Study guide
The Odyssey
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Overview
- Composed
- Probably in the late eighth or the seventh century BC, and generally thought to be somewhat later than the Iliad; when and how it was fixed in writing is disputed
- Genre
- Epic poem in the oral-traditional heroic style; a poem of return (nostos) rather than of war
- Metre
- Dactylic hexameter, in the same mixed literary dialect as the Iliad (mainly Ionic, with Aeolic and older elements)
- Length
- 24 books, about 12,100 lines of Greek
- Setting
- Ithaca and the palace of Odysseus; Pylos and Sparta; the island of Calypso; Scheria, land of the Phaeacians; and, in Odysseus' own narrative, the fabulous lands of the western sea and the edge of the underworld
- Time span
- About forty days of main action, ten years after the fall of Troy; the wanderings of the previous ten years are told in flashback
- Narrator
- An anonymous third-person narrator who calls on the Muse; in Books 9 to 12 Odysseus himself takes over as first-person narrator of his adventures
- Protagonist
- Odysseus, son of Laertes, king of Ithaca, the 'man of many turns' famed for cunning, endurance and skill with words
- Conflict
- Odysseus' struggle to reach home against the anger of Poseidon; then his struggle to reclaim his house, wife and kingdom from the suitors who are courting Penelope and consuming his property
- Key themes
- Homecoming; hospitality and its abuse; cunning intelligence (mētis); disguise and recognition; marriage and fidelity; justice and revenge; the power and unreliability of stories
Context
Like the Iliad, the Odyssey is attributed to Homer, about whom nothing reliable is known. Most scholars date it to the late eighth or the seventh century BC, a little after the Iliad, partly because its world seems wider and its social interests broader: it knows of colonisation, trade and seafaring, and its cast includes swineherds, nurses, beggars and slave women as well as kings. Ancient critics already felt the difference. The treatise On the Sublime, attributed to 'Longinus', compared the Odyssey to the setting sun, a work of Homer's old age, still great but given to storytelling rather than to the intensity of battle (Griffin 1987) (West 2014).
The Odyssey presupposes the Trojan War and probably the Iliad itself. It never retells an episode of the Iliad, which has been taken as a sign that the poet knew the earlier poem and deliberately avoided overlapping with it, while filling in what the Iliad leaves out: the death of Akhilleus, the wooden horse, the fall of Troy, the fates of the surviving heroes. Akhilleus and Odysseus also represent two contrasting ideals of the hero. Akhilleus chooses a short life with undying glory (kleos); Odysseus chooses survival, return and a long life, and wins glory by enduring and outwitting rather than by dying young (Nagy 1979) (Griffin 1987).
The poem belongs to a wider tradition of songs about the returns (nostoi) of the Greek heroes from Troy. A lost poem of the Epic Cycle, the Nostoi, told the homecomings of Agamemnon, Menelaus and others, and another, the Telegony, continued the story of Odysseus after the Odyssey ends. The Odyssey itself is full of other returns: Nestor's and Menelaus' are narrated in Books 3 and 4, and the murder of Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, avenged by his son Orestes, recurs throughout the poem as a model against which the story of Odysseus, Penelope and Telemachus is measured (Burgess 2001) (de Jong 2001).
The work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord showed that the Homeric poems grew out of a tradition of oral composition in performance, built from formulas, type-scenes and traditional story patterns (Lord 1960). The Odyssey is unusually self-conscious about this tradition. It contains two professional singers, Phemius in Ithaca and the blind Demodocus among the Phaeacians, and its hero is himself a master storyteller whose skill is compared to a singer's. The poem thus reflects on the pleasures, the uses and the dangers of song, including the possibility that a fine story may be untrue (Segal 1994).
How the poem reached its present form is part of the Homeric Question (Graziosi 2002). The text we read descends from editions prepared by scholars at Alexandria in the third and second centuries BC, notably Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus. The division into twenty-four books, each named by a letter of the Greek alphabet, is probably theirs or a little earlier. The ancient commentaries (scholia) preserve their judgements on doubtful lines, including the famous claim that the poem's 'end' came at Book 23, line 296 (Heubeck 1992).
Plot overview
Ten years after the fall of Troy, Odysseus is the only Greek hero who has neither returned home nor died. He is held on the remote island of Ogygia by the nymph Calypso, who wants to make him her immortal husband. In Ithaca, more than a hundred young nobles, the suitors, are courting his wife Penelope, feasting daily at his expense and plotting against his son Telemachus. With Poseidon absent, Athena persuades Zeus to let Odysseus go home. She also visits Telemachus in disguise and sends him to the mainland to seek news of his father from Nestor at Pylos and Menelaus at Sparta (Books 1 to 4, often called the Telemachy).
Hermes orders Calypso to release Odysseus. He builds a raft, is shipwrecked by Poseidon, and is washed ashore on Scheria, where the princess Nausicaa and her parents Alcinous and Arete receive him. At a Phaeacian banquet he reveals his name and tells the story of his wanderings: the Cicones, the Lotus-eaters, the Cyclops Polyphemus, the winds of Aeolus, the cannibal Laestrygonians, the enchantress Circe, the journey to the edge of the underworld, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, and the cattle of the Sun, whose slaughter by his crew led to the loss of his last ship and his arrival, alone, at Calypso's island (Books 5 to 12).
The Phaeacians carry Odysseus home in one of their magic ships. Athena disguises him as an old beggar, and he takes shelter with his loyal swineherd Eumaeus, where Telemachus, returning from Sparta, joins him and learns who he is. In the palace the beggar is insulted and attacked by the suitors and by disloyal servants, while he tests the loyalty of the household and talks at length with Penelope, who does not (or does not openly) recognise him. His old nurse Eurycleia knows him by a scar on his leg. Penelope announces a contest: she will marry the man who can string Odysseus' bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axes. Only the beggar succeeds, and with Telemachus and two loyal herdsmen he kills the suitors. The disloyal maids are hanged (Books 13 to 22).
Penelope tests the stranger with a trick about their marriage bed, which only her husband could see through, and the couple are reunited. Odysseus then visits his old father Laertes, and the families of the dead suitors come out to take revenge; Athena, on Zeus' instruction, imposes peace (Books 23 to 24). The poem does not narrate these events in order. It opens in the tenth year of the wanderings, follows Telemachus before it reaches Odysseus, and has the hero tell the earlier part of his story himself, so that the past arrives as a performance within the poem.
Book by book
Book 1: Athena visits Telemachus
Summary
The poet asks the Muse to tell of the 'man of many devices' who wandered after sacking Troy, and lost all his companions through their own folly. The story begins when all the other survivors of the war are home and Odysseus is held by the nymph Calypso. While Poseidon, who hates Odysseus for blinding his son the Cyclops, is away among the Ethiopians, the gods meet on Olympus. Zeus reflects on Aegisthus, killed by Orestes for murdering Agamemnon, and complains that mortals blame the gods for sufferings they bring on themselves. Athena turns the talk to Odysseus and wins Zeus' consent to his return.
Athena goes to Ithaca disguised as Mentes, a family friend from Taphos. Telemachus, sitting sadly among the suitors who are feasting in his father's hall, welcomes her as a guest. She tells him that his father is alive and urges him to call an assembly, to travel to Pylos and Sparta for news, and to consider how to be rid of the suitors, holding up Orestes as an example. When the singer Phemius performs the sad song of the Greeks' return from Troy, Penelope comes down and asks him to stop; Telemachus sends her back to her rooms, and then confronts the suitors Antinous and Eurymachus with a new boldness.
Analysis
The first book establishes the moral framework of the poem. Zeus' speech about Aegisthus insists that human beings suffer 'beyond what is ordained' through their own recklessness (atasthaliai), the same word the proem uses for Odysseus' companions and the poem will later use for the suitors. The Odyssey is therefore, from the start, a poem about responsibility and just punishment, in which the gods appear more concerned with human justice than they do in the Iliad (Clay 1983).
The book also introduces the theme of hospitality (xenia). Telemachus' prompt welcome of the disguised goddess contrasts with the suitors, who ignore the stranger and devour another man's food. His rebuke to Penelope, in which he claims authority over speech in the house, marks the first stage of his growth toward adulthood; it is also a statement about gender and authority that later readers have found troubling (Felson-Rubin 1994). The Agamemnon story, told by Zeus and taken up by Athena, will be repeated through the poem as a pattern that Odysseus' family might either follow or avoid (de Jong 2001).
Look you now, how ready mortals are to blame the gods. It is from us, they say, that evils come, but they even of themselves, through their own blind folly, have sorrows beyond that which is ordained.
Zeus' opening speech places human responsibility at the centre of the poem. The suitors, like Aegisthus, will be punished for crimes they were warned against.
My mother says that I am his child; but I know not, for never yet did any man of himself know his own parentage.
Telemachus' uncertainty about his father is also an uncertainty about himself. Much of the first four books shows him growing into his identity as Odysseus' son.
Book 2: The assembly in Ithaca
Summary
Telemachus summons the first assembly held in Ithaca since his father left. He complains that the suitors are devouring his house and appeals to the people for help. Antinous answers that the fault is Penelope's: she has deceived them for three years by weaving a shroud for Laertes by day and undoing it by night, until one of her maids betrayed her. He demands that she be sent back to her father to marry. Telemachus refuses. Zeus sends two eagles that fight above the assembly, and the old prophet Halitherses interprets them as a sign of Odysseus' return and the suitors' ruin; Eurymachus dismisses him with contempt.
Mentor, an old friend of Odysseus, rebukes the people of Ithaca for doing nothing. The assembly breaks up without result. Athena, now disguised as Mentor, finds a ship and crew for Telemachus. Telemachus tells the old nurse Eurycleia to prepare provisions and swears her to secrecy, and that night he sails secretly for Pylos.
Analysis
The assembly shows the political weakness of Ithaca without its king. The community has institutions, but no one will act against the powerful young men of the island, and the elders' warnings are mocked. Moses Finley used scenes like this to reconstruct the social world of the poem, in which the household (oikos) rather than the community is the main unit of power and wealth (Finley 1954).
Antinous' account of the shroud is the first of three tellings of Penelope's trick (the others in Books 19 and 24). Even in her enemy's mouth it becomes a tribute to her intelligence: he admits that no woman of old was her equal in shrewd devices. The weaving and unweaving, in which progress is perpetually undone, mirrors the suspended state of the household, and links Penelope's mētis to her husband's (Winkler 1990) (Katz 1991).
Then day by day she would weave at the great web, but by night would unravel it, when she had let place torches by her.
The trick of the shroud defines Penelope as a match for Odysseus in cunning, and her loom as a weapon of delay.
of whom not one was like Penelope in shrewd device
Antinous' grudging praise sets Penelope against the famous heroines of legend, anticipating the praise of Agamemnon's ghost in Book 24.
Book 3: Nestor at Pylos
Summary
Telemachus and Athena, still disguised as Mentor, arrive at sandy Pylos while Nestor and his people are sacrificing to Poseidon on the shore. Encouraged by the goddess, Telemachus overcomes his shyness and asks the old king for news. Nestor describes the quarrel that divided the Greeks after Troy, his own swift return, and what he has heard of the others. He has no news of Odysseus, but he tells at length how Aegisthus seduced Clytemnestra and murdered Agamemnon, and how Orestes took revenge.
Athena departs in the form of a sea eagle, revealing her divinity, and Nestor offers her a heifer with gilded horns. Telemachus is bathed by Nestor's youngest daughter and given a chariot, and sets out for Sparta with Nestor's son Peisistratus.
Analysis
Pylos is a model of an ordered household and of correct hospitality and piety: the guest is welcomed and fed before he is questioned, and the sacrifice is performed in full ritual detail. The scenes follow a type-scene pattern found throughout the poem, against which the suitors' behaviour in Ithaca can be judged (Reece 1993).
Nestor's stories serve Telemachus' education. They place Odysseus in a heroic past and give the young man models for action, especially Orestes, whose vengeance is repeatedly offered as an example of filial duty (de Jong 2001). Telemachus' growing ability to speak in public, a skill the Iliad prized as highly as fighting, is one measure of his maturing.
for all men have need of the gods.
The disguised Athena's remark, made as she joins the sacrifice, is ironic: the gods are closer than Nestor knows.
Book 4: Menelaus and Helen at Sparta
Summary
At Sparta Telemachus and Peisistratus arrive during the double wedding feast of Menelaus' son and daughter. They are received in a palace of dazzling wealth. Telemachus weeps when Menelaus speaks of Odysseus, and Helen recognises him by his likeness to his father. She adds to the wine a drug from Egypt that banishes grief, then tells how Odysseus entered Troy disguised as a beggar and how she alone recognised him. Menelaus tells how Odysseus restrained the Greeks inside the wooden horse when Helen walked around it imitating the voices of their wives.
The next day Menelaus recounts his return. Becalmed in Egypt, he captured the shape-shifting sea god Proteus, who told him of the deaths of the lesser Ajax and Agamemnon, that Odysseus is held by Calypso, and that Menelaus himself will be carried to the Elysian plain rather than die. In Ithaca, meanwhile, the suitors learn of Telemachus' journey and plan to ambush him on his return. Penelope, told the news, is distraught; Athena sends her a dream to comfort her.
Analysis
The Spartan scenes are full of tension beneath their luxury. Helen and Menelaus tell two stories about her conduct in Troy that do not agree: in hers she longs to return to her husband, in his she nearly betrays the Greeks. The poem sets them side by side without comment, letting the audience notice the uneasy marriage and Helen's ambiguous role. The Egyptian drug that brings forgetfulness also hints at the power of stories to soothe and to mislead (Doherty 1995).
Menelaus' return is a parallel to Odysseus': a long detention far from home, a divine helper, a disguise, and a trick to master a shape-changer. His promised immortality in Elysium, owed to his marriage to Helen, contrasts with Odysseus' choice of mortal life with Penelope in Book 5. The book closes the Telemachy with a deliberate cliffhanger, as the suitors set the ambush and the narrative turns to Odysseus himself (Heubeck 1992).
a drug to quiet all pain and strife, and bring forgetfulness of every ill.
Helen's drug calms the grief of her guests, but its power to make men forget even the death of a son makes it a disturbing gift.
to the Elysian plain and the bounds of the earth will the immortals convey thee, where dwells fair-haired Rhadamanthus, and where life is easiest for men.
Proteus' prophecy gives Menelaus the kind of escape from death that Odysseus will refuse.
Book 5: Calypso and the raft
Summary
At a second council of the gods Athena again pleads for Odysseus, and Zeus sends Hermes to order Calypso to let him go. Calypso protests that the gods are jealous of goddesses who love mortal men, but she obeys. She finds Odysseus weeping on the shore, as he does every day, and tells him he may leave. She offers him immortality if he stays; he answers that Penelope cannot compare with her in beauty, but that he longs for home all the same.
Odysseus builds a raft and sails for seventeen days. Poseidon, returning from the Ethiopians, sees him and raises a storm that wrecks the raft. The sea goddess Ino gives him a veil that will keep him from drowning, and after two days in the sea he reaches the coast of Scheria, where he scrambles ashore at a river mouth, half dead, and sleeps in a bed of leaves under two bushes.
Analysis
This is the first time we meet the hero, and we meet him weeping. Odysseus' refusal of Calypso's offer is the central choice of the poem: he prefers a mortal life, with its limits, its marriage and its death, to an immortality that would make him nobody. Calypso's name suggests 'the one who hides', and her island is a place where Odysseus would be concealed from the world of human fame. His choice has been read as the poem's definition of human identity (Segal 1994) (Peradotto 1990).
Odysseus' endurance is the main quality displayed in this book. He survives through a mixture of divine help, physical strength and intelligent decision, weighing his options at each crisis in short deliberative speeches. His arrival on Scheria, stripped of everything, is a kind of rebirth, from which he will gradually recover his name, his story and his status (Segal 1994).
Cruel are ye, O ye gods, and quick to envy above all others
Calypso's complaint exposes a double standard among the gods: male gods freely take mortal lovers, goddesses may not.
I will endure it, having in my breast a heart that endures affliction.
Odysseus' answer to Calypso sums up his heroism, which consists less in fighting than in enduring.
Book 6: Nausicaa
Summary
Athena appears in a dream to Nausicaa, the daughter of King Alcinous, and tells her to go and wash her clothes at the river, since her marriage cannot be far off. Nausicaa drives a mule cart to the river with her maids. After the washing they play ball, and their cries wake Odysseus. Naked and caked with brine, he covers himself with a branch and approaches; the maids run away, but Nausicaa, given courage by Athena, stands her ground.
Odysseus decides not to clasp her knees as a suppliant but to speak from a distance, and he flatters her with tact, comparing her to Artemis and to a young palm tree he once saw at Delos. Nausicaa gives him clothes and food, and Athena makes him tall and handsome. Nausicaa admires him openly and gives him directions to the city, telling him to approach her mother Arete first, but asks him to follow at a distance so that people will not gossip.
Analysis
The episode is a masterpiece of delicate social comedy. Odysseus must persuade a young girl, alone, that a naked stranger is no threat, and his speech, with its praise of a happy marriage, is both a model of diplomacy and a hint of what he himself longs for. The scene plays with the familiar story pattern in which a wandering stranger arrives, wins a princess and marries her; the audience knows that this pattern cannot be fulfilled (Doherty 1995).
Nausicaa is one of the most vivid young women in Greek literature, practical, brave and hopeful. Her principle that 'all strangers and beggars are from Zeus', which Eumaeus will repeat in Book 14, makes her a touchstone of hospitality, and her behaviour contrasts with the violence of the Cyclops and the suitors (Reece 1993).
For nothing is greater or better than this, when man and wife dwell in a home in one accord
Odysseus' blessing on Nausicaa describes 'like-mindedness' (homophrosynē), the ideal of marriage that he and Penelope will be shown to share.
for from Zeus are all strangers and beggars, and a gift, though small, is welcome.
Nausicaa states the religious basis of hospitality: the stranger is under the protection of Zeus.
Book 7: The palace of Alcinous
Summary
Athena, disguised as a young girl, guides Odysseus to the palace and wraps him in mist. She tells him the history of the Phaeacians and of their queen Arete, who is honoured as no other woman is. Odysseus marvels at the palace, with its bronze walls, golden doors, magic watchdogs, and a garden that bears fruit all year round.
He enters the hall, clasps the knees of Arete and begs for passage home. After a pause, an elder prompts Alcinous to welcome him. That night Arete recognises the clothes he is wearing as ones she made, and asks who gave them to him. Odysseus tells how he left Calypso and came to Scheria and how Nausicaa helped him, without revealing his name. Alcinous offers him his daughter in marriage, but promises him safe conveyance if he prefers to go home.
Analysis
The Phaeacians live on the border between the human world and the fabulous. Their gardens bear fruit continuously, their ships need no helmsmen, and they are close to the gods. Scheria is an idealised, almost utopian society, but its isolation and its suspicion of strangers hint at its limits (Segal 1994).
Arete's prominence, which has struck many readers, has been connected to the importance of women's judgement in the poem as a whole. Her question about the clothes shows her alertness, and she becomes Odysseus' patron among the Phaeacians (Doherty 1995). Odysseus' withholding of his name is the first of many concealments: he will reveal himself only after he has won his hosts' goodwill.
About the knees of Arete Odysseus cast his hands, and straightway the wondrous mist melted from him
The formal gesture of supplication, directed to the queen rather than the king, turns the invisible stranger into a guest with a claim on the household.
Book 8: The songs of Demodocus
Summary
Alcinous holds an assembly and arranges a feast for the stranger. The blind singer Demodocus sings of a quarrel between Odysseus and Akhilleus at Troy, and Odysseus weeps, hiding his face in his cloak. Alcinous notices and proposes athletic games. Provoked by the insults of the young Euryalus, who says he looks like a merchant rather than an athlete, Odysseus throws a discus farther than any Phaeacian.
Demodocus then sings a comic song about the adultery of Ares and Aphrodite, caught in a net by her husband Hephaestus. The young men dance, Euryalus apologises with a gift of a sword, and Odysseus is given rich presents. At the evening feast Odysseus asks Demodocus to sing of the wooden horse, and when the singer describes the sack of Troy, Odysseus weeps again. Alcinous stops the song and asks him at last to say who he is.
Analysis
Book 8 is the poem's fullest picture of epic performance. Demodocus is blind and inspired by the Muse; his three songs, heroic, comic and tragic, show the range of the bard's art. The tale of Ares and Aphrodite, a story of adultery detected by a clever but physically weak husband, offers a comic, inverted reflection on the themes of marriage and cunning that govern the Odyssey (Segal 1994) (de Jong 2001).
The simile that compares the weeping Odysseus to a woman lamenting over her husband killed in the sack of a city is among the most remarkable in Homer. It makes the conqueror of Troy share the suffering of his victims and turns the glory of the song into grief. The poem here explores what it means to hear one's own deeds sung by others (Segal 1994).
whom the Muse loved above all other men, and gave him both good and evil; of his sight she deprived him, but gave him the gift of sweet song.
The portrait of Demodocus is often read as a self-portrait of the epic tradition, and may lie behind the ancient legend of Homer's blindness.
And as a woman wails and flings herself about her dear husband, who has fallen in front of his city and his people
The simile makes the sacker of Troy weep like one of the widows of Troy.
Book 9: The Cyclops
Summary
Odysseus reveals his name and begins his story. After leaving Troy he sacked Ismarus, city of the Cicones, but his men stayed to feast and were driven off with losses. A storm carried them past Cape Malea into the unknown; they reached the land of the Lotus-eaters, where some men ate the lotus and forgot their homecoming, and had to be dragged back to the ships.
On the land of the Cyclopes, a race of one-eyed giants who have no laws, assemblies or farming, Odysseus, out of curiosity and in hope of gifts, entered the cave of Polyphemus with twelve men. The Cyclops trapped them and ate six of them. Odysseus made him drunk with strong wine, told him his name was 'Noman', and blinded him with a sharpened stake. When the other Cyclopes came to help, Polyphemus shouted that 'Noman' was killing him, and they left. The Greeks escaped by clinging under the bellies of the sheep. As he sailed away, Odysseus shouted his real name, and Polyphemus prayed to his father Poseidon for revenge.
Analysis
The adventures of Books 9 to 12 are told by Odysseus, a narrator with an interest in his own reputation and an audience to please. The Cyclops episode is the most famous of them. It is a story about the violation of hospitality, for Polyphemus eats his guests instead of feeding them, and about the triumph of mind over strength. The pun on 'Noman' (Outis) also plays on mētis, cunning, since the negative form mē tis sounds like it: Odysseus wins by becoming nobody (Clay 1983) (Peradotto 1990).
Yet the episode is also about the hero's limits. Odysseus enters the cave against his men's advice, and his final boast, in which he insists on his name and his glory as a sacker of cities, gives Poseidon the information he needs to curse him. The need for kleos, the fame attached to a name, conflicts with the anonymity that cunning requires, and causes the sufferings of the rest of the poem (Segal 1994).
I am Odysseus, son of Laertes, who am known among men for all manner of wiles, and my fame reaches unto heaven.
Odysseus finally names himself to the Phaeacians, and defines his fame by his cunning.
Noman is my name, Noman do they call me
The false name saves Odysseus by making him nobody; it is the opposite of the boast with which he ends the episode.
Cyclops, if any one of mortal men shall ask thee about the shameful blinding of thine eye, say that Odysseus, the sacker of cities, blinded it, even the son of Laertes, whose home is in Ithaca.
The boast reclaims his identity but enables Polyphemus' curse.
Book 10: Aeolus, the Laestrygonians and Circe
Summary
Aeolus, keeper of the winds, gave Odysseus a bag containing all the winds except the west wind that would carry him home. In sight of Ithaca, while Odysseus slept, his men opened the bag, thinking it held treasure, and were blown back to Aeolus, who drove them away as hated by the gods. The cannibal Laestrygonians then destroyed every ship except Odysseus' own.
On Aeaea, the island of the goddess Circe, half of the remaining crew were turned into pigs. Hermes gave Odysseus an herb, moly, to protect him; he resisted Circe's drug, threatened her with his sword, and made her swear not to harm him. She restored his men, and they stayed a year as her guests, Odysseus sharing her bed. When his men reminded him of home, Circe told him that he must first visit the house of Hades to consult the prophet Tiresias. As they left, the young Elpenor, asleep drunk on the roof, fell to his death.
Analysis
The book shows how close Odysseus comes to home and how far his crew's folly takes him away again. The bag of winds is a recurring pattern of the wanderings: success is undone by the companions' greed or disobedience, as the proem prepared us to expect. The Laestrygonians, a dark repetition of the Cyclops, reduce the fleet to a single ship (Heubeck 1992).
Circe is a dangerous female figure who becomes a helper. Her transformation of men into beasts, while their minds remain human, has been allegorised since antiquity as the power of appetite to degrade reason. Feminist critics have read the episode as an encounter in which male mastery is asserted and then exchanged for a relationship of mutual help and instruction (Doherty 1995) (Cohen 1995).
And they had the heads, and voice, and bristles, and shape of swine, but their minds remained unchanged even as before.
The detail that the men keep their human minds makes their transformation both grotesque and pitiful.
Moly the gods call it, and it is hard for mortal men to dig; but with the gods all things are possible.
The divine herb is one of the few cases where Homer distinguishes the language of the gods from that of men.
Book 11: The land of the dead
Summary
Odysseus sailed to the land of the Cimmerians at the edge of Ocean, dug a pit and poured the blood of sacrificed sheep, and the souls of the dead gathered. First came Elpenor, asking to be buried. Then Tiresias drank the blood and prophesied: Odysseus will reach home if his men spare the cattle of the Sun; he will find suitors in his house and kill them; he must then travel inland carrying an oar until he meets people who do not know the sea, and at last he will die a gentle death far from the sea. Next came his mother Anticleia, who had died of longing for him; three times he tried to embrace her, and three times she slipped away like a shadow.
Odysseus described a catalogue of famous women. Here he broke off, and Arete and Alcinous pressed him to continue. He went on to tell of the ghosts of his comrades at Troy: Agamemnon, who described his murder and warned against trusting women; Akhilleus, who rejected his praise and said he would rather be a landless labourer on earth than king of the dead; and Ajax, who refused to speak to him because of the quarrel over Akhilleus' armour. He saw the great sinners Tityos, Tantalus and Sisyphus, and Heracles, before fear drove him back to the ship.
Analysis
The Nekyia, the summoning of the dead, is the centre of Odysseus' narrative and one of the most influential episodes in European literature, imitated by Virgil and Dante. It gives Odysseus knowledge of his own future and of his home, but its deepest effect is emotional: the meeting with his mother shows the cost of his absence, and the meeting with Akhilleus questions the heroic ideal of the Iliad. Akhilleus' bitter words have been read as a reversal of his choice of glory over long life, and as the Odyssey's comment on the values of the older poem (Nagy 1979) (Griffin 1987).
The interruption in the middle of the book (the 'intermezzo') reminds us of Odysseus' audience, and of his skill in managing it: he stops at the point where he has their full attention, and they offer him more gifts. Some Analyst critics thought parts of the book, especially the catalogue of women and the final scenes with the sinners, were later additions (Page 1955). Ajax's silence, by contrast, is often admired as one of the most eloquent moments in Homer.
nay, it was longing for thee, and for thy counsels, glorious Odysseus, and for thy tender-heartedness, that robbed me of honey-sweet life.
Anticleia's words show that Odysseus' absence has its victims at home as well as at sea.
I should choose, so I might live on earth, to serve as the hireling of another, of some portionless man whose livelihood was but small, rather than to be lord over all the dead that have perished.
Akhilleus' answer to Odysseus' praise seems to reject the choice of glory over life that defined him in the Iliad.
Book 12: The Sirens, Scylla and the cattle of the Sun
Summary
Odysseus returned to Circe's island, buried Elpenor, and received Circe's instructions. To hear the Sirens safely, he had his men stop their ears with wax and bind him to the mast. He heard their song, which promised knowledge of all that happened at Troy and on earth, and begged to be released, but his men tied him tighter. He chose to pass near Scylla, a six-headed monster, rather than the whirlpool Charybdis, and lost six men.
On Thrinacia, the island of the Sun, contrary winds kept them for a month. When their food ran out and Odysseus was asleep, Eurylochus persuaded the men to kill some of the Sun's cattle. Helios complained to Zeus, who destroyed the ship with a thunderbolt once they had put to sea; all the men drowned. Odysseus, clinging to the wreckage, was swept back to Charybdis, survived by clinging to a fig tree, and drifted for nine days to Calypso's island. There he ends his story, since he has already told the rest.
Analysis
The Sirens offer a temptation that is specifically intellectual and poetic: they promise to sing the story of Troy, which is the subject of epic itself. Their song has been read as a rival form of epic, a poetry of the past that kills its listeners, against which the Odyssey sets its own song of survival and return (Pucci 1987) (Segal 1994). Odysseus, bound to the mast, can hear without being destroyed, a model of controlled curiosity.
The cattle of the Sun complete the theme announced in the proem: the companions perish through their own recklessness, and Odysseus is left alone. Yet the episode is morally complex. The men are starving, and Odysseus is asleep at the crucial moment, as he was when the bag of winds was opened. Scholars have debated whether the companions deserve their fate or whether the poem sympathises with their hunger (Clay 1983).
For we know all the toils that in wide Troy the Argives and Trojans endured through the will of the gods, and we know all things that come to pass upon the fruitful earth.
The Sirens' song offers the knowledge that epic itself provides; its fatal attraction is a temptation to live in the past.
Book 13: Return to Ithaca
Summary
The Phaeacians load Odysseus with gifts and carry him home in one of their ships. He falls into a deep sleep on board and is set down, still asleep, on the shore of Ithaca beside a cave of the nymphs, with his treasure piled by an olive tree. Poseidon, angry that his enemy has reached home, gains Zeus' permission to punish the Phaeacians: he turns their ship to stone as it comes into harbour, and Alcinous recalls an old prophecy that a mountain will enclose their city.
Odysseus wakes and, because Athena has covered the land in mist, does not recognise his own island. Athena appears disguised as a young shepherd. Odysseus at once tells her a false story, claiming to be a Cretan fugitive. Delighted, the goddess reveals herself, praises his cunning, and admits that she is like him. Together they hide the treasure and plan the suitors' deaths, and she transforms him into an old, ragged beggar and sends him to the hut of his swineherd Eumaeus.
Analysis
Book 13 marks the hinge of the poem, between the fabulous world of the wanderings and the realistic world of Ithaca. Odysseus' sleep on the ship, compared to death, divides the two halves. The fate of the Phaeacians, punished for their hospitality, is one of the poem's harshest ironies and a sign that Poseidon's anger is not yet exhausted (Heubeck 1992).
The scene between Odysseus and Athena is a playful contest of deceptions and one of the most intimate scenes between a god and a mortal in Homer. Athena loves Odysseus because he is like her: the goddess of mētis recognises the man of mētis. The first of Odysseus' 'Cretan lies' introduces a pattern of false autobiographies through which, in the second half of the poem, he tests others and reshapes his own story (Clay 1983) (Pucci 1987).
sweet sleep fell upon his eyelids, an unawakening sleep, most sweet, and most like to death.
The sleep that carries Odysseus from the world of the wanderings to Ithaca is described as a kind of death, from which he will wake into his own land.
Cunning must he be and knavish, who would go beyond thee in all manner of guile, aye, though it were a god that met thee.
Athena's affectionate rebuke after Odysseus lies to her establishes the special bond of mētis between the goddess and her favourite.
Book 14: The swineherd's hut
Summary
Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, reaches the hut of Eumaeus, who saves him from his dogs and gives him food and shelter, although he is poor and a slave. Eumaeus laments his absent master and complains of the suitors who eat his best pigs. The beggar swears that Odysseus will return, but Eumaeus refuses to believe him, because so many vagrants have brought false news to win a meal.
Asked for his story, Odysseus tells a long lie: he is a Cretan, the illegitimate son of a rich man, a warrior at Troy and a raider in Egypt, who was sold into slavery and escaped. He says he heard of Odysseus in Thesprotia. That night, when it is cold, he tells a story about a night ambush at Troy in which Odysseus found him a cloak, and Eumaeus takes the hint and gives him a cloak to sleep in.
Analysis
Eumaeus' hospitality is the poem's model of xenia offered by the humble. His generosity, based on piety and pity rather than expectation of return, contrasts with the suitors' greed in the palace. The narrator addresses him directly in the second person, a rare honour in Homer, which has been read as a sign of special sympathy (de Jong 2001) (Thalmann 1998).
The false tale is skilfully constructed. It mixes elements of Odysseus' real life (war, wandering, shipwreck) with an identity that is plausible for a beggar, and it tests the loyalty of the listener while revealing the narrator's resourcefulness. Critics have noted that these 'Cretan tales' resemble the Apologue in Books 9 to 12, and raise the question of how far the hero's own narrative can be trusted (Pucci 1987).
for from Zeus are all strangers and beggars, and a gift, though small, is welcome from such as we
Eumaeus repeats Nausicaa's principle almost word for word, adding the perspective of a slave who has little to give.
From broad Crete I declare that I am come by lineage, the son of a wealthy man.
The opening of the false autobiography, built from details that sound plausible.
Book 15: Telemachus returns
Summary
Athena appears to Telemachus in Sparta and urges him to go home, warning him of the suitors' ambush. Menelaus and Helen send him off with gifts. An eagle carrying off a goose appears, and Helen interprets it as a sign of Odysseus' return and vengeance. At Pylos, Telemachus avoids Nestor's lengthy hospitality and sails at once, taking on board Theoclymenus, a seer fleeing a killing.
In the hut, the beggar tests Eumaeus by offering to go to the palace; Eumaeus urges him to stay. Eumaeus tells his own life story: he was the son of a king on the island of Syrie, kidnapped as a child by his Phoenician nurse and sold to Laertes, who brought him up with his daughter. Telemachus lands secretly on Ithaca, sends his ship on to the town, and walks to the hut.
Analysis
The book brings the two strands of the plot together. The omen of the eagle and the goose and the arrival of Theoclymenus, a prophet who will foresee the suitors' doom, begin to build an atmosphere of approaching vengeance (Heubeck 1992).
Eumaeus' story is the counterpart of Odysseus' false tale in Book 14: a true autobiography of a man who fell from royalty into slavery. It deepens the poem's interest in the experience of slaves and in the arbitrariness of social status, and it shows Eumaeus' loyalty as a bond between persons rather than mere servility (Thalmann 1998).
Than roaming naught else is more evil for mortals
The disguised hero's comment on vagrancy expresses the poem's sense of homelessness as the worst of human conditions.
Book 16: Father and son
Summary
Telemachus arrives at the hut, and Eumaeus greets him like a father welcoming back an only son. Telemachus sends Eumaeus to the palace to tell Penelope he is safe. Athena restores Odysseus' appearance, and he reveals himself to his son. Telemachus at first thinks he must be a god; then the two embrace and weep. They plan the destruction of the suitors: Telemachus is to remove the weapons from the hall and tell no one, not even Penelope, of his father's return.
The ship that was sent to ambush Telemachus returns, and the suitors meet to plan his murder. Antinous proposes to kill him; Amphinomus, the most decent of the suitors, advises waiting for a sign from the gods. Penelope, informed by the herald Medon, confronts Antinous and reminds him that Odysseus once saved his father's life. Eurymachus lies to reassure her.
Analysis
The recognition between Odysseus and Telemachus is the first of a series of reunions in the second half of the poem, each different in form. Here the recognition is achieved through divine transformation rather than a sign, and the son's disbelief echoes his doubt about his parentage in Book 1. The simile in which Eumaeus welcomes Telemachus like a father sets up the real reunion and shows how the household's relationships have been displaced by Odysseus' absence (Murnaghan 1987).
The suitors' council shows them divided and corrupt. Amphinomus, who is given good qualities, will still die: the poem insists that association with the group condemns even the better individuals. Penelope's speech reveals her intelligence and political awareness (Katz 1991).
Nay, I am thy father, for whose sake thou dost with groaning endure many griefs, and submittest to the violence of men.
Odysseus' simple statement of identity resolves the question Telemachus raised in Book 1.
Book 17: The beggar in the palace
Summary
Telemachus returns to the palace and tells Penelope about his journey, though not about his father. Theoclymenus declares that Odysseus is already in Ithaca. Eumaeus leads the beggar to town; on the way the goatherd Melanthius insults and kicks him. At the palace gate lies the old dog Argos, whom Odysseus raised long ago, neglected on a dung heap. He recognises his master, wags his tail, and dies.
Odysseus begs from the suitors. Most give him something, but Antinous refuses and throws a footstool at him. Even the other suitors protest, warning that gods sometimes visit men in disguise. Penelope, hearing of the insult, asks to see the stranger for news of her husband; Odysseus asks her to wait until evening.
Analysis
The episode of Argos is one of the most moving in the poem. The dog alone recognises Odysseus at once, through his disguise, and his death, after twenty years of waiting, is a measure of the length of the absence. His neglected condition reflects the state of the household under the suitors' rule (Heubeck 1992).
The beggar's tour of the hall tests the suitors' hospitality, and the poem stresses their failure through a series of escalating insults. The suitors themselves raise the idea that the beggar might be a god in disguise, testing human righteousness, which is exactly what the audience sees happening (Murnaghan 1987) (Reece 1993).
But as for Argos, the fate of black death seized him straightway when he had seen Odysseus in the twentieth year.
The dog's recognition and death are told in two lines of restrained narration.
Book 18: Irus and Penelope
Summary
A local beggar, Irus, tries to drive Odysseus away. The suitors, amused, arrange a fight between them; Odysseus floors Irus with one blow. He warns Amphinomus that the gods punish the wicked and that Odysseus will soon return, but Amphinomus, though troubled, does not leave.
Athena inspires Penelope to appear before the suitors. Beautified by the goddess, she reproaches Telemachus for allowing the stranger to be ill-treated, and tells the suitors that Odysseus instructed her to remarry when their son grew a beard. She reproaches them for not bringing gifts as proper suitors do, and they shower her with presents. Odysseus is delighted by her cunning. The maid Melantho insults him, and Eurymachus mocks him and throws a footstool at him.
Analysis
Odysseus' speech to Amphinomus, on the frailty of human beings and their dependence on the gods, is one of the poem's great moral reflections. It shows the beggar as a wise man and makes Amphinomus' failure to act on the warning all the more tragic (Clay 1983).
Penelope's appearance before the suitors is one of the most debated scenes in the poem. Why does she choose this moment to show herself and to talk of remarriage? Some readers see an unconscious response to her husband's presence; others see deliberate strategy, whether to extract gifts, to delay or to test. The scene illustrates the difficulty of reading Penelope's mind, which the poem often leaves open (Felson-Rubin 1994) (Katz 1991) (Winkler 1990).
Nothing feebler does earth nurture than man, of all things that on earth are breathing and moving.
The disguised king, himself reduced to a beggar, speaks of human frailty to a suitor who will not heed him.
Book 19: Penelope and the stranger; the scar
Summary
Odysseus and Telemachus remove the weapons from the hall. That evening Penelope talks with the stranger. She tells him of her distress and the trick of the shroud; he tells her that he is a Cretan, Aethon, who once entertained Odysseus, and he describes the clothes and the brooch that Odysseus wore. She weeps. He assures her that Odysseus is near.
Penelope asks the old nurse Eurycleia to wash the stranger's feet. Eurycleia recognises a scar on his leg; the narrative digresses to tell how Odysseus received his name from his grandfather Autolycus and was wounded by a boar while hunting on Parnassus. Odysseus seizes her throat and silences her. Penelope, who notices nothing, tells him a dream in which an eagle kills her geese, and announces that she will hold a contest of the bow and axes the next day and marry the winner.
Analysis
The conversation between husband and wife is full of double meaning. The stranger's lies are so convincing that Penelope weeps, and her questions test him as he tests her. The 'gates of horn and ivory' speech, in which she distinguishes true dreams from false, comments on the difficulty of telling truth from deception in the poem as a whole (Murnaghan 1987).
The recognition by the scar and the long digression that follows were the subject of Erich Auerbach's famous essay 'Odysseus' Scar' in Mimesis (Auerbach 1953), which contrasted Homer's clear, foregrounded narrative with the reticence of the Hebrew Bible. Scholars have since stressed how the digression connects the scar with Odysseus' name and with his identity as a hunter and as a man who causes and suffers pain (de Jong 2001) (Peradotto 1990). Penelope's decision to set the contest at this point is at the heart of the debate about her knowledge.
He spoke, and made the many falsehoods of his tale seem like the truth
The narrator's comment, which recalls the Muses' claim in Hesiod to speak lies like the truth, identifies Odysseus as a poet of deception.
For two are the gates of shadowy dreams, and one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory.
Penelope's image of the two gates of dreams was later taken up by Virgil at the end of Aeneid 6.
Book 20: Omens before the slaughter
Summary
Odysseus lies awake in the porch, angry at the maids who go out laughing to sleep with the suitors, and restrains himself. Athena reassures him. Penelope, waking, prays to Artemis for death rather than marriage to a worse man. At dawn Odysseus asks Zeus for a sign; thunder rolls from a clear sky and a woman grinding grain curses the suitors.
The household prepares for a feast. Melanthius insults Odysseus again, but the cowherd Philoetius greets him kindly. The suitors' plan to kill Telemachus is checked by an omen. At the feast Ctesippus throws an ox-hoof at the beggar. Athena causes the suitors to laugh uncontrollably, and Theoclymenus has a terrible vision of their deaths, of walls dripping with blood and the hall full of ghosts. They mock him and he leaves.
Analysis
The book creates a long delay before the climax, filled with omens, prayers and premonitions. Odysseus' address to his own heart, recalling his endurance in the Cyclops' cave, shows the self-control that his revenge requires (Heubeck 1992).
Theoclymenus' vision is unique in Homer: a moment of second sight that brings the future slaughter into the present. The suitors' hysterical laughter, which Athena induces, marks them as doomed and deluded, and the scene has a quality of horror that anticipates tragedy (Heubeck 1992).
Endure, my heart; a worse thing even than this didst thou once endure on that day when the Cyclops, unrestrained in daring, devoured my mighty comrades
Odysseus' self-address links his patience in the palace to the cunning that saved him in the cave.
sprinkled with blood are the walls and the fair rafters.
Theoclymenus' vision of the coming slaughter.
Book 21: The contest of the bow
Summary
Penelope fetches the great bow that Odysseus received from Iphitus, weeps over it, and brings it to the hall. The challenge is to string the bow and shoot through twelve axe-heads. Telemachus nearly strings it, but his father signals him to stop. The suitors try in turn and fail; Antinous suggests postponing the contest. Outside, Odysseus reveals himself to Eumaeus and Philoetius by showing his scar and gives them instructions.
The beggar asks to try the bow; the suitors object, but Penelope insists he be allowed. Telemachus sends her to her room, saying the bow is for men, and Eumaeus, braving the suitors' threats, gives Odysseus the bow. Eurycleia locks the doors. Odysseus strings the bow easily, as a singer strings a lyre, and shoots an arrow through the axes. Zeus thunders, and Telemachus takes his place beside his father.
Analysis
The bow is the symbol of Odysseus' identity and of his marriage. Only the true husband can string it, so the contest is a test of identity disguised as a test of strength. Telemachus' near success and his father's signal show that the son has grown up but defers to his father (Austin 1975).
The simile of the singer stringing the lyre connects the archer with the poet. The two skills, violent and musical, are joined in the hero who has told his own story so well. The contest is also the moment when the stranger becomes the king again, and the language of the book increasingly calls him Odysseus (Segal 1994).
even as when a man well-skilled in the lyre and in song easily stretches the string about a new peg, making fast at either end the twisted sheep-gut—so without effort did Odysseus string the great bow.
The simile of the lyre joins the arts of the warrior and the singer.
The bow shall be for men, for all, but most of all for me; since mine is the authority in the house.
Telemachus' words repeat his rebuke to Penelope in Book 1, with 'bow' in place of 'speech'.
Book 22: The killing of the suitors
Summary
Odysseus throws off his rags and shoots Antinous through the throat as he raises a cup of wine. He reveals himself to the suitors. Eurymachus blames Antinous and offers compensation; Odysseus refuses, and a battle begins. Melanthius brings armour from the storeroom for the suitors, but is caught and tied up by Eumaeus and Philoetius. Athena, in the form of Mentor, encourages Odysseus and then raises her aegis, and the suitors flee in panic and are killed.
The priest Leodes begs for mercy and is killed; the singer Phemius and the herald Medon are spared at Telemachus' request. Eurycleia identifies twelve disloyal maids. They are made to carry out the bodies and clean the hall, and then Telemachus hangs them. Melanthius is mutilated and killed. Odysseus purifies the house with fire and sulphur, and the loyal servants greet him.
Analysis
The slaughter fulfils the poem's moral plan: the suitors are punished for their arrogance and violation of hospitality, and the gods support the killing. Yet the scene is also exceptionally violent and its justice has been questioned. Odysseus refuses all compensation, contrary to the usual Homeric practice, and kills every suitor, including the decent Amphinomus (Thalmann 1998).
The hanging of the maids, described in a simile of birds caught in a net, has become one of the most discussed scenes in the poem. Telemachus chooses a 'not clean' death instead of the sword his father ordered. Modern readers, from feminist critics to Margaret Atwood's novel The Penelopiad (2005), have asked whether the women, who were slaves with little choice, deserved their fate, and what the poem's apparent approval reveals about its values (Doherty 1995) (Thalmann 1998).
Ye dogs, ye thought that I should never more come home from the land of the Trojans
Odysseus' first words to the suitors after revealing himself.
And as when long-winged thrushes or doves fall into a snare that is set in a thicket, as they seek to reach their resting-place, and hateful is the bed that gives them welcome
The simile for the hanged maids combines pity with grim irony: the 'bed' that receives them is death.
Book 23: The bed
Summary
Eurycleia wakes Penelope and tells her that Odysseus has returned and killed the suitors. Penelope refuses to believe it and suspects a god. She comes down and sits opposite Odysseus in silence. Telemachus rebukes her hardness of heart, but she says that she and her husband have secret signs by which they will know each other. Odysseus has a mock wedding feast staged to hide the killings from the town, and is bathed by the housekeeper Eurynome and made handsome by Athena.
Penelope tests him by telling Eurycleia to move their bed outside the chamber. Odysseus, angry, explains that the bed cannot be moved, because he built it himself around the trunk of an olive tree rooted in the ground. Penelope runs to him and embraces him, explaining her caution. Athena holds back the dawn. Odysseus tells her of the journey inland that Tiresias foretold, and they go to bed. Afterwards he tells her the story of his wanderings.
Analysis
The final recognition is a reversal: here it is Penelope who tests Odysseus, and the cunning hero is caught off guard. The bed, rooted in the earth and built by his own hand, is a symbol of the marriage and its permanence, and the knowledge shared by husband and wife is a sign of their like-mindedness. Penelope's caution and intelligence show her as Odysseus' equal (Murnaghan 1987) (Felson-Rubin 1994) (Cohen 1995).
The simile at the moment of reunion is striking: Penelope's joy is compared to that of shipwrecked sailors reaching land, an image that belongs to Odysseus' experience rather than hers. It suggests that she too has endured a kind of shipwreck. The book also raises the problem of the poem's ending, for the Alexandrian scholars Aristophanes and Aristarchus said that the Odyssey ended at line 296, when the couple go to bed (Heubeck 1992) (Page 1955).
Who has set my bed elsewhere?
Odysseus' indignant reaction proves his identity, as Penelope intended.
And welcome as is the sight of land to men that swim
The simile transfers Odysseus' shipwreck to Penelope's experience of reunion.
And they then gladly came to the place of the couch that was theirs of old.
The line at which, according to the ancient scholia, Aristarchus and Aristophanes of Byzantium placed the 'end' of the Odyssey.
Book 24: Laertes and the peace
Summary
Hermes leads the souls of the suitors to the underworld, where Agamemnon and Akhilleus are talking. The suitor Amphimedon tells the story of their deaths, implying that Penelope planned the contest with Odysseus. Agamemnon praises Penelope's faithfulness and contrasts her with his own murderous wife.
Odysseus goes to the farm of his father Laertes, whom he finds in rags tending his vines. He tests him with another false story before revealing himself, proving his identity by the scar and by naming the trees Laertes gave him as a child. The families of the suitors, led by Antinous' father Eupeithes, come to take revenge. Laertes, rejuvenated by Athena, kills Eupeithes with a spear. Athena, with the approval of Zeus, stops the fighting and imposes a peace.
Analysis
The last book has been criticised since antiquity as an inferior addition. The second visit to the underworld, the testing of Laertes, and the abrupt divine resolution seem to many readers anticlimactic. Others defend it as a necessary conclusion: the poem must deal with Odysseus' father, the consequences of the killing, and the restoration of the community (Page 1955) (Heubeck 1992) (West 2014).
Agamemnon's praise of Penelope makes explicit the contrast between the two marriages that has run through the poem. The recognition of Laertes through the orchard trees, like the bed in Book 23, connects identity with growth and with a shared past. The final peace, imposed by the gods, has been read both as a restoration of order and as an evasion of the problem of the blood feud that the slaughter created (Thalmann 1998).
Therefore the fame of her virtue shall never perish, but the immortals shall make among men on earth a pleasant song in honor of constant Penelope.
Agamemnon's ghost predicts the undying kleos of Penelope, earned not by war but by fidelity.
Pear-trees thirteen thou gavest me, and ten apple-trees, and forty fig-trees.
Odysseus' memory of the trees given by his father in childhood proves his identity to Laertes.
and let them love one another as before, and let wealth and peace abound.
Zeus' plan for the peace with which the poem ends.
Characters
Odysseus's household
- Odysseus
- Son of Laertes and king of Ithaca, the hero of the poem, called polytropos, 'of many turns'. At Troy he was the master of strategy and the inventor of the wooden horse. In the Odyssey he is above all the man who endures: he survives twenty years of war and wandering, loses every companion, and returns home alone, disguised as a beggar. He is a superb speaker and liar, a skilled craftsman and archer, and a man of strong appetites and strong self-control. His cunning can save him or ruin him, as when his boast to the Cyclops brings Poseidon's anger on him. His character has been endlessly reinterpreted, from the treacherous schemer of Greek tragedy to Dante's restless voyager and Joyce's Leopold Bloom (Hall 2008).
- Penelope
- Daughter of Icarius and wife of Odysseus. For twenty years she has waited for her husband, and for the last three or four has held off the suitors by delays and tricks, most famously the shroud she wove by day and unwove by night. She is praised throughout the poem for her intelligence and fidelity, and she matches her husband in caution and cunning, testing him with the trick of the bed before accepting him. How much she knows or suspects about the beggar, and why she sets the contest of the bow when she does, are among the most debated questions in the poem (Felson-Rubin 1994) (Katz 1991).
- Telemachus
- The only son of Odysseus and Penelope, about twenty years old. At the start of the poem he is passive and uncertain of his identity; Athena's visit and his journey to Pylos and Sparta give him the experience and confidence to confront the suitors. He becomes his father's ally in the revenge, though his impulsiveness and the harshness with which he hangs the maids complicate the portrait.
- Laertes
- Odysseus' aged father, who has withdrawn to a farm in grief, where he lives in poverty and tends his vines. His recognition of his son in Book 24 and his rejuvenation by Athena complete the restoration of three generations of the family.
- Anticleia
- Odysseus' mother, who died of grief while he was away. Her ghost meets him in the underworld in Book 11, and she tells him the state of things in Ithaca; her flight from his embrace is one of the poem's most moving scenes.
- Eurycleia
- Odysseus' old nurse, bought by Laertes as a girl and loyal to the family. She recognises Odysseus by the scar while washing his feet, and later identifies the disloyal maids. Her triumph over the dead suitors is rebuked by Odysseus.
- Eumaeus
- Odysseus' swineherd, a slave of royal birth kidnapped as a child. He welcomes the disguised Odysseus with generous hospitality, remains loyal to his absent master, and fights beside him against the suitors. He is the poem's model of the virtuous servant, addressed by the narrator with special affection (Thalmann 1998).
- Philoetius
- Odysseus' loyal cowherd, who greets the beggar kindly and joins in the fight against the suitors.
- Melanthius
- The disloyal goatherd who sides with the suitors, insults and kicks the disguised Odysseus, and brings them weapons during the battle. He is cruelly mutilated and killed.
- Melantho
- Melanthius' sister, one of Penelope's maids. She sleeps with Eurymachus and insults the beggar. She is presumably among the twelve maids hanged after the slaughter.
- Argos
- Odysseus' old hunting dog, neglected on a dung heap in his master's absence. He recognises Odysseus through his disguise and dies at once.
Suitors
- Antinous
- The leading suitor, arrogant, violent and contemptuous. He plots the murder of Telemachus, throws a footstool at the beggar, and is the first to die, shot through the throat as he lifts a cup. His father, Eupeithes, leads the relatives' revenge in Book 24.
- Eurymachus
- The second leader of the suitors, smoother and more deceitful than Antinous. He mocks the beggar and the prophet Theoclymenus, and when Odysseus reveals himself, he tries to blame Antinous and offer compensation before he is killed.
- Amphinomus
- The most decent of the suitors, who opposes the murder of Telemachus and is warned by Odysseus to leave. He does not heed the warning and is killed by Telemachus.
Gods
- Athena
- Goddess of wisdom and crafts, and Odysseus' constant protector. She sets the plot in motion, guides Telemachus in the form of Mentes and Mentor, disguises Odysseus, and fights beside him. Her affection for Odysseus is based on their shared cunning, and she brings the poem to a close by imposing peace (Clay 1983).
- Zeus
- King of the gods, who is concerned in the Odyssey with justice and the punishment of wrongdoers. He permits Odysseus' return, destroys his crew for killing the cattle of the Sun, and approves Athena's final peace.
- Poseidon
- God of the sea and father of the Cyclops Polyphemus. His anger at the blinding of his son is the main divine obstacle to Odysseus' return; he wrecks Odysseus' raft and turns the Phaeacian ship to stone.
- Hermes
- Messenger of the gods, who orders Calypso to release Odysseus, gives him the herb moly against Circe, and leads the souls of the suitors to the underworld.
Peoples of the wanderings
- Calypso
- A nymph, daughter of Atlas, who keeps Odysseus for seven years on her island of Ogygia and offers him immortality. Her name suggests concealment. She releases him only at the command of Zeus.
- Circe
- A goddess and enchantress, who turns Odysseus' men into pigs. Overcome by Odysseus with Hermes' help, she becomes his lover and gives him advice for the rest of his journey.
- Polyphemus
- A one-eyed giant, one of the Cyclopes and a son of Poseidon. He eats six of Odysseus' men, is blinded by Odysseus, and calls down his father's curse on him.
- Nausicaa
- Daughter of Alcinous and Arete, king and queen of the Phaeacians. She meets the shipwrecked Odysseus at the river and helps him reach her parents' palace. Her hope that a man like him might marry her is gently left unfulfilled.
- Alcinous and Arete
- King and queen of the Phaeacians on Scheria, a seafaring people close to the gods. They receive Odysseus, listen to his story, and send him home with rich gifts. Arete is unusually influential, and Odysseus addresses his supplication to her.
- Demodocus
- The blind Phaeacian singer, whose songs about Troy and about Ares and Aphrodite move Odysseus to tears and inspire him to tell his own story.
- Tiresias
- The blind Theban prophet, whose ghost Odysseus consults in the underworld. He predicts the dangers ahead, the slaughter of the suitors and the journey inland that Odysseus must still make.
Others
- Nestor
- The aged king of Pylos, whom Telemachus visits in Book 3. He tells of the returns of the Greeks and of the murder of Agamemnon, and offers Telemachus the model of a pious and orderly household.
- Menelaus and Helen
- The king and queen of Sparta, reunited after the war. They receive Telemachus with luxurious hospitality and tell contradictory stories about Helen's conduct at Troy. Menelaus' account of his own return parallels Odysseus' wanderings.
- Agamemnon
- The commander of the Greeks at Troy, murdered on his return by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, and avenged by his son Orestes. His story serves throughout the poem as a dark counterpart to that of Odysseus, and his ghost praises Penelope in Book 24.
- Phemius
- The singer of the palace in Ithaca, forced to perform for the suitors. He is spared in the slaughter after pleading that he is 'self-taught' and sang against his will.
- Theoclymenus
- A seer who flees from Argos after killing a man and is taken to Ithaca by Telemachus. He prophesies Odysseus' presence and has a vision of the suitors' deaths.
Themes
Homecoming (nostos)
The Odyssey is the great poem of return. Its hero's goal is not glory but homecoming, and the word nostos and its relatives recur throughout. Homecoming means more than arrival: Odysseus must reclaim his household, his marriage, his son and his kingship, and must be recognised by each of them. The poem's other returns, especially Agamemnon's, show how a homecoming can fail (de Jong 2001).
Odysseus' refusal of Calypso's offer of immortality makes clear that home is bound up with human limits: to return is to accept mortality, age and death. The prophecy of Tiresias, which sends him on a further journey inland, suggests that even homecoming is not a final rest (Segal 1994).
Hospitality (xenia)
Xenia, the reciprocal relationship between host and guest, protected by Zeus Xenios, is the poem's central social institution. The many scenes of welcome follow a recognisable pattern: the guest is received, bathed, fed, and only then asked his name; he is given gifts and sent on his way. Nestor, Menelaus, the Phaeacians and Eumaeus offer good hospitality; the Cyclops, the Laestrygonians and the suitors pervert it (Reece 1993) (Finley 1954).
The poem uses xenia as a moral measure. The suitors are guests who behave as though they were hosts, devouring another man's property and insulting a stranger. Their punishment is therefore presented as divine justice for the violation of a sacred bond. Even the gods visit humans in disguise to test their hospitality, as the suitors themselves warn.
Cunning and mētis
Odysseus is the hero of mētis, cunning intelligence: the capacity to devise plans, to adapt, to deceive, and to endure in silence. His epithets, polymētis ('of many devices') and polytropos ('of many turns'), mark him as different from the heroes of strength. Athena, the goddess of mētis, loves him because he is like her (Clay 1983).
The poem celebrates cunning, but also shows its dangers. Lies and disguises are necessary for survival, yet the Cyclops episode shows that the desire to be known can undo them. Penelope, whose mētis matches her husband's, shows that cunning is not a male monopoly (Winkler 1990) (Pucci 1987).
Identity, disguise and recognition
Much of the Odyssey is a series of concealments and revelations. Odysseus hides his identity from the Phaeacians, calls himself 'Noman' to the Cyclops, and returns home as a beggar. The second half of the poem is built from recognitions, each of a different kind: by Athena, Telemachus, Argos, Eurycleia, the herdsmen, the suitors, Penelope and Laertes (Murnaghan 1987).
The tokens of recognition (a scar, a bow, a bed, a group of trees) connect identity to the body, to skill and to a shared past. The poem suggests that identity is not simply given but must be proved and acknowledged by others. Odysseus' name, which the poem links to the hatred or pain he causes and suffers, is itself a theme (Peradotto 1990).
Fidelity and Penelope
Penelope's fidelity is the condition of Odysseus' return, and the poem contrasts her with the murderous Clytemnestra and with the ambiguous Helen. Agamemnon's ghost predicts that her story will win undying fame. Her virtue is not passive endurance but active resistance, by trickery and delay, to pressure to remarry (Katz 1991) (Felson-Rubin 1994).
Her fidelity has been read in different ways. Some critics see the poem as celebrating a male ideal of the faithful wife; others stress her independence of mind, her ambivalence and her intelligence, and argue that the poem leaves room for different possible plots in her story (Felson-Rubin 1994) (Winkler 1990). Odysseus, meanwhile, is not sexually faithful, a double standard the poem does not question.
Justice and the suitors
The Odyssey presents a world in which the gods are concerned with justice. Zeus' speech in Book 1 insists that men are responsible for their own sufferings, and the suitors are warned repeatedly by omens, prophets and the beggar himself. Their destruction is presented as the punishment of hybris (arrogant violence) and of the violation of hospitality (Clay 1983).
The poem's justice has nevertheless troubled many readers. The killing is total, Odysseus refuses compensation, and the punishment of the maids and Melanthius is savage. The final peace is achieved only through divine intervention. Critics have read the conclusion as both a vindication of order and a revelation of the violence on which order depends (Thalmann 1998).
Storytelling and song
The Odyssey is full of storytellers: the singers Phemius and Demodocus, the old men Nestor and Menelaus, Helen, Eumaeus, and above all Odysseus, who narrates four books of the poem and tells several false autobiographies. The poem thus reflects on the power of song to give pleasure, to preserve fame, to move to tears and to deceive (Segal 1994).
The question of truth is central. Odysseus' stories to the Phaeacians are accepted as true, but his lies in Ithaca are also convincing, and the narrator says he could make falsehoods seem like the truth. Modern narratological study has emphasised how the poem uses different narrators and perspectives, and how the audience must judge between them (de Jong 2001) (Doherty 1995).
Motifs
Type-scenes of hospitality
The arrival of a guest, his reception, bath, meal and questioning are described in recurring patterns of formulaic language. These type-scenes, varied each time, allow the poem to measure each host by the standard of good xenia, and their distortion in the Cyclops' cave or in the suitors' hall signals moral corruption (Reece 1993).
Testing (peira)
Characters constantly test one another. Odysseus tests Eumaeus, Penelope, the maids, the suitors and Laertes with false stories; Penelope tests him with the bed; Athena tests Odysseus on his arrival. Testing reflects a world in which identity and loyalty cannot be taken for granted and must be proved.
Food, feasting and the belly
Eating is a constant concern: the suitors feast on Odysseus' herds, the companions eat the lotus and the cattle of the Sun, the Cyclops eats men, and Odysseus as a beggar speaks of the demands of the 'cursed belly'. Proper eating marks civilised society; excessive or forbidden eating marks transgression.
Weeping
The Odyssey is a poem of tears. Odysseus weeps on Calypso's shore, at Demodocus' songs and at his reunions; Penelope weeps for him nightly; Telemachus and Menelaus weep for the absent. Weeping marks memory, grief and the bonds between characters, and its similes often transfer suffering from one person to another.
Birds and omens
Eagles, hawks and other birds appear as omens throughout the poem, especially in the second half, predicting the destruction of the suitors. Penelope's dream of the eagle and the geese and the omen of the eagle with the goose in Book 15 identify Odysseus as a predator returning to his nest.
Symbols
The bed
The bed Odysseus built around the trunk of a living olive tree is the secret sign by which Penelope tests him. Rooted in the earth and immovable, it symbolises the stability of their marriage and the knowledge they share. Penelope's trick of pretending it has been moved hints at the fear that the marriage might have been disturbed (Cohen 1995).
The bow
The bow of Odysseus, given to him by Iphitus and left at home, is a token of his identity and kingship. Only its owner can string it, so the contest becomes a test of who Odysseus truly is. In his hands it becomes the weapon of revenge, and the simile of the lyre links it to the power of song.
The scar
The scar on Odysseus' leg, from a boar hunt in his youth, is the mark by which Eurycleia, the herdsmen and Laertes recognise him. The digression on its origin ties it to his name, his grandfather Autolycus and his initiation as a hunter, making it a sign of identity written on the body (Peradotto 1990).
The shroud
Penelope's web, the shroud for Laertes that she weaves by day and unpicks by night, symbolises her cunning, her fidelity and the suspended time of the household. It is described three times, and it links her to the poem itself as a work woven from many threads (Katz 1991).
Critical debates
Analysts and Unitarians
After F. A. Wolf's Prolegomena (1795), many nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars, known as Analysts, argued that the Odyssey was assembled from several earlier poems, such as a 'Telemachy', a poem of Odysseus' wanderings and a poem of revenge, joined by a later editor. They pointed to inconsistencies, such as the removal of the arms in Book 19 or the place of Theoclymenus. Denys Page's The Homeric Odyssey (1955) was the most influential English statement of this view (Page 1955).
Unitarians, by contrast, emphasise the poem's coherent design, its intricate cross-references and its patterns of repetition, and see the apparent inconsistencies as features of oral composition or of deliberate artistry. Since the work of Parry and Lord, the debate has shifted toward questions of oral tradition and the fixation of the text, though some scholars, such as M. L. West, have revived analytical methods to identify stages of composition (West 2014) (Heubeck 1992) (Lord 1960).
The 'end' at 23.296
The ancient scholia report that Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus considered line 296 of Book 23, when Odysseus and Penelope go to bed, to be the 'end' (telos or peras) of the Odyssey. Many modern Analysts took this to mean that the rest of Book 23 and all of Book 24 are a later addition, pointing to linguistic oddities and the weakness of the final scenes (Page 1955).
Others argue that the Alexandrian scholars meant the 'goal' or culmination of the plot rather than the literal end of the text, and that the poem needs its conclusion: the reunion with Laertes, the consequences of the killing, and the restoration of peace in Ithaca. Recent studies have stressed the many ways in which Book 24 picks up themes from earlier in the poem (Heubeck 1992) (West 2014).
Penelope's knowledge and the recognition
Does Penelope recognise Odysseus before the bed scene? The poem says explicitly that she does not, but her behaviour in Books 18 and 19, especially her decision to hold the contest of the bow just after her conversation with the beggar, has led some critics to argue for an earlier, unconscious or intuitive recognition. Norman Austin and others found signs of mutual understanding in the interview (Austin 1975).
Others resist this reading and stress Penelope's independence and her uncertainty. John Winkler argued that she pursues a strategy of her own, and Nancy Felson-Rubin and Marylin Katz showed how the poem leaves her motives open, so that she can be read as faithful wife, possible bride or cunning strategist (Winkler 1990) (Felson-Rubin 1994) (Katz 1991) (Murnaghan 1987).
The truth of the Apologue
The adventures of Books 9 to 12 are told not by the narrator but by Odysseus, a known liar, to an audience from whom he hopes to receive gifts and conveyance home. Ancient readers already joked about the 'tale told to Alcinous' as a byword for a tall story. Some critics have asked whether the poem invites us to doubt his account, especially given the contrast with his clearly false 'Cretan tales' (Pucci 1987).
Most scholars accept that the poem treats the Apologue as true, confirmed by the gods' scenes and by the narrator, while noting how it is shaped by Odysseus' perspective and purposes: he presents himself favourably, blames his companions and shapes his story for his Phaeacian audience. The Apologue thus becomes a model for reflection on narrators and their reliability (de Jong 2001) (Segal 1994) (Doherty 1995).
The slaughter and the hanging of the maids
The killing of the suitors is presented as just punishment, sanctioned by the gods. But its scale and violence, Odysseus' refusal to accept compensation, and the cruel deaths of Melanthius and the maids have troubled many readers. Some see the poem as endorsing the restoration of the master's authority over his household by any means (Thalmann 1998).
The maids have become a focus of feminist and social criticism. They are slaves, and their relations with the suitors may not have been freely chosen; their punishment is decided by Eurycleia and carried out by Telemachus. Critics have asked whether the poem invites any sympathy for them; the simile of the trapped birds suggests a note of pity (Doherty 1995) (Cohen 1995).
The Telemachy
The first four books focus on Telemachus, and Odysseus does not appear until Book 5. Analysts argued that the Telemachy was originally an independent poem, later attached to the Odyssey, citing apparent inconsistencies, such as the abrupt shift of scene and the long absence of the hero (Page 1955).
Unitarians argue that the Telemachy is integral: it introduces the situation in Ithaca, shows the need for Odysseus' return, develops the theme of the son's growth, and builds suspense by delaying the hero's appearance. The parallel stories of Nestor, Menelaus and Agamemnon also frame Odysseus' return (Clay 1983) (Heubeck 1992) (de Jong 2001).
The Odyssey and the Iliad: one poet or two?
Ancient scholars called chorizontes ('separators') argued that the two poems were by different poets; Aristarchus opposed them. 'Longinus' thought the Odyssey the work of Homer's old age. Modern scholars note differences in vocabulary, theology and social world, and many think the poems were composed by different poets, perhaps a generation apart (Graziosi 2002) (West 2014).
Others argue for a single poet or tradition, noting the poems' shared style and the way the Odyssey seems to complement the Iliad, avoiding its episodes while engaging with its values. Gregory Nagy's model of a gradual crystallisation of the tradition makes the question of individual authorship less relevant (Nagy 1979) (Griffin 1987).
Butler's 'authoress'
In The Authoress of the Odyssey (1897), the novelist Samuel Butler argued that the poem was composed by a young woman of Trapani in Sicily, who portrayed herself as Nausicaa. He based the argument on the poem's interest in domestic life, the prominence of its female characters and what he saw as a woman's errors about ships and male activities (Butler 1897).
The thesis has never been accepted by scholars, but it has been taken seriously as a provocation. Robert Graves made it the basis of his novel Homer's Daughter (1955), and later critics have used it to raise questions about gender, voice and audience in the poem (Hall 2008) (Doherty 1995).
Key passages
Tell me, O Muse, of the man of many devices, who wandered full many ways after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy.
The proem names its subject only as 'the man', without saying who he is, and defines him by his versatility (polytropos) and his wandering. The suppression of the name, which does not appear until line 21, anticipates the hero's disguises and the poem's concern with identity.
Look you now, how ready mortals are to blame the gods. It is from us, they say, that evils come, but they even of themselves, through their own blind folly, have sorrows beyond that which is ordained.
Zeus' complaint, prompted by the story of Aegisthus, sets out the moral framework of the poem. Human beings are responsible for their own suffering, and those who ignore divine warnings will be punished, as the companions and the suitors will be.
I will endure it, having in my breast a heart that endures affliction.
Odysseus' answer to Calypso's warning that he will suffer more on the voyage home. Endurance is his defining quality, and his decision to leave the goddess defines his choice of mortal life over immortality.
For nothing is greater or better than this, when man and wife dwell in a home in one accord
Odysseus' wish for Nausicaa describes the marital harmony (homophrosynē) that is the poem's ideal, and that he and Penelope will demonstrate through the shared secret of the bed.
Noman is my name, Noman do they call me
The false name tricks the Cyclops into telling his neighbours that 'Noman' is killing him. It also puns on mētis, cunning, and shows how Odysseus survives by giving up his identity, which he will dangerously reclaim at the end of the episode.
I should choose, so I might live on earth, to serve as the hireling of another, of some portionless man whose livelihood was but small, rather than to be lord over all the dead that have perished.
In the underworld Akhilleus rejects Odysseus' consolation. His words seem to reverse the choice of glory over life that he made in the Iliad, and to endorse the Odyssey's values of survival and return.
He spoke, and made the many falsehoods of his tale seem like the truth
The narrator's comment on Odysseus' lies to Penelope. It recalls the Muses' boast in Hesiod's Theogony that they can tell lies like the truth, and identifies Odysseus as a poet of deception.
Endure, my heart; a worse thing even than this didst thou once endure on that day when the Cyclops, unrestrained in daring, devoured my mighty comrades
Odysseus restrains his anger at the maids by recalling his patience in the Cyclops' cave. The self-address shows his mastery of himself and links his revenge to his earlier cunning.
And welcome as is the sight of land to men that swim
The simile describing Penelope's joy at the reunion recalls Odysseus' own shipwreck, transferring his experience to her and suggesting the equality of their suffering.
Therefore the fame of her virtue shall never perish, but the immortals shall make among men on earth a pleasant song in honor of constant Penelope.
Agamemnon's ghost praises Penelope's fidelity and contrasts her with Clytemnestra. The kleos usually won by warriors is here promised to a woman for her constancy.
Questions for study
Why does the Odyssey begin with Telemachus rather than Odysseus?
Think about how the Telemachy establishes the situation in Ithaca, creates suspense and presents the theme of the son's growing up. Consider the effect of meeting Odysseus first through other people's memories.
Is Odysseus a reliable narrator of his own adventures?
Consider his audience and purposes among the Phaeacians, his false tales in Ithaca, and the narrator's comment in Book 19. Does the poem give us reasons to trust or doubt the Apologue?
How does the Odyssey define heroism differently from the Iliad?
Compare Odysseus' qualities with Akhilleus'. Consider Akhilleus' words in the underworld, Odysseus' choice of mortality, and the poem's emphasis on endurance and cunning.
How far does Penelope know or suspect the beggar's identity before Book 23?
Look closely at Books 18 and 19, especially her dream and her decision to set the contest. Weigh the narrator's statements against the hints and ambiguities.
What role does hospitality play in the moral structure of the poem?
Compare the scenes at Pylos, Sparta, Scheria and Eumaeus' hut with the Cyclops and the suitors. How is xenia linked to divine justice?
Is the killing of the suitors and the maids just?
Consider the warnings the suitors receive, the refusal of compensation, the treatment of Amphinomus, Melanthius and the maids, and the need for divine intervention at the end.
What is the significance of the recognition tokens: the scar, the bow, the bed and the trees?
Think about how each connects identity to the body, to skill, to marriage or to family history, and why different tokens suit different people.
How does the poem portray women and their power?
Consider Penelope, Helen, Arete, Nausicaa, Calypso, Circe, Eurycleia and the maids. Do the female characters share any common qualities or functions?
What does the Odyssey suggest about the power and dangers of song and storytelling?
Think about Phemius, Demodocus, the Sirens and Odysseus as storyteller. Consider the pleasure, grief and deception that song can produce.
Does Book 24 provide a satisfying ending to the poem?
Weigh the arguments that the poem ends at 23.296 against the case for Book 24. Consider the reunion with Laertes, the second visit to the underworld, and Athena's imposed peace.
Further reading
- Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Translated by Willard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953.
- Austin, Norman. Archery at the Dark of the Moon: Poetic Problems in Homer's Odyssey. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.
- Burgess, Jonathan S. The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
- Butler, Samuel. The Authoress of the Odyssey. London: Longmans, Green, 1897.
- Clay, Jenny Strauss. The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.
- Cohen, Beth, ed. The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer's Odyssey. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
- de Jong, Irene J. F. A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
- Doherty, Lillian Eileen. Siren Songs: Gender, Audiences, and Narrators in the Odyssey. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995.
- Felson-Rubin, Nancy. Regarding Penelope: From Character to Poetics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.
- Finley, M. I. The World of Odysseus. New York: Viking Press, 1954.
- Graziosi, Barbara. Inventing Homer: The Early Reception of Epic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
- Griffin, Jasper. Homer: The Odyssey. Landmarks of World Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
- Hall, Edith. The Return of Ulysses: A Cultural History of Homer's Odyssey. London: I. B. Tauris, 2008.
- Heubeck, Alfred, Stephanie West, J. B. Hainsworth, Arie Hoekstra, Joseph Russo, and Manuel Fernández-Galiano. A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988–1992.
- Katz, Marylin A. Penelope's Renown: Meaning and Indeterminacy in Homer's Odyssey. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.
- Lord, Albert B. The Singer of Tales. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960.
- Murnaghan, Sheila. Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987.
- Nagy, Gregory. The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979.
- Page, Denys. The Homeric Odyssey. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955.
- Peradotto, John. Man in the Middle Voice: Name and Narration in the Odyssey. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
- Pucci, Pietro. Odysseus Polutropos: Intertextual Readings in the Odyssey and the Iliad. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
- Reece, Steve. The Stranger's Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.
- Segal, Charles. Singers, Heroes, and Gods in the Odyssey. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994.
- Thalmann, William G. The Swineherd and the Bow: Representations of Class in the Odyssey. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998.
- West, M. L. The Making of the Odyssey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
- Winkler, John J. The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Written by the Poetry Codex editors. Updated 2026-10-19.