Odysseus | Myth, Significance, Trojan War, & Odyssey - Britannica

Role in the Odyssey

Odysseus’s wanderings and the recovery of his house and kingdom are the central theme of the Odyssey, which also relates how Penelope and Telemachus struggle to maintain their authority in his absence. Below are Odysseus’s adventures in chronological order:

• Odysseus and his crew depart Troy and stop at Ismarus, where they attack the local tribe, called the Cicones. At first victorious, they are eventually overwhelmed and suffer great losses.
• He then comes to the land of the Lotus-Eaters and only with difficulty rescues some of his companions from their lōtos-induced lethargy.
• He encounters and blinds Polyphemus, a Cyclops and a son of Poseidon, escaping from his cave on the coast of Sicily by clinging to the belly of a ram.
• He visits Aeolus, master of the winds, who gives him a bag containing a favorable wind to aid his journey. However, his mistrustful crew opens the bag while Odysseus is sleeping and the wind escapes, blowing them off course.
• He loses 11 of his 12 ships to the Laestrygones, cannibalistic giants who fling massive boulders at the ships and eat most of Odysseus’s men.
• He reaches Aeaea, the island of the enchantress Circe, where he has to rescue some of his companions whom she had turned into swine.
• He visits the Land of Departed Spirits, where he speaks to the spirit of Agamemnon and learns from the Theban seer Tiresias how he can expiate Poseidon’s wrath over the blinding of Polyphemus.
• He then encounters the Sirens and sails past their island unharmed by tying himself to the mast of his ship and having his men block their ears with beeswax.
• He successfully navigates the strait between the monstrous Scylla and Charybdis. The first is a female creature with six heads that snatches up six of Odysseus’s men, and the latter is a deadly whirlpool personified.
• He reaches Thrinacia, an island on which live the Cattle of the Sun. Despite warnings, his companions plunder the cattle for food. He alone survives the ensuing storm that Zeus sends after being entreated by the enraged sun god, Helios.
• He reaches Ogygia, the idyllic island of the nymph Calypso, who keeps him captive for seven years. Her promise of immortality cannot overcome Odysseus’s longing for home, and his release is eventually secured by divine intervention.
• He sails from Ogygia on a raft and is shipwrecked on Scheria, the island of the Phaeacians. He is found by their princess, Nausicaa, and finally gets to Ithaca with the assistance of the Phaeacians, who furnish him with a ship.

Disguised by Athena as an elderly beggar, Odysseus reveals himself to the swineherd Eumaeus and to Telemachus. At the palace he is recognized by his faithful dog, Argos, who dies after greeting him, and his nurse, Eurycleia (or Euryclea), who identifies him from a scar. Still in disguise, Odysseus wins a contest for Penelope’s hand by stringing and shooting with his old bow. He then slays Penelope’s suitors with the help of Telemachus. Penelope still does not believe him and gives him one more test. When he successfully evades her trick question about their marriage bed, she at last knows it is he and accepts Odysseus as her long-lost husband and the king of Ithaca.