The Odyssey Myth Summary | Odysseus's Homecoming After the Trojan War and the Ending with Penelope and His Son

When the gods held their council and decided to allow Odysseus's homecoming, he was still lingering on the island of the goddess Calypso. A long time had already passed since Troy fell.

One reason his return was so delayed was the grudge of Poseidon, god of the sea. Let's untangle things in order: where that grudge began, and what had been happening on Ithaca in the meantime.

How Penelope Held Out for 20 Years, and the Limits of That Trick

Odysseus's absence lasted nearly 20 years, but the period during which the suitors who actually tormented his wife Penelope crowded into the palace was far shorter. The suitors' leader Antinous described this time as three years passed and the fourth year beginning.

Penelope endured those years with a loom. She promised to remarry once she finished weaving the burial shroud for her father-in-law Laertes, and every night she secretly unraveled the cloth she had woven by day.

This trick worked for a full three years. In the fourth year, one maid who knew the situation betrayed her to the suitors, and she was finally forced to complete the half-finished shroud. She succeeded in buying time, but it was never a method that could work forever.

The Son Who Set Out to Find His Father: Telemachus

At the same time, his son Telemachus was in the most powerless position in this situation. With no father and no strength to drive out the suitors, all he could do was watch his own household fall to ruin.

Things begin to shift little by little when the goddess Athena arrives disguised as a traveler. The next day, Telemachus convenes an assembly and publicly raises the problem that the suitors are trying to force his mother into marriage and squandering the family's wealth.

He then declares he will seek news of his father himself and sails off to Pylos and Sparta. This was the first time Telemachus left home and took direct action.

His grandfather Laertes had completely withdrawn from all this commotion, living alone on a rural farm in worn clothes—and this quiet seclusion leads, much later, to an unexpected scene.

A Story That Begins on a Raft and Travels Back into the Past

The point at which the story actually unfolds before our eyes is the moment Odysseus builds a raft and departs from Calypso's island. Calypso first swears she means him no harm to ease his suspicions, then helps him complete the raft in four days, and on the fifth day sends him off with food, clothing, and a gentle wind.

But Poseidon, returning from Ethiopia, happens to witness this voyage. Furious that the gods had decided Odysseus's homecoming without him, he raises a storm and smashes the raft.

Barely washed ashore, Odysseus lands on the island of the Phaeacians. Princess Nausicaa, out doing laundry, finds him and gives him food and clothing, but she does not take him in her carriage to the court.

Her reason was that entering the city alongside a strange man would stir up bad rumors among the people. Instead, she tells him to wait in the grove of Athena's temple and walk in alone after her party has gone ahead. She also advises him to grasp the knees of Queen Arete first, not the king.

Odysseus waits in the grove as told, then heads to the palace alone. Athena, who had hidden him in mist, now appears as a girl carrying a water jug and guides him to the royal palace. And there, at a banquet hosted by the king, Odysseus reveals who he is and personally recounts everything he has endured. This is exactly why the adventures we know are conveyed belatedly through his recollection, rather than in the order the events happened.

The First Events in the Retelling: Disaster That Began in a Human Town

The first event Odysseus recounts is not the one-eyed giant most people picture. The first place the fleet leaving Troy raided was Ismarus, city of the Cicones.

Odysseus urged them to leave at once, but his men settled on the beach, drinking wine and slaughtering livestock. In the meantime, the Cicones from the interior gathered and counterattacked, and only after losing six men per ship did they barely escape to sea.

Next, the fleet, battered by storms for nine days, reached on the tenth day the land of the Lotus-eaters. The inhabitants there did not harm the scouting party; they merely shared lotus fruit with them—but those who ate it lost even the desire to return home.

Odysseus dragged his men, who wanted to stay put, back to the ships by force and sent them off, saving everyone.

What Was Gained and Lost in Polyphemus's Cave

Only then comes the cave of the one-eyed giant Polyphemus. Trapped in the cave, Odysseus and his men lose six of their number to the giant.

The escape itself is so tightly packed with events, and so significant that it forms a story on its own, that we covered the process of getting out of the cave and its price in detail separately in the Cyclops myth explained.

Here, let's just note the outcome. Because Odysseus, having escaped safely, shouted his real name and homeland at the last moment, Polyphemus prayed to his father Poseidon to prevent him from ever reaching home alive. Poseidon granting that prayer was the beginning of the grudge that haunted him for the rest of the journey.

The Fleet Undone by a Single Bag of Winds

The next port of call was the island of Aeolus, keeper of the winds. Aeolus, who hosted Odysseus as a guest for a month, sealed all the dangerous winds in an oxhide bag tied with a silver cord and gave it as a gift. Only the gentle wind was left outside to push them toward Ithaca.

After nine days of sailing, close enough to see the lights of home, Odysseus, who had held the tiller the whole way, fell asleep for a moment. In that gap, his men, suspecting the bag held gold and silver treasures, untied the knot. The trapped winds burst out all at once, and the fleet was blown all the way back to Aeolus's island. When Odysseus returned to ask for help again, Aeolus shut his door, saying he would not aid one hated by the heavens.

Rowing for six days, the fleet reached on the seventh day the land of the Laestrygonians. The other ships moored side by side inside a harbor ringed by cliffs, but only Odysseus tied his ship outside the harbor.

The inhabitants of that land were not humans but giants. The giants swarmed down from the cliffs, hurling rocks to smash the ships inside the harbor and spearing the men. Odysseus barely got his one ship out and escaped, and of the remaining eleven ships inside the harbor, not a single person survived. So every adventure afterward is the story of one surviving ship.

Circe's Island and the Warnings Heard in the Underworld

The one remaining ship reached Circe's island. The sorceress Circe fed the scouting party drugged food and turned them into pigs.

To save his men, whose bodies alone had become beasts, Odysseus received the magic-blocking herb moly from the god Hermes and confronted Circe. Frightened, Circe turned the men back into humans, and the company ended up staying on that island for a full year. If you want to look more deeply into this encounter, you can check the context of the relationship in the Circe myth explained.

Before they departed, Circe told Odysseus to descend to the underworld and meet the prophet Tiresias. Tiresias warned that Poseidon's anger still burned, but prophesied that as long as they did not touch the Sun god's cattle, they could eventually return to Ithaca after great hardship. This one remark becomes the foreshadowing of the greatest tragedy to come.

In the underworld, Odysseus meets many others as well. His mother Anticlea tells him of her own death from longing for her son, along with the news that Penelope is still sunk in sorrow.

Achilles, who died at Troy, leaves a surprising remark. He says he would rather be a poor man's servant among the living than king over all the dead, astonishing Odysseus.

Agamemnon recounts how he was murdered by his wife and her lover, and leaves the heavy advice never to trust a wife too completely, no matter who she is. Yet he also notes separately that Penelope, at least, is trustworthy.

From the Sirens' Song to the Sun God's Cattle: A Price That Could Not Be Undone

Back out at sea, Odysseus's company passes the island of the Sirens. As Circe had instructed, the men's ears are plugged with beeswax, and Odysseus himself, who actually wanted to hear the song, passes by lashed to the mast. Thanks to this contrast—so that even if he was swayed by temptation, his body could not move—he survives hearing the song unharmed. What this danger specifically was is covered in more detail in the Sirens myth explained.

But at the very next passage, the price could not be avoided. Scylla snatched six men, one in each of her mouths, in an instant, and Odysseus could only watch as they were dragged away, flailing their limbs in the air.

Barely past that place, the company lands on the Sun god's island, where the worst choice occurs. Running out of food and starving, the men, while Odysseus slept, caught and ate the Sun god's cattle—the very cattle Tiresias had warned against.

The result was horrific. Zeus shattered the ship with a lightning bolt, and all the remaining men except Odysseus drowned. Of everyone who had set out together, Odysseus was the only one to set foot on Ithaca's soil alive. His drifting, clinging to a plank of wreckage, until he reached Calypso's island was the direct result of this shipwreck.

Why He Didn't Head Straight for His Own Door Even After Reaching Home

Having arrived safely on Ithaca aboard a Phaeacian ship, Odysseus does not head straight home. Athena wrinkles his skin and removes the golden sheen of his hair, transforming him into an old, wretched beggar, and instructs him not to reveal to anyone yet that he has returned.

Instead, she tells him to first visit the hut of Eumaeus, the swineherd who had served him since long ago, and take stock of the situation. Inside the palace, more than a hundred suitors had entrenched themselves.

At Eumaeus's hut, Odysseus comes face to face with his son Telemachus, returned from Sparta. When Athena momentarily restores him to his original young, handsome form, Telemachus, startled, asks whether he might be a god. Odysseus answers that he is not a god but his father, and the two weep aloud and embrace each other.

The first to recognize Odysseus, who entered the palace disguised as a beggar, was not a person but the old dog Argos. This dog, which Odysseus had raised himself before leaving, now lay dying, flea-ridden and abandoned on a dung heap—but the moment he caught his scent, he pricked up his ears and wagged his tail. Argos, without even the strength to come closer, recognized his master in that moment and immediately breathed his last. Odysseus only secretly wiped away a tear so Eumaeus would not see, and said nothing.

The Scar, the Bow, and the Final Day Fought with Identity Concealed

Inside the palace, Penelope sits and talks with the man disguised as a beggar. Odysseus introduces himself as Aethon, son of Deucalion from Crete, and lies that he once hosted Odysseus.

He then describes with perfect accuracy the purple woolen cloak Odysseus wore then, and even the golden brooch shaped like a dog holding a spotted fawn in its jaws. Because it was clothing Penelope herself had made for her husband, she weeps upon hearing this.

Then the old nurse Eurycleia, washing the guest's feet, touches the scar from the boar hunt of his youth and realizes who he is. Odysseus grips her throat with his right hand and pulls her close with his left, warning her in a low voice that if she reveals this, she will be destroyed along with the other maids. Having barely gotten past this moment when his identity nearly came to light, the next day Penelope declares she will hold a bow contest.

The condition was to string her husband's bow and shoot a single arrow through the line of twelve axes. The suitors, one and all, cannot even bend the bow and flounder helplessly. Finally the beggar in worn clothes steps forward and, as casually as a musician stringing a new lyre, strings the bow and shoots the arrow clean through all twelve axes at once. Yet even at this moment he does not reveal who he is, saying only to Telemachus that the guest had not shamed him.

It was not the bow test but the very next arrow that revealed his identity. Only after shooting Antinous through the throat does Odysseus declare who he is, rebuking the suitors: did you think he would never return from Troy? Following this arrow, Eurymachus falls, then Amphimonus is struck down by the spear Telemachus throws—and only then does the goatherd Melanthius fetch twelve sets each of shields, helmets, and spears from the storeroom to arm the remaining suitors. It was because Telemachus had left the storeroom door unlocked.

Melanthius, going for weapons a second time, is caught and hung from the rafters. With the weapon supply cut off and Athena joining the fight, the battle turns again, and the suitors who had trampled the palace for over three years are all cut down in a single day.

Why Penelope Had to Verify the Bed to the Very End

His wife Penelope does not immediately embrace the man who claims to be her husband. His wretched clothing made him hard to recognize; she was wary that a wicked man might deceive her with false tales; and she even wondered whether some angry god might have wiped out the suitors in order to test her.

She throws out a test, ordering the nurse to move the marital bed out of the room. Odysseus flares up the moment he hears it. That bed was built by cutting down no olive tree that grew in the center of the room—rather, he had used its living stump as a bedpost, shaping the frame himself and adorning it with gold and silver—so it was an object that could not be moved in the first place.

The moment he precisely names this secret known only to the couple and one maid, Penelope finally weeps and embraces him. Twenty years of waiting was confirmed not by skill with a bow, but by a single bed.

The Reunion with Father Laertes, and the War That Almost Began Again

Though it seemed everything was over, Odysseus still had his father Laertes left. Seeing the old man working alone in the vineyard in worn clothes, he at first plays a traveler from a far country, hedging that the garden is beautifully tended while its owner is not.

Unable to bear watching Laertes sunk in grief, believing his son had died in a distant land, Odysseus finally proves himself with the scar and the memory of the vineyard his father had given him as a child, counting out the trees one by one. Laertes is so overjoyed on the spot that his knees nearly give way.

But the peace was not yet complete. The relatives who had gathered up the suitors' bodies came armed in force, led by Antinous's father Eupeithes. The prophet Halitherses warned that this grudge had been the will of heaven and that resisting would bring greater calamity, but a considerable number did not listen.

The two sides actually clashed. The spear thrown by Laertes, whom Athena had filled with strength, struck Eupeithes down on the spot, and Odysseus and Telemachus pressed into the front line, cutting down their opponents. Had it continued, it was a situation from which not one of them would have returned alive.

At that very moment, Athena cries out, shouting for the fighting to stop. Just as weapons are about to drop from the startled people's hands, Zeus hurls a thunderbolt down before Athena's feet. Athena immediately tells Odysseus that if he does not stop this fight, Zeus will be angry, and he gladly obeys. As Athena establishes a covenant of peace between the two sides, the war, wandering, and vengeance spanning 20 years—having nearly escalated into yet another bloody reckoning—barely comes to a halt, and the story ends.