Chapter 1
A council of the gods, and a young man at his wits' end
The poem opens not on a hero but on a council of the gods. Athena pleads with Zeus to free Odysseus, who has been stranded for seven years on Calypso's island while his enemy Poseidon is away at a feast. Zeus agrees: Hermes will be sent to release him. Athena herself flies to Ithaca, disguised as an old family friend, and finds Telemachus — twenty years old, never having known his father — miserable among the hundred suitors who have moved into the palace. She gives the boy what no one has given him in twenty years: a plan. Tomorrow he is to call an assembly and denounce the suitors publicly.
Chapter 2
Telemachus calls the assembly
Telemachus stands before the men of Ithaca with his father's staff in his hand and denounces the suitors. The herald reports omens — eagles fighting overhead — and the seer Halitherses interprets them: Odysseus is alive, he is coming home, and the suitors will pay. The suitors are unmoved. Antinous and Eurymachus blame Penelope for stringing them along (the trick of weaving and unweaving Laertes's shroud has just been discovered) and refuse to leave until she chooses one. Telemachus, getting no help from the assembly, announces he will sail himself for news of his father. Athena, in disguise, helps him gather a ship and crew. They sail at sunset.
Chapter 3
At Pylos with old Nestor
Telemachus and his guide arrive at Pylos to find the wise old Nestor on the beach, sacrificing bulls to Poseidon. Nestor is one of the few Greek captains who came home cleanly from Troy. He receives the young man with full hospitality before asking his name. When Telemachus says who he is, Nestor begins to talk — and Nestor is a great talker. He tells the long story of the Greek captains' homecomings, including the most pointed of them: Agamemnon's. The leader of the Greeks walked into his own palace and was murdered in his bath by his wife and her lover. Telemachus listens, then sails on to Sparta the next morning.
Chapter 4
At Sparta — the first news of Odysseus
At Sparta, Menelaus and Helen receive Telemachus with extraordinary hospitality — there are even two weddings in the palace on the day he arrives. The king and queen weep at the mention of Odysseus. Helen drops a drug into the wine to ease everyone's grief, and the stories begin. She tells one: Odysseus once disguised himself as a beggar to infiltrate Troy. Menelaus tells how, on his own way home, he wrestled the shape-shifting sea-god Proteus to learn the captains' fates. Proteus told him: Agamemnon dead, Ajax dead, and Odysseus alive — held captive on Calypso's island. It is the first hard news Telemachus has had in twenty years.
Chapter 5
Calypso releases him; Poseidon wrecks the raft
The narrative finally finds its hero. A second council of the gods sends Hermes to compel Calypso to release Odysseus; she gives him tools to build a raft and lets him go. He sails for seventeen days. On the eighteenth, Poseidon, returning from a feast, sees him and raises a storm that destroys the raft. Odysseus survives only with the help of a sea-nymph named Ino, who gives him her veil as a life-preserver, and Athena, who calms the worst of the wind. He washes up half-dead on Scheria, the magical island of the Phaeacians, and falls asleep under a pile of leaves on the beach.
Chapter 6
A princess on the beach
The young princess Nausicaa goes down to the river to wash the household's clothes. After the washing, the maids start a ball game on the beach. The ball goes into the water; the maids' scream wakes the half-naked stranger sleeping under a pile of leaves nearby. Odysseus emerges, holding a branch in front of himself for modesty, salt-crusted and terrifying. The maids flee. Only Nausicaa stands her ground; he addresses her with extraordinary tact. She gives him food, oil, and fresh clothes, sends the maids to bathe him, and directs him to her father's palace — but tells him, gently, to walk a little behind her so the townspeople do not gossip.
Chapter 7
In the palace of Alcinous
Hidden by a mist Athena has thrown around him, Odysseus walks alone into the Phaeacian palace and throws himself at Queen Arete's knees. The mist lifts. The court is astonished. Alcinous orders him fed and seated; after the meal he asks who the stranger is. Odysseus tells them only what he has just survived — Calypso's island, the storm, the shore — but does not yet say his name. The queen recognizes the clothes he is wearing as her own daughter's. He explains carefully, protecting Nausicaa from any awkwardness. Alcinous, half-jokingly, offers him his daughter and a palace; or, if he prefers, a passage home on the Phaeacians' magical ships.
Chapter 8
A bard sings of Troy, and Odysseus weeps
At the feast in his honor, the blind bard Demodocus sings of the Trojan War — a song the audience does not know but the listening stranger remembers exactly. Odysseus pulls his cloak over his head and weeps. Alcinous tactfully calls a halt and proposes athletic games instead. The Phaeacian princes invite the stranger to compete; he refuses; one of them mocks him as a sailor, no athlete. Stung, Odysseus picks up the heaviest discus and throws it twice as far as anyone else. He invites the princes to compete with him at any other event. They decline. Demodocus sings again. Alcinous, certain now this is no ordinary man, asks him gently to say his name.
Chapter 9
The Cyclops — "My name is Nobody"
Odysseus speaks. He tells how, after leaving Troy, his ships first raided the Cicons (a brief, costly success), then drifted to the land of the Lotus Eaters — where the men ate the lotus and lost all desire to go home. Then the Cyclopes. Trapped in the giant Polyphemus's cave with two of his men already eaten, Odysseus offered the giant strong wine and waited until he was drunk. The giant asked his name; Odysseus said only Outis — Nobody. He blinded the giant in his sleep with a sharpened olive stake and escaped clinging to the underside of a ram. Out at sea, he could not resist shouting his real name. Polyphemus prayed to his father Poseidon, and the curse begins now.
Chapter 10
Aeolus, the Laestrygonians, Circe
Aeolus, the wind-god, gave Odysseus a bag of all the contrary winds, leaving only a fair west wind. For nine days they sailed; on the tenth, with Ithaca in sight, Odysseus fell asleep and his men opened the bag. The winds blew them all the way back. The Laestrygonian giants, cannibals, sank eleven of his twelve ships. The witch Circe turned his men into pigs; with Hermes's help, Odysseus forced her to restore them and then shared her bed for a year. When his men finally reminded him of home, Circe gave him the next instruction: he must visit the dead and consult the prophet Tiresias before he can hope to return.
Chapter 11
The visit to the dead
Odysseus sailed to the edge of the world. He dug a trench, poured offerings of milk and honey and the blood of black sheep, and called the dead. The prophet Tiresias spoke first and gave him the prophecy of the rest of his journey. His mother Anticleia came forward — he had not known she was dead, of grief, waiting for him. He tried three times to embrace her and three times she slipped through his arms like smoke. Then the great heroes of the Trojan War: Agamemnon, then Achilles. Achilles told Odysseus he would rather be a slave to a poor farmer above ground than king of all the dead.
Chapter 12
Sirens, Scylla, and the cattle of the sun
Back from the dead. Odysseus stopped his men's ears with wax and had himself tied to the mast so he alone could hear the Sirens' song. Then the choice of monsters: Scylla, who would take six men, on one side; Charybdis, the whirlpool that swallows whole ships, on the other. He chose Scylla. The six men died screaming his name. Then the island of Helios, the sun: Odysseus had been warned by Tiresias and Circe not to eat the sacred cattle, but his men, starving on a windless month-long stop, ate them anyway. Zeus shattered the ship with a thunderbolt. Odysseus alone survived, washing up on Calypso's island where the present finds him.
Chapter 13
Home in Ithaca, in disguise
Odysseus's story ends. The Phaeacians load his ship with gifts and sail him home in a single night, laying him gently on the shore of Ithaca, asleep, with his treasure piled around him. He wakes and does not recognize his own country — Athena has thrown a mist around the harbor. A young shepherd appears on the path; the stranger asks where he is. The shepherd is Athena. She drops the disguise and laughs at his lying — he is exactly the man she remembered. They sit on the beach and plan. She turns Odysseus into an old beggar. He must walk into his own house unrecognized and study the suitors before he kills them.
Chapter 14
In the hut of Eumaeus
Odysseus, in his beggar's disguise, goes to the hut of Eumaeus, his old swineherd. Eumaeus is a man originally born noble, taken into slavery as a child by pirates, now keeping the king's pigs at the edge of the estate. He has not seen his master in twenty years and does not recognize the beggar at his door. What he does is keep the law of hospitality: he slaughters two suckling pigs from his own stock and serves them, apologizing for not having more. He talks lovingly of his absent master, whom he believes is dead. Odysseus tests him by inventing a long false story about himself — and finds him true.
Chapter 15
Telemachus comes home
Athena flies to Sparta and rouses Telemachus, who has been there nearly a month. Time to come home; the suitors are planning to ambush him at sea. He sails. Athena diverts him from the ambush, and he lands on a remote part of the Ithacan coast and walks inland to the hut of Eumaeus — where Athena has arranged for him to meet a beggar. Meanwhile in the hut, Eumaeus and the disguised Odysseus have been talking through the night. The chapter ends with Telemachus walking up the path at sunrise, the dogs running out to meet him with their tails down (they always know him), and his father not yet ready to reveal himself.
Chapter 16
"I am your father"
Telemachus walks into the swineherd's hut. The dogs, who normally bark at strangers, fawn on him. Eumaeus weeps with relief — he loves the boy like a son. The disguised beggar gives Telemachus his seat by the fire. Eumaeus is sent to the palace to tell Penelope quietly that her son is home. While he is gone, Athena returns Odysseus to his real form for one moment — taller, younger, washed clean. Telemachus, terrified, thinks he is a god. I am your father, Odysseus says. They embrace and weep, and the sun would have set on their tears if Telemachus had not asked at last what they were going to do about the hundred armed men in the great hall.
Chapter 17
A beggar in his own house, and a dying dog
Disguised again, Odysseus follows Eumaeus down the road to the palace. Mocked along the way by Melanthius the disloyal goatherd, he says nothing. At the gate lies an old dog on a heap of dung, half-blind and full of fleas. He is Argos, the puppy Odysseus raised as a boy and trained for hunting. Argos lifts his head as the disguised stranger walks past. He recognizes him. He wags his tail once, drops his ears, and dies. Inside the great hall, Odysseus sits by the door holding out a wooden bowl. The suitors mock him; Antinous throws a footstool at him and hits him in the back. Penelope, hearing of the visiting beggar, asks to speak with him later that evening.
Chapter 18
A warning the suitor refuses to hear
A series of trials in the great hall. Another beggar named Irus arrives and tries to drive Odysseus from the door; Odysseus quietly strips for the fight, and the suitors are surprised to see the body of an old soldier under the rags. He breaks Irus's jaw with one punch. Penelope, prompted by Athena, comes down into the hall and extracts gifts from each of the suitors — scolding them for taking from a household instead of bringing to it. Odysseus, watching, smiles at her cleverness. He then warns the better-mannered Amphinomus, without revealing his identity, to leave before the master returns. Amphinomus is troubled. He goes back to his seat. He does not leave.
Chapter 19
The interview, and the scar
After the suitors have gone to bed, Penelope sends for the beggar. Odysseus, still in disguise, tells her a long, careful, mostly false story — but seeded with one detail he could only know if he had really seen Odysseus. Penelope weeps. He tells her, with quiet certainty, that her husband is on his way. The old nurse Eurycleia is told to wash his feet. As her hands move up his thigh she feels a long scar — the scar from a boyhood boar-hunt that she had bandaged herself. She gasps; he silences her with a hand at her throat. Then Penelope, on impulse, announces a contest for tomorrow: whoever can string Odysseus's old bow and shoot through twelve aligned axe-heads will be her husband.
Chapter 20
The last quiet hour
Odysseus cannot sleep. He lies in the hallway planning, hearing the disloyal maids slipping out to spend the night with the suitors. Athena appears in the dark and tells him to rest. Penelope, in her chamber upstairs, prays to Artemis to die before another day of this. The suitors gather for one final meal; they are louder and crueler than before. The seer Theoclymenus reads omens of disaster — the walls running with blood, the suitors' faces becoming the faces of dead men. He tells them to leave while they can. They laugh and drive him from the hall. Outside, Odysseus and his small party — Telemachus, Eumaeus, the loyal cowherd Philoetius — make their final preparations.
Chapter 21
The trial of the bow
Penelope brings out the great bow of Odysseus, the one no one has touched in twenty years, and announces the contest she invented the night before. Telemachus tries first, half-jokingly, half-seriously — and very nearly strings it on his fourth attempt before catching his father's eye and stopping on purpose. The suitors try, one by one. None can string it. They warm the bow over the fire to soften the wood; nothing helps. Antinous suggests they postpone the contest until tomorrow. The beggar asks for a turn. Penelope intercedes — let him try. He turns the bow over like a singer turning over a lyre, strings it without effort, and shoots an arrow through the twelve axe-heads from his seat. Outside, Zeus thunders.
Chapter 22
The slaughter
Odysseus throws off his rags, leaps onto the threshold, and announces himself. The doors are locked. Telemachus, Eumaeus, and Philoetius bring weapons from the storeroom. The slaughter begins. Antinous goes first — Odysseus shoots him through the throat as he lifts a wine cup. Eurymachus tries to negotiate, blames everything on Antinous, offers compensation; Odysseus refuses and kills him. The other suitors scatter, find no weapons, and try to fight with the furniture. Athena appears for a moment as a swallow on a beam, watching. When it is done, the great hall is stacked with bodies. The disloyal maids — twelve of them — are made to clean the blood from the floor and are then hanged in the courtyard.
Chapter 23
The secret of the bed
Eurycleia runs upstairs to wake Penelope: your husband is home, the suitors are dead. Penelope refuses to believe her — some god, she says, must have come to punish the suitors and is now wearing her husband's face. She comes down anyway and sits across the hall from him by the firelight, in silence. Telemachus is angry. She answers quietly: if this is really him, he and I will know each other by tokens no one else in the world could share. Odysseus calls for the maids to make up the bed in the great chamber. Penelope, casually, tells the maids to drag the bed out — and Odysseus snaps. That bed cannot be moved. He built the room around an olive tree on the site; the trunk of the tree is one of the bedposts. Penelope's knees give.
Chapter 24
Peace in Ithaca
Hermes leads the souls of the dead suitors down to Hades, where they meet the ghosts of Achilles and Agamemnon. Agamemnon hears the story of Penelope's twenty-year fidelity and contrasts it bitterly with his own wife's betrayal. Up in Ithaca, Odysseus walks out to the country farm of his old father Laertes, who is in the orchard, planting a tree, dressed like a slave. Odysseus tests him too — names the trees Laertes once gave him as a child — and the old man faints from joy in his arms. The families of the slain suitors gather, armed, to take revenge. They march on Laertes's farm. Athena calls a halt. Both sides put down their weapons. The poem ends.