Source Verification: Odysseus

Why did Odysseus's journey home take ten years?

Two separate causes stack on top of each other in the Odyssey: Odysseus blinds the Cyclops Polyphemus, a son of Poseidon, and the enraged sea god delays and wrecks his voyage across the entire poem in revenge; on top of that, Odysseus and his crew repeatedly bring disaster on themselves, most fatally by eating the cattle of the sun god Helios against explicit warning, which costs the rest of the crew their lives and leaves Odysseus to finish the journey alone.

Source: Homer, Odyssey, Book 1

How did Odysseus escape the Cyclops Polyphemus?

Trapped in Polyphemus's cave, Odysseus gets the Cyclops drunk on wine, tells him his name is "Nobody," and then blinds his single eye with a sharpened stake while he sleeps. When Polyphemus cries out that Nobody is hurting him, the other Cyclopes assume nothing is wrong and do not come to help, and Odysseus's men escape clinging to the undersides of the Cyclops's sheep as he lets them out to graze.

Source: Homer, Odyssey, Book 9

What did Odysseus learn from the prophet Tiresias in the underworld?

On Circe's advice, Odysseus sails to the edge of the world and calls up the shade of the blind prophet Tiresias to learn his fate: how to get home safely, the danger of eating the cattle of the sun god Helios, and a final warning that death will eventually come to him from the sea, in old age, gently. The consultation frames the rest of the poem as a fate already partly known rather than a purely open journey.

Source: Homer, Odyssey, Book 11

How did Odysseus resist the Sirens' song without dying?

Warned in advance by the sorceress Circe, Odysseus has his crew plug their ears with wax so they cannot hear the Sirens at all, while he alone is tied tightly to the mast so he can hear the song without being able to steer the ship toward the rocks it lures sailors onto. He orders the crew to ignore any pleas he makes to be untied until they are safely past.

Source: Homer, Odyssey, Book 12

How did Odysseus prove his identity to Penelope after twenty years?

Penelope tests him by ordering their marriage bed moved out of their bedroom, which Odysseus objects to immediately: he built the bed himself around a living olive tree, rooted in the ground, so it cannot be moved without destroying it. Only the real Odysseus would know this secret, and his reaction confirms his identity to her more convincingly than any physical scar or story could.

Source: Homer, Odyssey, Book 23

How did Odysseus defeat Penelope's suitors?

Disguised as an old beggar by Athena, Odysseus returns to Ithaca unrecognized and enters an archery contest Penelope sets for her suitors: stringing Odysseus's own great bow and shooting an arrow through the sockets of twelve axe heads lined in a row. None of the suitors can even string the bow; Odysseus does both feats easily, then turns the bow on the suitors themselves and kills them with the help of his son Telemachus and two loyal servants.

Source: Homer, Odyssey, Book 21

Why did Odysseus lose the contest for Achilles's armor to himself and not Ajax?

After Achilles's death, the Greek army votes on which of the two greatest surviving warriors, Odysseus or Ajax, deserves his armor, and awards it to Odysseus for his cunning contributions to the war effort rather than to Ajax for his raw combat strength. Sophocles's Ajax stages the aftermath: Ajax cannot bear the humiliation and is driven to madness and eventual suicide, a result later Greek audiences used to question whether cleverness should really outrank courage.

Source: Sophocles, Ajax

• Homer, Odyssey, Book 1
• Homer, Odyssey, Book 9
• Homer, Odyssey, Book 11
• Homer, Odyssey, Book 12
• Homer, Odyssey, Book 21
• Homer, Odyssey, Book 23
• Homer, Iliad
• Sophocles, Ajax

• W.B. Stanford, The Ulysses Theme (1963)
• Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993)