Summary

The Odyssey opens ten years after the fall of Troy. The Trojan War was caused by the crime of the Trojan prince Paris, who abducted from Sparta the beautiful Helen, wife of King Menelaus, whose brother Agamemnon of Mycenae, ‘king of men’, led a great expedition against Troy. Prominent heroes on the Greek side were Achilles, son of the sea-goddess Thetis; the aged Nestor, Ajax, Diomedes, and Odysseus. After ten years of siege Achilles killed Hector the Trojan champion. Achilles himself was killed, but through the trick of the Wooden Horse a select force of Greeks entered the city and took it. At the sack of Troy some Greeks, notably the minor hero Ajax ‘the lesser’, committed crimes against the gods, especially their own patron goddess Athena; she raised storms against them on their way home, and some were lost. Agamemnon, on his triumphant return, was murdered by his wife and her lover Aegisthus.

Ten years later Odysseus has not returned to his western island of Ithaca. In his absence his wife Penelope is beset by a crowd of suitors, the young nobles of Ithaca and neighbouring islands, whom she has kept at bay by clever tactics. They are now trying to wear down Penelope and her son Telemachus, who is about twenty, by feasting in the house and consuming their substance. Meanwhile Odysseus is stranded on a remote island, detained by the amorous nymph Calypso; and at home the situation is approaching a climax.