The Odyssey begins ten years after the end of the ten-year Trojan War that is the subject of the Iliad, and Odysseus has still not returned home from the war.

She is persuaded to release him by Odysseus ' great-grandfather, the messenger god Hermes, who has been sent by Zeus in response to Athena's plea.

When Poseidon finds out that Odysseus has escaped, he wrecks the raft but, helped by a veil given by the sea nymph Ino, Odysseus swims ashore on Scherie, the island of the Phaeacians.

Their leader points out that Odysseus has now caused the deaths of two generations of the men of Ithaca: his sailors, not one of whom survived ; and the Suitors, whom he has now executed.

The Cyclops then throws the top half of a mountain at him and prays to his father, Poseidon, saying that Odysseus has blinded him.

Then the scene shifts: Odysseus has been a captive of the beautiful nymph Calypso, with whom he has spent seven of his ten lost years.

Book 22, wherein Odysseus kills all the Suitors, has been given the title Mnesterophonia: " slaughter of the Suitors ".

* Dante Alighieri has Odysseus append a new ending to the Odyssey in canto XXVI of the Inferno.

There is a strong theme of homecoming ( nostos ) in the Odyssey, because Odysseus is on a journey home after the Trojan war has finally ended.

However, it has been suggested that Achilles speaks only to Phoenix and Ajax, ignoring Odysseus, to whose guile he bears a considerable dislike.

She only has one son by Odysseus, Telemachus, who was born just before Odysseus was called to fight in the Trojan War.

Under the direction of Circe, a powerful sorceress, Odysseus travels to the underworld ( katabasis ) in order to gain insight about his impending voyage home by raising the spirits of the dead through the use of spells which Circe has taught him.

The Odysseys passages contain many descriptive references to necromantic rituals: rites must be performed around a pit with fire during nocturnal hours, and Odysseus has to follow a specific recipe, which includes the blood of sacrificial animals, to concoct a libation for the ghosts to drink while he recites prayers to both the ghosts and gods of the underworld.

Since antiquity, Ithaca has been identified as the home of the mythological hero Odysseus.

* Frederick Rolfe, in The Weird of the Wanderer, has the hero ( Nicholas Crabbe ) discover that he is a reincarnation of Odysseus and marry Helen: both are deified.

At the outset of Telemachus ' journey, Odysseus has been absent from his home at Ithaca for twenty years due to the Trojan War and the intervention of Poseidon.

During his absence, Odysseus ' house has been occupied by hordes of suitors seeking the hand of Penelope.

When Odysseus attacks the Cyclops later that night and stabs him in the eye, the Cyclops runs out of his cave, yelling to the other cyclopes that " No-one has hurt me!

" So sentient is Tiresias, even in death ," observes Marina Warner " that he comes up to Odysseus and recognizes him and calls him by name before he has drunk the black blood of the sacrifice ; even Odysseus ' own mother cannot accomplish this, but must drink deep before her ghost can see her son for himself.

Notably he encountered the spirit of Agamemnon, of whose murder he now learned, and Achilles, who told him about the woes of the land of the dead ( for Odysseus ' encounter with the dead, see also Nekuia ).

Events in the main sequence of the Odyssey ( excluding Odysseus ' embedded narrative of his wanderings ) take place in the Peloponnese and in what are now called the Ionian Islands.

There are difficulties in the apparently simple identification of Ithaca, the homeland of Odysseus, which may or may not be the same island that is now called Ithake.

: But come now, change thy theme, and sing of the building of the horse of wood, which Epeius made with Athena's help, the horse which once Odysseus led up into the citadel as a thing of guile, when he had filled it with the men who sacked Ilion.

Despite any difficulties with Homer's description of the island, in classical and Roman times the island now called " Ithaca " was universally held to be the home of Odysseus ; the Hellenistic identifications of Homeric sites, such as the identifications of Lipari as the island of Aeolus, are usually taken with a grain of salt, and attributed to the ancient tourist trade.

He put his skills to the test when he stole the helmet of the great warrior and his grandson, Odysseus, " he had broken into the stout-built house of Amyntor, son of Ormenus ; and he gave it to Amphidamas of Cythera to take to Scandeia, and Amphidamas gave it to Molus as a guest-gift, but he gave it to his own son Meriones to wear ; and now, being set thereon, it covered the head of Odysseus " ( Homer 10. 254 I ).

The Odysseus crater is now quite flat for its size of approximately 450 km or more precisely, its floor conforms to Tethys ' spherical shape.

The Doctor has now come under such pressure to help the Greeks he eventually proposes the use of a wooden horse to Odysseus.

The villa included a grotto where some noteworthy sculptures, now housed in the museum, have been found: these portrayed the assault of Scylla to Odysseus ' ship, the blinding of Polyphemus, the theft of the Palladium and Odysseus lifting Achilles's corpse.

Meanwhile, Odysseus ' now 15-year-old son Telemachus ( Alan Stenson ) tries to find his father and is told by Athena ( Isabella Rossellini ) to seek out one of his fellow comrades that fought with him.

Phineus then revealed to the Argonauts the path their journey would take and informed them how to pass the Symplegades safely, thus filling the same role for Jason that Circe did for Odysseus in the Odyssey.

Odysseus stopped working and revealed his sanity.

Odysseus, at least, accused him of this crime and Ajax was to be stoned to death, but saved himself by establishing his innocence with an oath.

Hermes told Odysseus to use the holy herb moly to protect himself from Circe's potion and, having resisted it, to draw his sword and act as if he were to attack Circe.

Father and son meet ; Odysseus identifies himself to Telemachus ( but still not to Eumaeus ), and they decide that the Suitors must be killed.

Odysseus takes part in the competition himself: he alone is strong enough to string the bow and shoot it through the dozen axe heads, making him the winner.

Now at last, Odysseus identifies himself to Penelope.

Odysseus protests that this cannot be done since he made the bed himself and knows that one of its legs is a living olive tree.

After Odysseus reveals himself to Telemachus due to Athena's advice, the two men plan the downfall of the suitors.

Following the failure of the suitors at this task, Odysseus reveals himself, and he and Telemachus bring swift and bloody death to the suitors.

Providing Odysseus with a veil and telling him to discard his cloak and raft, she instructs him how he can entrust himself to the waves and succeed in reaching land and eventually Ithaca.

) Leucothea makes a dramatic appearance as a gannet who tells the shipwrecked Odysseus to discard his cloak and raft and offers him a veil ( κρήδεμνον, kredemnon ) to wind round himself to save his life and reach land.

The oracle also features in Odysseus's fictive yarn about himself told to the swineherd Eumaeus: Odysseus, he tells Eumaeus, has been seen among the Thesprotians, having gone to inquire of the oracle at Dodona whether he should return to Ithaca openly or in secret ( as the disguised Odysseus is actually doing ).

He keeps to himself on his farm, overcome with grief over Odysseus ' absence and alone after his wife, Anticleia, died from grief herself.

Odysseus keeps his identity to himself at first, but when he sees how disappointed Laertes is to learn that this " stranger " has no news of his son, Odysseus reveals himself, and proves his identity by reciting all the trees he received from Laertes when he was a boy.

Odysseus, some say, went by night to Troy, and leaving Diomedes waiting, disguised himself and entered the city as a beggar.

According to the Little Iliad, on the way to the ships, Odysseus plotted to kill Diomedes and claim the Palladium ( or perhaps the credit for gaining it ) for himself.

In the Odyssey, Odysseus, affecting to be Cretan himself, instances Pelasgians among the tribes in the ninety cities of Crete, " language mixing with language side by side.

Homer's Odyssey too makes use of this device ; Odysseus ' adventures at sea are all narrated by the hero himself to the court of king Alcinous in Scheria.

On being pushed to explain himself, Odysseus spins a distorted tale, misleading Eumaeus into believing that he is the son not of Laertes but of Castor.