Ten years after Troy, Odysseus is still far from rocky Ithaca — detained by Calypso, wrecked by Poseidon, beguiled by Circe, and tested in the house of Hades — while on his island a crowd of suitors devours his substance and plots against his son. The poem that bears his name is the return of the man of many wiles: disguise, endurance, the bow, and at last reunion with Penelope.1
Two journeys, one house
Homer's poem runs on two threads: Telemachus grows from boy to man while suitors devour Ithaca, and Odysseus — detained on Calypso, then carried to Scheria — tells the Phaeacians the tale of ten years' wandering before he reaches home in beggar's rags. The nested episodes follow the son's voyage to Pylos and Sparta, the father's road from Troy to Ogygia, and the final reckoning in the hall.2
The wanderings
After Troy came Lotus and Polyphemus, Aeolus' winds and Circe's swine, the descent to Hades, the Sirens and Scylla, the cattle of the Sun and shipwreck — each arc lives in its nested episode from the Cyclops to the strait. Calypso and the Phaeacians close the sea-road; the beggar king, the bow, and Penelope's test close the house.3
Endings opposed
Homer reunites Odysseus and Penelope and stays the feud of the suitors' kin. The Epic Cycle knew other closures — exile in Aetolia, Thesprotian kingship, slanders against the queen, and Telegonus' sting-ray spear in the nested Telegony — wired as dispute topics where the sources flatly contradict the poem.4
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Episodes
How the centuries saw it
Odysseus and the Sirens (the "Siren Vase")
The Siren Painter, c. 480–470 BC
Odyssey 12 on an Attic stamnos — the hero lashed to the mast while his crew rows past the meadow of bones, hearing the song that kills every man who reaches it unbound.
Odysseus and his men blinding Polyphemus (Eleusis Amphora, detail)
Polyphemus Painter (proto-Attic), c. 660 BC
The oldest surviving Cyclops scene — Nobody's cunning stake earns Poseidon's endless enmity and ten more years of wandering before rocky Ithaca.
Head of Odysseus (Sperlonga group)
Rhodian sculptors (Hagesandros, Athanadoros and Polydoros, attrib.), 1st century AD, after a Hellenistic original
The pilos-capped hero from the colossal marble groups of the Sperlonga grotto — brow knotted, mouth parted, the face of endurance itself, found smashed in Tiberius' dining cave in 1957.