The Ten-Year Voyage Home
A war of ten years was only the beginning. To get home, one man would need ten more, crossing seas that would eventually claim every man who sailed with him.
The Odyssey opens not with battle but with waiting. Ten years after the fall of Troy, Odysseus, king of Ithaca, has still not returned home — and by the end of his journey, all of his crewmates will have perished along the way. His son Telemachus, now twenty, lives in a household overrun by 108 suitors who feast at his family's expense while pressing his mother Penelope to remarry, certain that Odysseus is dead.
The goddess Athena, Odysseus's protector, seizes a moment when the sea god Poseidon — Odysseus's enemy — is away from Olympus. She pleads his case to Zeus, then visits Telemachus disguised as a tribal chief named Mentor, urging him to seek news of his father. Telemachus calls the men of Ithaca to assembly to demand help against the suitors, but finds none. That night, disguised Athena secures him a ship and crew.
Telemachus sails to Pylos, where the old warrior Nestor, returned from Troy, tells him Odysseus never sailed home with the others after disagreements at Troy. Nestor sends him onward to Sparta, to Menelaus, among the last to return from Troy, who might know Odysseus's fate.
In Sparta, Menelaus and Helen host Telemachus and recount their own harrowing journey through Egypt, where Menelaus captured the divine Proteus on the island of Pharos to learn the way home. From Proteus, Menelaus also learned of Odysseus: he is held captive by the goddess Kalypso on an island. Telemachus also learns that Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks at Troy, was murdered on his return by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus.
The epic then turns to Odysseus himself, who has spent seven years as Kalypso's captive on the island of Ogygia, refusing her offers despite her love for him. Hearing Athena's pleas, Zeus sends the messenger Hermes to order Kalypso to release him. Odysseus builds a raft from trees Kalypso shows him.
More from Mythology
The Doctor Who Sang a Nation Into Being
A country doctor rode into the forests of Karelia armed with nothing but a notebook — and rode out with the soul of a nation.
The Boat That Carried the Sun
Every sunset, the ancient Egyptians believed, the sun climbed into a boat and sailed straight into the realm of the dead — only to fight a monstrous serpent before dawn could return.
The Wild Man of the Snows
At 21,000 feet, a colonel found tracks in the snow that he blamed on a wolf — but his guides knew better, and gave the world a name that would echo for a century.
The Knight Who Went Mad for Love: Orlando Furioso
A hero so devoted to duty he was Charlemagne's greatest paladin loses his mind—not to a sword wound, but to heartbreak. To cure him, a friend must ride a flying horse to the Moon.
The Book That Turned the World Into Myth
A poet condemned to exile spent his final years in Rome finishing a poem that would outlive empires—a poem about nothing standing still, not gods, not lovers, not even the shape of a man.
Paradise Lost: Milton's Rebel Angel
A blind poet, dictating verses in the dark, dared to explain the ways of God to men — and in doing so, made Hell's ruler unforgettable.