Greek Mythology's Original Texts 3: Homer's Odyssey — the Journey Home

Thank you for visiting. This article is the third installment in a series explaining the original texts of Greek mythology.

This time, taking up Homer’s epic “Odyssey,” which follows the Iliad from last time, we look at it in detail, following its structure.

For an overview map of Greek mythology’s original texts as a whole, please see this summary article.

The Original Texts of Greek Mythology — Index to the Classics & Articlesen.senkohome.com/myths-religions-origins-greek/

What Kind of Original Text Is the “Odyssey”?

The Odyssey is a 24-book epic depicting the 10-year adventure of the cunning “Odysseus,” who led the Trojan War to victory, until he reaches his home island of Ithaca. It is a new type of hero story, overcoming hardship by “wisdom (metis)” rather than valor.

A great feature of this original text is its skillful structure, which does not tell events in chronological order. The story is built of three parts: (1) the abandoned home in turmoil from its master’s absence, (2) the adventures Odysseus himself tells as a flashback, and (3) the homecoming and revenge.

Greek Mythology, the Whole Story in One BookView on Amazon → Greek & Roman Mythology, Explained in MangaView on Amazon →

1. The Suitors Who Prey on His Absence (Books 1–4)

The story begins with the wretched state of Ithaca, where its master has not returned for 20 years. The neighboring nobles (the suitors), regarding Odysseus as dead, courted his wife “Penelope,” squatting in the estate and eating through its wealth.

Penelope bought time by saying, “I will choose one of the suitors when I finish weaving my father-in-law’s shroud,” with the cleverness of unraveling at night what she wove by day, putting off remarriage for three years.

The grown son “Telemachus,” encouraged by the goddess Athena, sets out on a journey in search of news of his father. The story begins from this son’s viewpoint.

At this time the goddess Athena disguises herself as an old man, Odysseus’s old friend “Mentor,” and guides and encourages the unreliable young Telemachus. The name of this wise adviser later became the origin of the English word “mentor,” meaning “a good leader and adviser.”

Telemachus first visits the old hero Nestor of Pylos, then Menelaus and Helen of Sparta. Menelaus tells of his experience, when he was held up in Egypt on his own return, of pinning down and capturing the shape-shifting “old man of the sea,” Proteus, and forcing him to prophesy. From his mouth comes the news that Odysseus is alive, detained on the island of the goddess Calypso. Menelaus also tells of the tragedy of Agamemnon, the supreme commander who returned in triumph from Troy only to be murdered by his wife and her lover. This tale of “a returning hero killed by the betrayal at home” is overlaid with the fate of Odysseus, about to return to Ithaca, a foreshadowing that gives tension to the whole story.

2. The Adventures Told — Ten Years Wandering the Sea

In the middle of the story, on the island of the Phaeacians where he has washed ashore, Odysseus himself tells his adventures so far as a flashback. This is the most famous part of this original text. The adventures are told roughly in the following order.

Having lost all his men, Odysseus alone survives and is detained for seven years on the island of the goddess “Calypso.” These hardships continued because, by wounding the one-eyed giant Polyphemus, he had incurred the fierce wrath of the sea god Poseidon, the giant’s father.

The circumstances by which this long flashback comes to be told are also masterful. Finally permitted to return by the council of the gods, Odysseus escapes Calypso’s island on a raft, but at the end Poseidon raises a storm that breaks his raft, and he barely makes it ashore on the island of the Phaeacians (Scheria). There he is helped by the beautiful princess “Nausicaa,” playing with her handmaids on the beach, and is warmly received in the king’s palace. At the feast, when a bard begins to sing the song of the Trojan War and the Trojan Horse, Odysseus covers his face and weeps. Seeing this, the king asks his identity and history, and at last he names himself and begins to tell of his wandering up to that point. In other words, the structure is such that the adventures of part 2 are all told as a flashback at this banquet of hospitality.

In each of these adventures, Odysseus gets through danger not by physical strength but by wisdom and eloquence. The tale in which he lies to the one-eyed giant that his name is “Outis (Nobody),” so that even when the giant calls for help he can only say “‘Nobody’ is attacking me,” is the prime example.

A Closer Look at the Famous Scenes

Among the many adventures, let’s look a little more closely at three scenes that have been especially handed down.

The one-eyed giant Polyphemus. Odysseus and his party are trapped in the cave of Polyphemus, one of the giant Cyclopes, and his comrades are eaten one after another. Rather than fleeing, he first gets the giant dead drunk on strong wine, and in the gap puts out his single eye with a fire-hardened stake. To the fellow giants who rush to his cry, he can only say “‘Nobody (Outis)’ is attacking me,” so no help comes. Further, the next morning, when the cave’s stone door opens, they escape past the hands of the blinded giant by clinging beneath the bellies of the sheep. It is the symbolic scene of this story — wisdom prevailing over brute strength.

The sea-witches the Sirens. The bird-monsters that beguile sailors with beautiful song, luring them onto the reefs to wreck. Following the witch Circe’s advice, Odysseus stops his men’s ears with beeswax so they cannot hear the song, and had himself alone bound fast to the mast, because he wanted to hear the song. Ordering that the rope never be loosed even if he raged, entranced by the song, he thus became “the only human to survive hearing the Sirens’ song.” Facing temptation head-on while devising a way not to drown in it — a way out so like him.

The descent to the underworld (land of the dead). To learn the way home, Odysseus goes, while living, to the land of the dead. There he receives a warning about the homecoming from the spirit of the prophet Tiresias, and exchanges words with the spirits of his dead mother and fallen comrades like Achilles and Agamemnon at Troy. Achilles’s words — “I would rather be a poor servant on earth than a king in the underworld” — are a famous passage reflecting the Greek view of life and death.

3. Homecoming and Revenge on the Suitors (Books 13–24)

Odysseus, finally permitted to return by the council of the gods, is at last delivered to his home Ithaca with the help of the people of the Phaeacian island he last reached.

With the goddess Athena’s help, he disguises himself as an “old beggar,” and revealing his identity first only to the faithful swineherd Eumaeus and his son Telemachus, returned from his journey, he plans to slay the arrogant suitors.

The disguise was perfect, but he is nearly seen through in an unexpected place. The old nurse “Eurycleia,” ordered to wash the guest’s feet, finds on his leg the old scar Odysseus had received in a boar hunt in his youth, and with a start realizes his identity. He instantly covers the nurse’s mouth and makes her keep the secret firmly. This “recognition by the scar” is known as one of the most famous reunion scenes since antiquity. Penelope, too, enduring her husband’s absence, proposes a certain contest as a final ploy to fend off the suitors pressing for remarriage.

And in the contest Penelope set — “to string Odysseus’s mighty bow and shoot an arrow through the holes of 12 axe handles” — the bow that not one of the suitors could string, Odysseus in beggar’s guise strings easily and shoots through. At the signal of that arrow, he reveals his identity and, with his son and a few attendants, slays the suitors to the last man.

Finally, the cautious Penelope, unable to fully believe in her husband, mentions the “secret of the bed known only to the two of them” (that the bed was made using the root of a living tree and cannot be moved) to confirm that the man before her is the true Odysseus. And so, after 20 years, husband and wife are reunited, and the story comes to a close.

What the “Odyssey” Left to Later Ages

Even 3,000 years on, the Odyssey lives on throughout our culture.

First, the title itself became a common noun. The English word “odyssey,” meaning “a long, eventful journey of adventure,” is still widely used. Together with the “mentor” mentioned earlier, two English words were born from this single work.

The story’s structure too had an enormous influence on later literature. The theme of “the journey home (nostos)” and the technique of the “frame story,” recalling past adventures from the present, became the prototype of countless adventure tales. In the 20th century, the Irish writer James Joyce, in his novel “Ulysses” (the Latin name of Odysseus), depicting a single day in Dublin, modeled each chapter on an adventure of the Odyssey.

And above all, the new image of a hero — a protagonist who carves out his fate not by strength but by wisdom — was passed on, with a charm different from the valor-praising Iliad, to the protagonists of later stories.

To Learn More

Here are some related books. Reading them alongside this series lets you savor this world even more deeply.

The World’s Loveliest Classroom of Greek MythologyView on Amazon → A Collection of Greek Myths (Kodansha Academic Library)View on Amazon →

Conclusion

In this article, I explained Homer’s epic the Odyssey in detail, following its structure. How was it?

The Odyssey, turning on the cunning Odysseus’s “wisdom and homecoming (nostos),” was an original text depicting adventures with many monsters and reunion with family. It presents another image of a hero, paired with the valor-praising Iliad.

In the next article (Article 4), I will explain Apollodorus’s The Library, which gathers many hero tales beginning with the Twelve Labors of Heracles, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

The Original Texts of Greek Mythology — Index to the Classics & Articlesen.senkohome.com/myths-religions-origins-greek/

I hope you’ll read the next article too.