[4] Odyssey

• When the Odyssey opens, the war has been over for ten years, but Odysseus still isn’t home.
• Every day, Penelope made a big production of weaving, but every night she undid her day’s work. She managed to keep this up for two years before one of her slave-girls told on her and the suitors forced her to finish the job.
• But what could he do, one young man against seventy suitors?
• Odysseus and his men had an exciting trip once they had left Troy.
• The first thing they did was to sail to the land of the Cicones and start a war with them.
• From the Cicones, they went to the land of the Lotus-Eaters
• Odysseus’ encounter with the Cyclops named Polyphemus was his most famous adventure.
• Odysseus told him that his name was “Nobody” and suggested that his “host” give him a present, which is what Zeus liked to see when strangers meet.
• Next, they came to the Aeolian Islands, home of King Aeolus, lord of the winds
• Without the help of Aeolus, Odysseus’ and the Greeks’ ships landed on Telepylos, the land of the Laestrygonians. The Laestrygonians were cannibals and when three men went onto the land, the Laestrygonian king ate them all. Odysseus and the Greeks run for the ships, but, the Laestrygonians had already smashed 11 of the ships and began to feed on some of the men. Odysseus orders the rest of the men to his ship, and they row away from Telepylos as fast as possible.
• Next, they landed on the island of the witch Circe.
• They had to visit the underworld and ask the dead poet Teiresias how to get home.
• The island of the Sirens was the next obstacle.
• Odysseus blocked his men’s ears with wax, but he asked his men to tie him to the mast as he listened to the Sirens’ song. Circe warned Odysseus about the Clashing Rocks, a pair of rocks that clashed together whenever a ship passed through. Choosing to avoid that fate, Odysseus had to choose a route between Charybdis, a monster whirlpool that swallows everything near it, or Scylla, a six-headed monster that snatches people from up a fog-concealed cavern. If they went close to Charybdis, the entire ship would go down.
• Tired, hungry, and demoralized, the men stopped at the Island of the Sun, where Apollo kept the famous cattle of the sun
• He clung to the wreckage and washed up on Calypso’s island, where he spent several years as her love slave.
• Finally, the gods interceded, Calypso released him, and he built a raft and washed up on the shore of the Phaeacia.
• He woke up in Ithaca disoriented.
• 24


  How many books does Odyssey have?