Summaries for the odyssey, written notes

➔ Homer’s invocation to the Muses (9 daughters of Zeus worshipped for inspiration to art and music)

➔ The audience learns: ◆ Poseidon has stranded Odysseus with Calypso, the nymph ◆ Poseidon is upset with Odysseus for pobed-chamberclops’ eye out ◆ Athena begs Zeus to let Odysseus return to Ithaca ◆ Hermes is sent to free Odysseus from Calypso

➔ Athene comes to advise Telemachus + is disguised as Mentes, a family friend ➔ Suitors have overrun Odysseus’ home + want to marry his mother, Queen Penelope ➔ Mentes/Athene tell Telemachus to find a boat + to sail to different places asking about his father ➔ She tells Telemachus that he should warn of the suitors or kill them upon his return ➔ From Mentes, Telemachus decides that he should go to Pylo and Sarta to talk with both King Nestor and King Menekau ➔ If Telemachus learns that his father is alive, he should go home and put up with the suitors, knowing his father will be home soon. ➔ If Telemachus learns that his fathers are dead, he should prepare a proper burial for him. ➔ Also, he will have to ask Odysseus’s father Laertes choose a suitor for Penelope to marry (due to arranged marriage ➔ Telemachus is also informed to kill the suitors who will not leave their home.

➔ Athene pleads to the gods and Zeus at Mount Olympus to release Odysseus held captive by the immortal nymph Calypso. ◆ Calypso is the daughter of the Titan Atlas and was forced to live on the island Ogygia as a punishment for siding with her father and the Titans during the War of the Titans. ➔ Zeus sends Hermes to secure Odysseus’s release ➔ Calypso bore Odysseus two children, Nausithous and Nausinos. Calypso is also called Atlantis. ➔ Odysseus spends 7 years with her ➔ Calypso is found singing and weaving + many birds + plants surrounded her ◆ Calypso promise Odysseusss immortality if he stays with her ➔ Hermes tells Calypso she must relinquish Odysseus ● The first time the reader meets Odysseus ➔ He is found crying; he misses his home. ➔ Odysseus told Calypso she was more beautiful than his wife, but he misses Penelope ➔ Odysseus has lain with Calypso every night ➔ Calypso feels insecure when Odysseus tells her this, and she warns him of the many dangers at sea he must face. ➔ Poseidon will make sea travel dangerous for Odysseus as he is upset with him. ➔ Poseidon creates a storm and destroys Odysseus’s raft ➔ Athena and another nymph help Odysseus arrive on the island of Scheria, home of the Phaecians ➔ After, 20 days at sea, Odysseus lands on Scheria and falls asleep under a pile of leaves

➔ At night, Athena visits the Phaeacian princess. Nausicaa, in a dream, urges her to wash her clothing.

➔ When Nausicaa wakes, she takes a mute-cart and her maids, and they wash her clothing in pools by a river. ➔ They spread the wet clothing along the beach, then wash and play a game in the nude. ➔ For once, femininity is not used for seduction. ➔ Odysseus, naked himself, wakes up when he hears the girls. ➔ He approaches them, but his dirty, wild appearance frightens all of them away but Nausicaa. ➔ He asks if she is mortal or a goddess, and praises her surpassing beauty. ➔ He asks for her help in directing him to town and providing him with clothing ➔ Nausicaa gladly agrees and directs her maids to tend to him. Odysseus is modest, however, and wants to bathe in privacy. ➔ Odysseus cleans up, with Athena making him even more handsome, and the maids give him food and drink. ➔ Nausicaa directs him to walk behind her cart with her maids on the way to town but warns him that if people in town see him with her, they will gossip that he is her future husband. ➔ Nausicaa asks Odysseus to hide behind some trees near the city wall when they enter, then to ask directions to the palace of her father King Alcinous. ➔ There he will find her mother Arete, whom he should ask for help; if she likes him, she will help him home soon. ➔ They head to town and pass Athen’s grove, where Odysseus prays to Athena for hospitality from the Phaeacians.

➔ After he waits for Nausicaa to go to her father Alcinous and Queen Arete, Nausicaa to go to her father Alicinous’s palace, Odysseus makes his way alone and encounters Athene disguised as a little girl. ◆ Odysseus asks her for directions to the palace and she leads him there while shrouding him in a mist so no one can see him. ● Odysseus needs this protection as most Phaecians, unlike most Greeks, do not like strangers. ➔ Odysseus meets King Alcinous and Queen Arete, Nausicaa’s parents. ➔ King Alcinous asks if Odysseus is a god. ➔ Odysseus shares some of his troubles ➔ King Alicicnous has a banquet for Odysseus and agrees to help him arrive home. ➔ He offers Odysseus his daughter Nausicaa to marry if he will stay on the island.

➔ Demodocus, the blind minstrel, tells stories. ◆ Odysseus asks him to sing a song about the Trojan horse (a song about himself) ● No one knows Odysseus identity yet ➔ Demodocus sings about the Trojan war (fighting) ◆ Odysseus cries ➔ Alcinous demands to know the identity of Odysseus ➔ Homer ends the book with suspense

➔ Odysseus reveals himself to King Alcinous as Laertes’ son. ◆ Odysseus tells stories of his misadventures with his crew. ◆ These stories are flashbacks - Odysseus narrates them

◆ Hermes gives Odysseus an antidote to eating to work against Circe’s power + he rushed to her home ➔ Then, Odysseus should threaten Circe with death, at which point Circe will offer to sleep with him ➔ Odysseus visits Circe, and the plant works its magic against her poison. ➔ He goes through with Hermes’ plan, and because of his fortitude she takes him to be the great Odysseus ➔ As Hermes predicted, Circe asks Odysseus to sleep with her: he first makes her promise not to use any more enchantments ➔ After they retire to Circe’s bed-chamber, she turns them back into men, now looking better than ever. ◆ Circe tells Odysseus to have his men bring their ships and gear ashore and come back with everyone ◆ They all return but Eurylochus is still suspicious ➔ Circe releases all of Odysseus’ men, and since she is the most beautiful immortal and invites them to stay with her for a year ➔ Finally, one of Odysseus’s men asks if perhaps they could consider the possibility of going home. ➔ So Odysseus approaches Circe to help them get to Ithaca ➔ She prophecies that he cannot go home until he visits the land of the dead to see Teiresias, who has further instructions for him. She gives him directions to get to the Underworld ➔ Meanwhile, Elpenor wakes up and falls off the roof to his death. ➔ Sadly, nobody notices because they’re all despairing over the news of going to the Underworld and busy preparing the ship. ➔ They find that Circe disappeared for good, leaving behind only a black ewe and ram as a sacrifice required to enter the Underworld.

➔ Odysseus travels to the Underworld and makes the offerings according to Circe’s instructions. The shades of the dead gather to drink the blood (gross) and then talk to Odysseus. ➔ The first shade is Elpenor, freshly falled=n from Circe’s roof. Odysseus’s eyes bug out when he sees one of his crew members - he weeps and listens to the man’s story. ➔ Elpenor begs for Odysseus to honour his death by building a burial mound for his dead body. Odysseus agrees since it’s the least he can do after totally having failed to notice that one of his crew members was missing ➔ Odysseus then glimpses his mother’s shade among the rest of the dead. This is news to him, since last he heard she was still alive. Not a good way to find out. ➔ Fortunately, he is soon distracted from his weeping by the arrival of Teiresias ➔ Teiresias drinks the blood of Odysseus’ sacrifices and then speaks ➔ His first words are a warning: don’t eat Helios's cattle at Thrinacia. His next is to casually announce that Odysseus will survive alone. ◆ In other words, all of his companions will die. ➔ The good news is, Odysseus will make it home after all but he will find trouble there. He’ll have to make suitors pay for their insolence with blood. ➔ After defeating the suitors, Teiresias continues, Odysseus had better go inland until he reaches an area of the earth which has never known the sea. There, he has to pray to Poseidon in order to ensure himself a peaceful seaborne death in his old age, surrounded by all his folk. ➔ Odysseus’s mother Anticlea tells him of the situation back home in Ithaca: Telemachus is growing up but helpless against the suitors: Penelope is still loyal and his mother died from loneliness. ◆ Odysseus tried to embrace her three times, but this doesn’t work out too well since Anticlea is dead. ➔ When she leaves, there is a long line of dead people waiting for him ➔ Odysseus draws his sword to hold them back. He lets them come and drink one at a time. ➔ Odysseus speaks first to a long line of princesses: Tyro, Antiope, Alkmene, Megara, Spicaste, Chloris, Leda, Iphimedeia, Phaidra, Prokris, Ariadne, Maira, Klymene, and Eriphyle. ➔ At this point, Odysseus pauses in his narrative. The Phaeacians are all “No way!”

➔ Queen Arete, clearly impressed by all these stories, decides that when they do finally send Odysseus on his way, it should be with lots of treasure. ➔ King Alcinous then asks Odysseus if he met any of his friends who died at Troy. ➔ He sure did. ➔ Back in the Underworld, Odysseus sees Agamemnon and hears the tragic story of his murder and his son Orestes’s revenge against Aegethes and Clytemnestra. ➔ Agamemnon is understandably bitter against women and considers all of them treacherous. Except for Penelope, whom he praises for her loyalty. ➔ Then appear the spirits of Achilleus, Patroklos, Antiochos, and Telamonian Aias, some of Odysseus’s buddies from the Trojan war. ➔ Odysseus praises Achilles for having earned so much honour and glory in his life ◆ Achilles says being dead sucks and would have rather been a slave and lived a long life ➔ He then asks Odysseus about his son, Neoptolemus ◆ Odysseus responds with what he knows of the lad’s brilliant and luck in battle ➔ Odysseus pleads with Aias to not be angry anymore after their quarrel in Troy over armour. Aias turns around away from Odysseus and ignores him. ➔ Before, Odysseus also saw Minos, Orion, Tityos, Tantalos, Sisyphos and Heracles. ➔ When all the ghosts come to drink the blood Odysseus freaks out and runs to his ship. ➔ Everyone leaves.

➔ Odysseus has returned to Circe’s island and she warns him of the dangers of his journey ➔ Circe warns the men of the Sirens, beautiful, birdlike women whose music enchants men so that they may kill them ● No sailor has ever survived the lure of the sirens. ◆ Circe tells Odysseus to plug the men’s ears with wax so they can’t hear the Sirens ◆ The men will continue to steer the boat past the Sirens. ◆ Odysseus can be tied to the mast of the boat so he can hear them ➔ Circe tells the men that the 2nd daughter to avoid is the den if Scylla, a monster who has 12 legs and 6 serpent’s necks and heads. ◆ She has 3 rows of sharp teeth ◆ She will eat 6 men at once ➔ The 3rd danger is the whirlpool Charybdis ➔ Circe tells the men that they should hug the cliffs of Scylla because it is better to lose 6 men than an entire boat of men. ➔ The 4th danger are Helios’ cattle, if the men eat them, the ship + crew will be destroyed but not Odysseus ➔ Odysseus never tells the men of the last prophecy ➔ The men survive the Sirens ➔ The men drop their oars in fear of Scylla and Charybdis ➔ They avoid Charybdis ➔ Odysseus tells the men not to eat Helios’ cattle when they arrive on Thrinakia for a rest. ➔ After a month of storms, the men are hungry and kill a cow. ➔ The men eat Helios’ cattle and are punished at sea by a thunderbolt from Zeus. ➔ Odysseus is the one who survived and is rescued on Calypso’s island.

➔ Poseidon is angry with the Phaeacians for helping Odysseus and asks Zeus to punish them ◆ Zeus places mountains around their city, ending their seafaring ways ➔ Odysseus fell asleep on the way home, and the Phaeacians left him on the shore of Ithaca. ➔ When he awakens, he does not know where he is, and Athene covers the island with mist so he does not recognise it.

➔ Melantho, the disloyal maid, insults Odysseus

➔ Odysseus and Telemachus discuss their strategy to kill the suitors

➔ Odysseus wants to test the loyalty of Penelope and her maids ➔ The maids have not been loyal and have been helping suitors

➔ Odysseus, the beggar, and Penelope sit and talk: she tells him about his problems - how she misses her husband and does not want to remarry

➔ Odysseus, the beggar, tells a story about his identity and how he met Odysseus and how he praises ➔ Penelope cries upon hearing about her husband

➔ Odysseus decides that Penelope passed the loyalty test ➔ Odysseus, the beggar, tells her that Odysseus is sailing home

➔ Penelope is hopeful and asks Eurycleia to wash his feet ➔ Eurycleia tells Odysseus, the beggar, that he is a lot like Odysseus.

➔ Then Eurycleia sees the scar on his foot from a boar’s tusk injury ➔ Eurycleia recognize Odysseus

➔ Odysseus swears Eurycleia to secrecy ➔ Odysseus imagines killing the suitors as he tries to sleep.

➔ The suitors are sleeping with the maids in his home ➔ Athena assures Odysseus he will defeat the suitors: she will protect him

➔ Penelope is so miserable she asks the goddess Artemis to make her die

➔ Odysseus hears Penelope crying, and he prays to Zeus to give her a sign that he is home. ➔ Zeus sends thunder

➔ The suitors still plot to kill Telemachus ➔ The suitors continue to abuse Pdysseus, the beggar

➔ Telemachus threatens them for bothering the beggar ➔ The suitor insists Penelope choose a suitor to marry

➔ Blood from animals they eat streams from their mouth - an omen of death

➔ Penelops tells the suitors that she will marry the one who can bend, string and shoot Odysseus special

hunting bow through 12 axe handles ➔ This contest takes place on a festival day for Apollo, the god of archery.

➔ Nobody can work Odysseus’s bow ➔ Odysseus asks the cowherd Philoetius and the swineherd Eumaeus to help him

➔ Odysseus tells them that they were the only men who missed him ➔ Odysseus will give the cowherd and the swineherd wives, cattle and homes if they help him kill the

suitors ➔ Odysseus shows the his scar to prove himself

➔ Odysseus tells them to lock himself and all the suitors in the room when he picks up the bow ➔ Penelope allows Odysseus, the beggar, to test the bow

➔ Telemachus has removed the suitors weapons from the hall

➔ Odysseus, the beggar, strings the bow and shoots it through the axe holes

➔ Telemachus straps on his armour ➔ The fighting with the suitors begins in the next book

➔ Odysseus takes off his beggar rags

➔ Odysseus must fight more than 100 suitors ➔ He attacks Antinous the meanest, first, and shoots an arrow into his neck

➔ The suitors run around, looking for their weapons and cursing Odysseus ➔ Odysseus accuses the suitors of such things as: ‘using’ his maids and trying to marry his maids and

trying to marry his wife ➔ The suitors, of course, don’t believe his is Odysseus

➔ Eurymachus blames the suitors actions on Antinous’ commands ➔ Eurymachus tells Odysseus that he and the suitors will give him gifts if he lets them go

➔ Odysseus replies “There will be killing till the score is paid” ➔ Telemachus, Eumaeus, and Philoetius help Odysseus kill the suitors

➔ Athena’s shield comes to life, and she, disguised as Mentor, help kill the suitors ➔ All the suitors are killed by the end of the battle

➔ The goatherd Melanthius who has insulted Odysseus, tries to bring the suitors weapons to the hall Eumaeus and Philoetius string him alive

➔ Odysseus rounds up the disloyal maids, forces them to clean up the mess of dead bodies, and then Telemachus hangs them

➔ One suitor is even killed and fed to the dogs! ➔ Eurycleia announces Odysseus’s returns to Penelope

➔ Penelops suspects a trick from the gods and decides to test Odysseus ➔ Telemachus chides her for doubting Odysseus’s identity

➔ She tells Telemachus that she and Odysseus shares secret signs ➔ Odysseus tells Telemachus + the servants to stage a fake wedding feast so that nobody suspects the

massacre ➔ Odysseus is made handsome by Athene

➔ Odysseus tells Eurycleia to prepare a couch for him to to sleep upon ➔ Penelope tells the nurse to carry their marriage bed out for him to sleep on - words meant to test her

husband ➔ Odysseus becomes upset because the bed was built around an olive tree that serves as a bedpost - it

another man had sawed the post from the trunk

➔ Odysseus passes Penelope’s test and they embrace ➔ Athene delays the sunrise so the couple can spend more time together

➔ Odysseus plans to travel to his father Laertes’ house and to seek revenge upon the suitors families