Odyssey
Homer's epic of Odysseus's return from Troy in twenty-four books; the hero tells his own wanderings (Cyclops, Circe, the dead, Sirens, Scylla) to the Phaeacians, then kills the suitors and is recognised by Penelope. Its eleventh book is the oldest Greek description of the dead, and its eighth the oldest account of the Wooden Horse. Read in Murray's Loeb translation.
Why this wins its question: Indexes the poem by the questions people ask (which book has the Cyclops, is the Horse in it, how does it end) with line numbers, and keeps Homer's Hades distinct from the Virgilian one.
Key takeaways
- The famous adventures occupy four books (9–12) and are told by Odysseus himself, a frame the summaries drop.
- Book 11 is the reference text for Hades before Virgil, and it has no Charon, no Elysium and no descent, only a voyage.
- The Horse and Achilles's funeral are Odyssey material; the Iliad has neither.
- The Epitome is the ancient reader's digest of it and the source of everything after the last line.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
It opens with the man, not the war: "Tell me, O Muse, of the man of many devices, who wandered full many ways after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy", who lost his comrades because "they devoured the kine of Helios Hyperion", and is held by Calypso while all the rest are home (Od. 1.1–15).
The wanderings are told in the first person to Alcinous (Od. 9.1–38): the Cicones and the Lotus-eaters (Od. 9.39–104), the Cyclops (Od. 9.105–566), the journey to the dead (Od. 11), and, after Circe's warning that they have "gone down alive to the house of Hades to meet death twice", the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis and the cattle of the Sun (Od. 12.21–141; 12.165–259).
Book 11 is the Greek underworld's first description: Odysseus sails to Oceanus and the Cimmerians, digs a pit and pours blood (Od. 11.13–36), hears Teiresias's prophecy (Od. 11.90–137), meets the heroines, Ariadne among them (Od. 11.321–325), hears Achilles prefer a serf's life to lordship over the dead (Od. 11.488–491), sees Minos judging and Tityos, Tantalus and Sisyphus punished (Od. 11.568–600), meets the phantom of Heracles (Od. 11.601–626) and flees for fear of the Gorgon's head (Od. 11.633–635).
It supplies what the Iliad omits about Troy: Demodocus's song of "the horse of wood, which Epeius made with Athena's help" (Od. 8.492–520), Menelaus's memory of Helen walking round it imitating the wives' voices (Od. 4.271–289), and Agamemnon's shade describing Achilles's funeral, the Muses' dirge and the golden urn (Od. 24.36–92).
The return: Odysseus strips off his rags and shoots Antinous "in the throat" (Od. 22.1–16); Penelope tests him with the bed built round the living olive tree (Od. 23.181–230); Hermes leads the suitors' ghosts to the asphodel meadow (Od. 24.1–14); and the poem ends when Athena, after Zeus's thunderbolt, makes "a solemn covenant betwixt the twain ... in the likeness of Mentor" (Od. 24.529–548).
Herodotus treats it as Homer's and quotes it: the lines on the drugs Helen had "from Thon's wife, Polydamna, an Egyptian" (Od. 4.227–230) and Menelaus's "the gods still held me in Egypt" (Od. 4.351–352), to prove Homer knew of the Egyptian sojourn (Hdt. 2.116.4–5), while dating Homer with Hesiod four hundred years before himself (Hdt. 2.53.2).
Apollodorus's Epitome follows it book by book, from Ismarus and the Lotus-eaters through Polyphemus "a son of Poseidon and the nymph Thoosa", Aeolus, the Laestrygones, Circe, the dead, the Sirens named Pisinoe, Aglaope and Thelxiepia, Scylla, Thrinacia, Calypso, the Phaeacians, the suitors listed by island, the bow and the recognition (Apollod. E. 7.1–33), and then continues where Homer stops, with four accounts of the hero's death (Apollod. E. 7.34–40).
Questions answered
- How does the Odyssey begin?
- It opens with the man, not the war: "Tell me, O Muse, of the man of many devices, who wandered full many ways after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy", who lost his comrades because "they devoured the kine of Helios Hyperion", and is held by Calypso while all the rest are home (Od. 1.1–15). source
- Which books of the Odyssey contain the wanderings?
- The wanderings are told in the first person to Alcinous (Od. 9.1–38): the Cicones and the Lotus-eaters (Od. 9.39–104), the Cyclops (Od. 9.105–566), the journey to the dead (Od. 11), and, after Circe's warning that they have "gone down alive to the house of Hades to meet death twice", the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis and the cattle of the Sun (Od. 12.21–141; 12.165–259). source
- What happens in the underworld book of the Odyssey?
- Book 11 is the Greek underworld's first description: Odysseus sails to Oceanus and the Cimmerians, digs a pit and pours blood (Od. 11.13–36), hears Teiresias's prophecy (Od. 11.90–137), meets the heroines, Ariadne among them (Od. 11.321–325), hears Achilles prefer a serf's life to lordship over the dead (Od. 11.488–491), sees Minos judging and Tityos, Tantalus and Sisyphus punished (Od. 11.568–600), meets the phantom of Heracles (Od. 11.601–626) and flees for fear of the Gorgon's head (Od. 11.633–635). source
- How does the Odyssey end?
- The return: Odysseus strips off his rags and shoots Antinous "in the throat" (Od. 22.1–16); Penelope tests him with the bed built round the living olive tree (Od. 23.181–230); Hermes leads the suitors' ghosts to the asphodel meadow (Od. 24.1–14); and the poem ends when Athena, after Zeus's thunderbolt, makes "a solemn covenant betwixt the twain ... in the likeness of Mentor" (Od. 24.529–548). source
- Is the Trojan Horse in the Odyssey?
- It supplies what the Iliad omits about Troy: Demodocus's song of "the horse of wood, which Epeius made with Athena's help" (Od. 8.492–520), Menelaus's memory of Helen walking round it imitating the wives' voices (Od. 4.271–289), and Agamemnon's shade describing Achilles's funeral, the Muses' dirge and the golden urn (Od. 24.36–92). source
- Did Homer write the Odyssey?
- Herodotus treats it as Homer's and quotes it: the lines on the drugs Helen had "from Thon's wife, Polydamna, an Egyptian" (Od. 4.227–230) and Menelaus's "the gods still held me in Egypt" (Od. 4.351–352), to prove Homer knew of the Egyptian sojourn (Hdt. 2.116.4–5), while dating Homer with Hesiod four hundred years before himself (Hdt. 2.53.2). source