bed, my husband too...'"
She goes on to say that she alone recognised him and helped him leave the city safely (In Euripides' play, The Trojan Women, Hecuba, Queen of Troy, tells a similar story, except in her version, it was she who helped the disguised Odysseus leave the city. She also told of how she had entreated Helen to leave with him and so bring an end to the war, but Helen had refused).
But back to Telemachus. He hears from Menelaus a little of the story of the wooden horse, and how that deception was the crafty Odysseus' plan entirely. This is another episode that wasn't included in The Iliad.
When it is time for Telemachus to return home to Ithaca, at the end of Book Four, Menelaus offers him a troop of fine horses as a gift but Telemachus has to refuse:
"No running-room for mares in Ithaca, no meadows.
Goat, not stallion, land, yet it means the world to me.
None of the rugged islands slanting down to sea
is good for pasture or good bridle paths,
but Ithaca, best of islands, crowns them all."
Because I come from a rugged rocky place, I really related to his words. Aren't they the essence of 'heimat' or love-of-home!
Book Five is when The Odyssey switches to being an account of how Odysseus roamed back and forth across the Mediterranean Sea during the ten years since the end of the Trojan war, and it is also when the narrative really begins to twist and turn on itself in a very sophisticated way.
And there's a slight echo of Telemachus' longing for Ithaca in the first glimpse we get of Odysseus as a living character rather than someone who is being recalled by others. It happens when the nymph Calypso, with whom he's been living for seven years, tells him of Hermes' message from the gods allowing Odysseus to finally return home:
"...she found him on the headland, sitting still,
weeping, his eyes never dry, his sweet life flowing away
with the tears he wept for his foiled journey home,
since the nymph no longer pleased him. In the nights, true,
he'd sleep with her in the arching cave—he had no choice—
unwilling lover alongside lover all too willing..."
We almost feel sorry for the famous strategist, don't we? His sharp wits were no use to him while he was under Calypso's spell in the paradise of her magical island of Ogygia. But now that she has been ordered to grant his freedom, he puts his wits to good use and builds an elaborate raft to take him back home. Scholars think Ogygia was off the coast of Malta so he has to travel north-east across part of the Mediterranean towards the western edge of Greece. It should be plain sailing but the god Poseidon, who hadn't heard about the other gods' decision (he was off partying with friends in North Africa!), sends a mighty storm which very nearly does for Odysseus and his raft. Salvation comes via the sea nymph Ino (I met her recently in Euripides' Bachantes):
"She pitied Odysseus, tossed, tormented so—
she broke from the waves like a shearwater on the wing,"
and she advises him to abandon the raft and swim to the nearest shore instead.
The mythical island he eventually reaches after much difficulty is ruled by Alcinous, king of the Phaeacians, and after Alcinous' daughter Nausicaa finds the exhausted hero along the shore (women are good to Odysseus), he is brought to the palace.
All those trials have taken us to Book Seven and in the next five Books, 'seasoned, worldly-wise' Odysseus recounts some of his adventures to Alcinous and his court. He starts with his most recent adventure, and it's interesting to hear him tell in his own words, edited to suit the hearers, of his escape from 'the dangerous nymph' Calypso's island—a tale we'd been told already. And we realise too that the crafty man hasn't told the king his real name. I wondered at that but soon realised the purpose it served in narrative terms because before Odysseus gets to tell any more of his adventures, in comes…
"....the faithful bard the Muse adored
above all others, true, but her gifts were mixed
with good and evil both: she stripped him of sight
but gave the man the power of rapturous song."
Is this a case of Homer, the blind bard, putting himself into his poem?
In any case, the bard starts to sing of the mighty feats of Agamemnon and Achilles—and of Odysseus himself—and we realise how clever it was in narrative terms that Odysseus hadn't yet revealed his identity.
Disguised Odysseus then asks the bard to sing of the wooden horse, 'the cunning trap good Odysseus brought to Troy,' and the bard launches into that story in which Odysseus comes out such a hero. But hearing the tale of his own heroic deeds moves Odysseus to such tears that Alcinous asks him to tell more of his own adventures instead.
Odysseus agrees but first he declares that sitting at a table laden with food and wine, in good company, listening to the bard's stories is 'the best that life can offer.' Is this Homer inserting a sly tribute to himself? It's a fine tribute to all bards anyway, and we readers can only agree with it!
So then Odysseus reveals his identity and begins on the long history of his journey away from the sacked city of Troy, and the many adventures he met with before he became trapped on magical Calypso's island. Some of the details he shares are to his credit, others not so much, but always there's a narrative purpose for sharing them. Take this example:
"The wind drove our ships to Ismarus...There I sacked the city, killed the men, but as for the wives and plunder, that rich haul we dragged away from the place. We shared it around so no one, not on my account, would go deprived of his fair share of the spoils."
Much later, after they'd been at sea a long while and were running low on food, they landed on an island and hunted goats to make a meal with which they had lots of wine, and in case we wondered how they still had any left since they'd been at sea so long, he reminds us of all the wine they'd taken when they sacked the city of Ismarus. The narrative, as told by wily Odysseus, never catches itself out.
And we hear of his further fearsome adventures which reduce his fleet down to a single ship and a small troop of men. That ship reaches the island of the sorceress Circe who turns some of the men into pigs. When Odysseus tricks her into turning them back, an odd detail is mentioned about a man who fell from the roof of Circe's house instead of climbing down the ladder as the others did to escape. I wondered why that little detail was included but later when Odysseus visits the underworld, he meets the spirit of the man who'd fallen from the roof who complains that Odysseus didn't stay on Circe's island to give him a proper burial. The narrative really is full of such unexpected twists, and Odysseus' account is interspersed here and there with comments he makes to his listeners in Alcinous' palace in case we forget where we are in the bigger story.
His stories from the underworld are particularly interesting because he meets characters from The Iliad, the murdered Agamemnon for example, who tells of being laid low by Aegisthus, and how Clytemnestra then killed his concubine Cassandra, the daughter of Priam whom he'd taken from Troy. And Odysseus sees his former comrades Achilles and Patrocles too. And there is this scene, with its odd sense of déjà vu for us perhaps:
"And I saw Minos there, illustrious son of Zeus,
firmly enthroned, holding his golden sceptre,
judging all the dead...
Some on their feet, others seated, all clustering
round the king of justice..."
By Book Twelve, Odysseus has left the underworld and we might expect him to try to set out for Ithaca but he doubles back to Circe's island—he hasn't forgotten about the man who fell from the roof and needs burying!
Later he tells of visiting an island belonging to the sun god Helios. While telling of that, he mentions something Zeus said to Helios, and as if his listeners in Alcinous' palace might wonder how Odysseus could knew what the gods said to one another, he adds: —"Or so I heard from the lovely nymph Calypso, who heard it herself, she said, from Hermes."
Anyway, Odysseus' stories, including how he finally lost his last ship and all his his men, impress Alcinous so much that he gives him a fine new ship and a crew plus heaps of treasures and sends him on his way to Ithaca. The remaining Books tell of the ruses Odysseus employs to defeat Penelope's suitors who'd been camped in his 'grand high-roofed house' eating his food and drinking his wine for years, waiting for her to choose one of them as a husband. We are not surprised that some of his wily methods involve hiding the treasures he'd been given by Alcinous and adopting the disguise of a beggar. It's a long time before he reveals himself to Penelope and there's a lot of murder and mayhem before that happens, but a lot of ingenious doings at the same time. We alternately cheer and boo him. As the goddess Athena, herself in disguise, says to him at one point:
"Any man—any god who met you—would have to be
some champion lying cheat to get past you
for all-round craft and guile! You terrible man,
foxy, ingenious, never tired of twists and tricks...
That's why I can't forsake you in your troubles—
you are so winning, so worldly-wise, so self-possessed!"
And there is a certain honesty in the following description Odysseus gives of himself and his life, though the irony is that he's telling this truth to an old retainer to whom he hasn't yet revealed his identity:
"…but I had no love
for working the land, the chores of households either,
the labour that raises crops of shining children. No,
it was always oarswept ships that thrilled my heart,
and wars, and the long polished spears and arrows,
dreadful gear that makes the next man cringe.
I loved them all—god planted that love in me.
Each man delights in the work that suits him best."
The fact that Odysseus hasn't revealed himself, especially to his very elderly father Laertes, seems cruel, but it serves Odysseus well in his attack on the suitors, and it serves as an excellent narrative strategy too since the reader knows more than the other characters. There are some unexpectedly moving moments amongst all this deception, as when his old dog Argos who'd waited for Odysseus' return for twenty years, pricks up his ears at his approach, but hasn't the strength to run to him—and so keeps the secret of his identity.
Through all the final episodes of revenge on the suitors, the story-telling skill never falters. I think that's what impressed me the most in this book, how it never slips up. For example, when Telemachus is asked to lay out a row of axes, just as Odysseus used to do, in such a way that a crossbow could be fired through them in a contest of skill, Telemachus manages to lay them out just right, but in case we might wonder at that since we know he was just a baby when Odysseus left, that fact is mentioned: 'though he'd never seen the axes ranged before'.
Once the suitors have been vanquished, Odysseus reveals himself to everyone bit by bit until his elderly father Laertes, who lives far from the palace, is the only person who remains in the dark. When Laertes asks where the stranger has come from, Odysseus, the master of tricks and illusions, can't resist indulging in one last riddle:
"The whole tale I'll tell from start to finish.
I come from Roamer-Town, my home's a famous place,
my father's Unsparing, son of old King Pain,
and my name is Man of Strife..."
So eventually the Man of Strife from Roamer-Town reveals himself to Unsparing, son of old King Pain in ever famous Ithaca, and some kind of harmony is restored to life on the island—though we wonder how peace and harmony can coexist with that incorrigible Man of Strife.
April 8, 2026
The metaphors in this book go HARD
THE METAPHORS THE METAPHORS!!!
Read this book in 10th grade and the teacher only made us read specific books, so I thought I’d reread it
The chronology is so interesting… it starts in the middle, loops back to the beginning through storytelling, and then reaches the end
It starts with Odysseus at Circe
Penelope is portrayed so weak, and not as steadfast as I remember (she craves the suitor’s attention, which is why she didn’t refuse them outright), cries all the time, relegated to women’s work by Telemachus, not a great female protagonist all around
Telemachus is SO WEIRD, harsh with his mother especially (nothing she does will ever please him), and maybe he’s weird because he is growing into a Greek man (and Homeric Greek men have weird notions of dignity if Odysseus is an example)
Odysseus is what Odysseus is. The translators note says it best: he’s got character (individuality and personality) but he doesn’t have character (moral goodness). This is not a hero who pretends to be a hero.. Odysseus- raider of cities.
THE METAPHORS THE METAPHORS!!!
Read this book in 10th grade and the teacher only made us read specific books, so I thought I’d reread it
The chronology is so interesting… it starts in the middle, loops back to the beginning through storytelling, and then reaches the end
It starts with Odysseus at Circe
Penelope is portrayed so weak, and not as steadfast as I remember (she craves the suitor’s attention, which is why she didn’t refuse them outright), cries all the time, relegated to women’s work by Telemachus, not a great female protagonist all around
Telemachus is SO WEIRD, harsh with his mother especially (nothing she does will ever please him), and maybe he’s weird because he is growing into a Greek man (and Homeric Greek men have weird notions of dignity if Odysseus is an example)
Odysseus is what Odysseus is. The translators note says it best: he’s got character (individuality and personality) but he doesn’t have character (moral goodness). This is not a hero who pretends to be a hero.. Odysseus- raider of cities.
April 27, 2026
This is an esteemed classic, but it’s also a fucking slog. I give The Odyssey extra points for being literally one of the first stories ever written, but Christopher Nolan has his work cut out for him.
January 16, 2026
Someone should make this into a movie
April 30, 2026
An epic story to read
June 25, 2026
"It’s hard for a mortal man to force a god."
February 27, 2026
Upgraded to full 5 stars after having read the Iliad first. Absolutely epic.
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