The Odyssey

I picked up The Odyssey because I had carried a vague school memory of it for years, a man tied to a mast and a wife weaving by night, and I wanted the full shape of it at last. I chose the Robert Fagles translation, the Viking Press edition from 1996, because friends told me it reads aloud well and keeps the story moving. I read it in the evenings, a book or two at a time, and I was surprised by how funny and how sad it is in turns. This is a full retelling, so every major turn is below, from Telemachus searching for news to the bow contest in Ithaca.

Why I picked up the Fagles translation

Homer probably composed this poem near the end of the eighth century before the common era, long after the wars it remembers, and it came down through singers before anyone wrote it out. The Fagles translation from 1996 tries to keep that spoken music while using plain modern words.

The story starts near the end of Odysseus losing his way home. Troy has fallen ten years before. Most Greek leaders have returned or died. Odysseus, king of Ithaca, has been gone twenty years in total, ten at war and ten lost at sea. His son Telemachus was a baby when he left and is now a young man. His wife Penelope waits in a house full of men who want to marry her and take the kingship. His old father Laertes grieves on a farm. His dog Argos grows old. Athena, who favors Odysseus for his quick mind, decides the time has come to move him home, even though Poseidon still hates him for blinding his son Polyphemus.

What struck me early was how much of the start belongs to Telemachus, not Odysseus. The first four books are often called the Telemachy, the story of the son. That choice gives the poem a second spine. We see Ithaca from inside, what it costs to wait, before we ever see the hero on Calypso's shore. I found that patient opening a good way in, though I can see why some readers want the monsters right away.

Telemachus goes looking for news

Athena comes to Ithaca disguised as Mentes, an old family friend, and finds Telemachus sitting among the suitors in his own hall. The suitors, more than a hundred young nobles led by Antinous and Eurymachus, eat his cattle and pigs, drink his wine, and press Penelope to choose one of them. Telemachus feels shame and anger but has no force to drive them out. Athena as Mentes tells him to call an assembly, to order the suitors to leave, and to sail for news of his father.

Telemachus does call the assembly, the first in Ithaca since Odysseus left. He speaks well. Antinous answers with scorn and blames Penelope for tricking them. Eurymachus adds smooth threats. The old lord Halitherses warns that Odysseus will return and punish them, and the suitors laugh. No help comes. That night Athena, now disguised as Mentor, helps Telemachus find a ship and crew in secret. He sails with twenty men, leaving Penelope to learn of it after he is gone, which hurts her and shows how little room he has to act openly.

He goes first to Pylos, to old Nestor, who fought at Troy with Odysseus. Nestor receives him with full rites, a bath, a feast, and sacrifice to Poseidon. He has no sure news, only stories of how the fleet split after Troy and how Agamemnon was murdered on his return by Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. He sends Telemachus on to Sparta with his son Pisistratus, by chariot across the plain.

In Sparta, Menelaus and Helen receive him. Helen, whose flight to Troy caused the war, now lives again as queen and speaks with a mix of regret and pride. Menelaus tells what he learned in Egypt from the sea god Proteus, that Odysseus lives and is held by the nymph Calypso on her island. He also tells of his own hard return and his brother Agamemnon's death. Telemachus hears enough to know his father may still live, and he gains weight as a speaker among kings. Back in Ithaca the suitors learn he has gone and set an ambush at Asteris to kill him on his return. The plot against a son in his own home sets up the revenge to come.

Penelope and the suitors in Ithaca

Penelope holds the center of Ithaca while the men circle her. She tells the suitors she must finish weaving a shroud for Laertes before she can marry, then each night she undoes by torchlight what she wove by day. She keeps this up for three years until a maid betrays her. It is a clever stall, and the poem treats it with respect rather than scorn. She weeps for Odysseus, she dreams of him, and she fears for Telemachus once she learns of the ambush.

The suitors are not all the same. Antinous is cruel and forward, the one who throws a stool at the beggar later and who plans the murder of Telemachus. Eurymachus is smooth, handsome, and two faced, giving gifts to Penelope while urging the others on. Amphinomus is kinder and warns against killing Telemachus, and later Odysseus will pity him and urge him to leave, to no use. The rest eat and drink and sleep with the maids who have turned to their side. The house order breaks down. Telemachus cannot pay for it all. Eumaeus the swineherd and Philoetius the cowherd stay loyal from the fields, while the goatherd Melanthius mocks his master and helps the suitors.

Penelope also tests her place with care. She appears before the suitors veiled, with maids at her sides, and draws gifts from them with fair words, which Telemachus permits because it stocks the house. She prays to Athena for help. She argues with the beggar in disguise later about whether Odysseus will return. I found her the most grown person in the poem. She does not have ships or spears, so she uses delay, dreams, and close reading of men. The poem lets her doubt Odysseus even when he sits in front of her, which felt true after twenty years apart.

Laertes lives out on his terraced farm, wearing rags and mourning his son. Odysseus will find him there at the end, hoeing around a young tree. That small farm scene matters because it shows the cost beyond the palace. It is not only a throne at stake. It is an old man, a wife, a son, and servants who kept faith.

Cyclops and Circe and the land of the dead

When we finally meet Odysseus, he weeps on the shore of Ogygia, held by Calypso, who loves him and offers him a life without death if he will stay. Hermes brings the order from Zeus to let him go, pushed by Athena. Calypso complains that male gods take mortal women freely while female gods are denied, a sharp speech I did not expect, then helps him build a raft and gives him food and wine. He sails and Poseidon wrecks him in sight of Scheria. He swims two nights, helped by the sea goddess Ino with her veil, and crawls ashore naked under bushes.

He tells his past to the Phaeacians, and that long tale fills the middle of the poem. After Troy he raided the Cicones and lost men to a counterattack. Then the Lotus Eaters, where three men ate the sweet fruit and forgot home until dragged back to the ships. Then the Cyclops. Polyphemus, son of Poseidon, traps Odysseus and twelve men in his cave, eats six of them in pairs, and Odysseus blinds him with a heated stake after getting him drunk and calling himself Nobody. When Polyphemus cries that Nobody hurt him, the other Cyclopes leave. Odysseus escapes tied under rams, but shouts his true name as they sail off, which lets Polyphemus call on Poseidon to curse him. That boast explains much of the later pain.

Aeolus the wind king gives him a bag of winds, and his men open it in sight of Ithaca, so they blow back to sea. The Laestrygonians, giant cannibals, smash eleven of twelve ships. The last ship reaches Circe on Aeaea. She turns half his men into pigs with drugged food. Hermes gives Odysseus a herb called moly and warns him to draw his sword and make her swear no harm. He beds her, a frank part of the tale, and his men return to human shape, younger and taller than before. They stay a year, feasting, until his men shame him into leaving. Circe tells him he must visit the house of Hades to hear Tiresias.

The trip to the dead is dark and strange. Odysseus digs a pit, pours offerings, and holds the ghosts back with his sword while Tiresias drinks first. Tiresias warns him not to touch the cattle of Helios and foretells trouble in Ithaca. Odysseus then speaks with his mother Anticlea, who died of grief while he was gone, and learns Penelope still waits. He sees Agamemnon and Achilles, and judges and sinners below. Fear drives him back to his ship.

Sirens and Scylla and Calypso

Circe warns Odysseus of what lies ahead, and he follows her course with care. He plugs his men's ears with wax and has himself tied to the mast to hear the Sirens. Their song promises knowledge of Troy and all things on earth, and he begs to be freed, but his men tie him tighter until they pass. Then Scylla and Charybdis. Charybdis sucks the sea down three times a day and spews it up. Scylla lives in a cliff cave with six heads and takes six men, one per head, as they row past. Odysseus chooses to lose six rather than risk all to Charybdis, and does not tell his men beforehand to keep them rowing. He hears their screams as she snatches them like fish. It is brutal and quick, and he carries the guilt of that choice.

On Thrinacia, the island of Helios, the winds trap them for a month. Odysseus makes his men swear not to touch the sun god's cattle. While he sleeps, Eurylochus, his second in command, persuades the hungry men to kill and eat the best beasts, hoping to pay Helios back later with a temple. Helios demands punishment. Zeus breaks the ship with a bolt after they sail. All drown except Odysseus, who floats on mast and keel through Charybdis again and drifts to Ogygia. There Calypso keeps him seven years. She loves him and hates to lose him, and he sleeps with her while weeping for home by day. That split state, comfort and grief at once, is one of the most human notes in the poem.

Athena keeps pressing his case among the gods while Poseidon stays away. Hermes frees him. He builds the raft, sails, wrecks, and reaches Scheria, land of the Phaeacians. He meets Nausicaa at the river, where she has gone with maids to wash clothes. She helps him reach town. In the palace of Alcinous and Arete, he is honored as a guest. The singer Demodocus sings of Troy and makes him weep. Pressed to name himself, Odysseus tells his tale, then the Phaeacians give him gifts and carry him home asleep to Ithaca.

On Ithaca, Athena disguises him as an old beggar so he can test who stayed true. Eumaeus takes him in at his hut and speaks with love of his lost master. Telemachus returns from Sparta, dodges the ambush, and meets his father at the hut. Odysseus reveals himself with Athena's help, and father and son plan the fight.

The bow contest and coming home

Odysseus enters his own hall as a beggar. The suitors mock him. Antinous hits him with a stool. Penelope sends for him to ask for news, and he lies with skill to keep her hope alive. The old nurse Eurycleia washes his feet and knows him by a scar from a boar hunt on Parnassus. He swears her to silence.

Penelope sets the contest that will decide her marriage. She brings out the great bow of Odysseus, left in the house since Troy, and twelve axes set in a line. Whoever strings the bow and shoots through the axes will marry her. Leodes, the seer among the suitors, tries first and fails. Eurymachus fails and groans at the shame. Antinous puts off his own turn and sends for grease to soften the bow. Meanwhile Odysseus asks to try, as a beggar wanting sport. The suitors shout him down until Penelope and Telemachus insist. Eumaeus and Philoetius slip out to lock the doors and guard them. Odysseus takes the bow, strings it as easily as a singer strings a lyre, and shoots through all twelve axes. Then he strips his rags and stands on the threshold with bow and arrows.

The fight is fast and hard. He shoots Antinous through the throat as the man lifts a cup. Eurymachus charges with a sword and dies to an arrow in the chest. Amphinomus comes on and Telemachus spears him. When arrows run out, they take spears and shields from the storeroom, where Telemachus left a door ajar and Melanthius stole arms for the suitors. Athena shakes her aegis and turns their spears aside. Odysseus, Telemachus, Eumaeus, and Philoetius kill them all. The disloyal maids are made to carry out the bodies and clean the hall with water and sulfur, then hanged in the yard. Melanthius is bound and cut down in cruel fashion. The house is smoked clean.

Penelope still will not trust her eyes. She tests him with the bed, saying she will have it moved from their room. Odysseus flares that no one could move it, since he built their bedroom around a living olive tree and made the bed from its trunk. Only he and Penelope and one maid know that mark. At that secret sign she weeps and embraces him. They tell each other their long pains through the night, and Athena holds back the dawn to give them time. The next day he sees Laertes on the farm and proves himself by naming every tree the old man gave him as a boy. Then the kin of the dead suitors rise under Eupeithes, father of Antinous, and Athena and Zeus stop the war after a brief clash, with peace laid on Ithaca.

I admire the ending for its firmness, though parts drag for modern taste. The middle wanders by design, tale inside tale, and Fagles keeps the repetitions that oral song used to aid memory. I found it rich in the Phaeacian books and slower around Circe and Calypso, where waiting stretches. The bow contest and the scar test still land with force, and Penelope stands as a match for Odysseus in mind.