The Odyssey
Also known as: The Odyssey, Odysseia
An archaic Greek epic in dactylic hexameter recounting Odysseus’s ten-year struggle to return home after the Trojan War and the restoration of order in Ithaca. Framed by Telemachus’s search and Odysseus’s narrated adventures, it explores cunning, hospitality, identity, and justice under divine scrutiny.
Description
The Odyssey follows Odysseus’s nostos—his homecoming—after Troy, structured across twenty-four books. Books 1–4 (the “Telemachy”) center on his son Telemachus, establishing Ithaca’s crisis and the suitors’ predation upon household and custom. Books 5–8 move to Odysseus’s release from Calypso and arrival among the Phaeacians, where hospitality and song frame the hero’s identity. In Books 9–12, Odysseus recounts his trials: the Cicones, Lotus-Eaters, Cyclops, Aeolus and the bag of winds, Laestrygonians, Circe, the Nekuia (descent to consult Tiresias), Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, and Helios’s cattle. Books 13–24 narrate his disguised return to Ithaca, recognition scenes with loyal servants, Penelope’s steadfastness and testing, the bow trial, slaughter of the suitors, and reconstitution of political and familial order. Athena’s guidance, Poseidon’s enmity, and ritualized hospitality (xenia) underscore a world where narrative performance and cunning (mētis) determine survival and legitimacy.
Historiography
Composed within an oral-formulaic milieu, the poem was later stabilized in written form and divided into twenty-four books by Hellenistic scholars, notably Zenodotus and Aristarchus at Alexandria. Its text is preserved across papyri, medieval manuscripts, and scholia; the Venetus A (10th century) is a key witness with extensive scholia. Alexandrian editorial signs and lemmata influenced subsequent reception and commentary. Modern editions synthesize papyrological finds, manuscript families, and ancient scholarship.
Date Notes
Likely composed within the archaic Greek oral-formulaic tradition in the late 8th century BCE; textual fixation and scholarly editing occurred over the classical and Hellenistic periods.
Themes
Archetypes
Major Characters
- Odysseus
- Penelope
- Telemachus
- Athena
- Poseidon
- Circe
- Calypso
- Eumaeus
- Antinous
- Alcinous
Myths
- The Wanderings of Odysseus
- The Enchantment of Circe
- The Descent to Hades
- The Return to Ithaca
- The Slaying of the Suitors
Facts
- Composed in dactylic hexameter and traditionally divided into twenty-four books.
- Books 1–4 (Telemachy) foreground Telemachus and Ithaca’s disorder.
- Odysseus’s first epithet, polytropos (“of many turns”), signals his defining cunning.
- Books 9–12 are Odysseus’s first-person Apologoi, including the Nekuia in Book 11.
- Hospitality (xenia) norms structure alliances and judge characters’ morality.
- Athena is Odysseus’s principal divine patron; Poseidon is his chief antagonist.
- Penelope’s weaving ruse is a paradigmatic image of fidelity and intelligence.
- The contest of the bow functions as a recognition and legitimation rite.
- Alexandrian scholars standardized the 24-book division using the Greek alphabet.
- Key manuscript witness: Venetus A (10th century) with extensive scholia.