Summary: Book 7
On his way to the palace of Alcinous, the king of the Phaeacians, Odysseus is stopped by a young girl who is Athena in disguise. She guides him to the king’s house and covers him in a protective mist that keeps the Phaeacians from harassing him. She also advises him to supplicate the queens Arete at her knees since she will help him get home. Odysseus finds the palace residents holding a large feast. He is struck by the splendor of the palace. As soon as he sees the queen, he throws himself at her feet, and the mist about him disappears. At first, the king wonders if this wayward traveler might be a god, but without revealing his identity, Odysseus puts the king’s suspicions to rest by declaring that he is a mortal. He then explains his story of his fate and troubles, and the king and queen gladly promise to see him off the next day in a Phaeacian ship. Later that evening, Arete recognizes the clothes that he is wearing something she herself had made for her daughter Nausicaa. Suspicious, she interrogates Odysseus further. While still withholding his name, Odysseus responds by recounting the story of his journey from Calypso’s island and his encounter with Nausicaa that morning. Alcinous is so impressed with his visitor that he offers Odysseus his daughter’s hand in marriage.
Summary: Book 9
Reluctantly, Odysseus tells the Phaeacians the sorry tale of his wanderings. From Troy, the winds sweep him and his men to Ismarus, city of the Cicones. The men plunder the land and, carried away by greed, stay until the Cicones turn on them and attack. Odysseus and his crew finally escape, having lost six men per ship. A storm sent by Zeus sweeps them along for nine days before bringing them to the land of the Lotus-eaters, where the natives give some of Odysseus’s men the intoxicating fruit of the lotus. As soon as they eat this fruit, they lose all thoughts of home and long for nothing more than to stay there eating more fruit. Only by dragging his men back to the ship and locking them up can Odysseus get them off the island. Odysseus and his men then sail to the land of the Cyclopes, a rough and uncivilized race of one-eyed giants. After making a meal of wild goats captured on an island offshore, they cross to the mainland. There they immediately come upon a cave full of sheep and crates of milk and cheese. The men advise Odysseus to snatch some of the food and hurry off, but he decides to stay longer. The cave’s inhabitant soon returns—it is the Cyclops Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon. Polyphemus soon turns hostile. He eats two of Odysseus’s men on the spot and imprisons Odysseus and the rest in his cave for future meals.
Odysseus wants to kill Polyphemus right then, but he knows that only Polyphemus is strong enough to move the rock that he has placed across the door of his cave. Odysseus then creates a plan. The next day, while Polyphemus is outside pasturing his sheep, Odysseus finds a wooden staff in the cave and sharpens, then hardens it in the fire. When Polyphemus returns, Odysseus gets him drunk on wine that he brought along from the ship. Polyphemus asks Odysseus his name. Odysseus replies that his name is “Nobody” As soon as Polyphemus collapses drunk, Odysseus and a group of his men drive the red-hot staff into his eye. Polyphemus wakes with a shriek, and his neighbors come to see what is wrong, but they leave as soon as he calls out, “Nobody’s killing me”. When morning comes, Odysseus and his men escape from the cave, unseen by the blind Polyphemus, by clinging to the bellies of the monster’s sheep as they go out to graze. Safe on board their ships and with Polyphemus’s flock on board as well, Odysseus calls to land and reveals his true identity. Odysseus torments and mocks Polyphemus leading him to hurl rocks at their ship, which luckily missed. Polyphemus then prayed to his father Poseidon to curse Odysseus with a hellish journey.
Summary: Book 10
The men sail from the land of the Cyclopes to the home of Aeolus, ruler of the winds. Aeolus presents Odysseus with a bag containing all of the winds, and he stirs up a wind to guide Odysseus and his crew home. However, Odysseus’s shipmates, who think that Aeolus has secretly given Odysseus a fortune in gold and silver, tear the bag open. The winds escape and stir up a storm that brings Odysseus and his men back to Aeolia. This time, however, Aeolus refuses to help them, certain that the gods hate Odysseus and wish to do him harm. The men then row to the land of the Laestrygonians, a race of powerful giants whose king, Antiphates, attack Odysseus’ men and manages to snatch a few. Odysseus and his remaining men flee toward their ships, but the Laestrygonians pelt the ships with boulders and sink them.
Only Odysseus’s ship escapes from there, Odysseus and his men travel to Aeaea, home of the witch-goddess Circe. Circe drugs a group of Odysseus’s men and turns them into pigs. When Odysseus goes to rescue them, Hermes approaches him in the form of a young man. He tells Odysseus to eat an herb called moly to protect himself from Circe’s drug and then threaten to harm her. Odysseus follows Hermes’ instructions, overpowering Circe and forcing her to change his men back to their human forms. Odysseus soon becomes Circe’s lover, and he and his men live with her in luxury for a year. When his men finally persuade him to continue the voyage, Odysseus asks Circe for the way back to Ithaca. She replies he must sail to Hades, the world of the dead, to speak with the spirit of Tiresias, a blind prophet who will tell him how to get home. The next morning, Odysseus woke his men for the departure. He discovers, however, that the youngest man in his crew, Elpenor, had gotten drunk the previous night, slept on the roof, then fell from the it and broke his neck.
Summary: Book 12
Odysseus returns to Aeaea, where he buries Elpenor and spends one last night with Circe. She describes the obstacles that he will face on his voyage home and tells him how to tackle them. As he sets sail, Odysseus passes Circe’s advice on to his men. They approach the island of the Sirens, and Odysseus, as instructed by Circe, plugs his men’s ears with beeswax and has them bind him to the mast of the ship. He alone hears their song from the island. The Sirens’ song is so tempting that Odysseus begs to be released from his ropes, but his faithful men only bind him tighter. Once they have passed the Sirens’ island, Odysseus and his men must pass through between Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla is a six-headed monster who, when ships pass, swallows one sailor for each head. Charybdis is an enormous whirlpool that can swallow the entire ship. As instructed by Circe, Odysseus leads his ship against the cliffs of Scylla’s lair. As he and his men stare at Charybdis on the other side of the strait, the heads of Scylla swoop down and gobble up six of the sailors. They pass by Charybdis without harm.
Odysseus next comes to Thrinacia, the island of the Sun. He wants to avoid it entirely, but Eurylochus persuades him to let his crew rest there. A storm keeps them there for a month, and at first they survive on its food in the ship. When these run out, however, Eurylochus persuades the other crew members to disobey Odysseus and slaughter the cattle of the Sun god. They do so one afternoon as Odysseus sleeps; when the Sun god finds out, he asks Zeus to punish Odysseus and his men. Shortly after the men set sail from Thrinacia, Zeus kicks up another storm, which destroys the ship and sends the entire crew to its death beneath the waves. Only Odysseus survives. The storm sweeps him all the way back to Charybdis, which he escapes for the second time. Clinging on the broken pieces of his ship, he eventually reaches Ogygia, Calypso’s island.
