Odyssey

The Odyssey is a major Ancient Greek epic poem. It was written by Homer, as a sequel to the Iliad. In its origin it was an oral epic poem from Mycenaean Greece, about the 11th century BC. The hero of the poem is Odysseus, or Ulysses as he is called in Latin; the poem is mythological, not historical.

The poem is the story about Odysseus's ten-year-long voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War.^[1] The Trojan War is the subject of the Iliad. At the same time, his wife Penelope has to fight off a lot of men who want to marry her; and his son Telemachos searches for him.

Along the way, Odysseus and his men have to fight monsters and many other dangers. The main events (places he goes, creatures and people he meets) of Odysseus' journey are:

• the Kikones
• the Lotus Eaters
• the Cyclops Polyphemus
• Aeolus, King of the winds
• the Laistrygones
• the sorceress Circe
• the Underworld
• the Sirens
• the sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis
• Helios' cattle
• the nymph Calypso
• the Phaeacians

1. ↑ Renshaw, James; Knights, Sally; Buckley, Paul (2009). OCR Classical Civilisation Reader for GCSE. Oxford University Press. p. 50. ISBN 9780198325970.