1.

Athena (who is Odysseus’s protector)

2. Telemachus, Odysseus’s son
3. Odysseus's enemy, the sea-god Poseidon
4. Athena (now disguised as Telemachus’s friend Mentor
5. Nestor, most venerable of the Greek warriors at Troy
6. Nestor is now at home in Pylos.
7. Menelaus’ brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and leader of the Greeks at
Troy, murdered on his return home by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover
Aegisthus.
8. Calypso is persuaded by the messenger god Hermes to release Odysseus.
9. The men visited the lazy Lotus-Eaters
10. The men were captured by the Cyclops Polyphemus, escaping by blinding him
with a wooden stake.
11. They stayed with Aeolus the master of the winds
12. He gave Odysseus a leather bag containing all the winds, a gift that should have
ensured a safe return home, had not the sailors foolishly opened the bag while
Odysseus slept
13. All the winds flew out and the resulting storm drove the ships back the way they
had come.
14. They re-embarked and encountered the cannibal Laestrygones.
15. Odysseus’s own ship was the only one to escape
16. He sailed on and visited the witch-goddess Circe, whose magic potions turned
most of his sailors into swine.
17. Hermes met with Odysseus and gave him a drug called moly, an antidote to
Circe’s potion.
18. They stayed on Circe’s island for a year.
19. They crossed the Ocean and reached a harbor at the western edge of the world,
where Odysseus sacrificed to the dead and summoned the spirit of the old
prophet Tiresias to advise him.
20. They skirted the land of the Sirens,
21. Approaching sailors were drawn to them by their enchanting singing, causing
them to sail on the cliffs and drown
22. Odysseus escaped the Sirens by having all his sailors plug their ears with
beeswax and tie him to the mast.
23. They passed between the many-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool
Charybdis.
24. They landed on the island of Thrinacia. There Odysseus’ men – ignoring the
warnings of Tiresias and Circe – hunted down the sacred cattle of the sun god
Helios.
25. This sacrilege was punished by a shipwreck in which all but Odysseus himself
were drowned.
26. He was washed ashore on the island of Calypso, where she kept him as her
lover, and he had only now escaped.
27. the Phaeacians, who are skilled mariners, agree to help Odysseus on his way
home.
28. They deliver him at night, while he is fast asleep, to a hidden harbor on Ithaca.
He finds his way to the hut of one of his own former slaves, the swineherd
Eumaeus.
29. Odysseus now plays the part of a wandering beggar in order to learn how things
stand in his household.
30. Telemachus disembarks on the coast of Ithaca and makes for Eumaeus’s hut.
Father and son meet.
31. Odysseus identifies himself to Telemachus (but still not to Eumaeus) and they
determine that the suitors must be killed.
32. Accompanied by Eumaeus, Odysseus now returns to his own house, still
disguised as a beggar.
33. He experiences the suitors’ rowdy behavior and plans their death
34. He meets Penelope: he tests her intentions with an invented story of his birth in
Crete, where, he says, he once met Odysseus. Closely questioned, he adds that
he had recently been in Thesprotia and had learned something there of
Odysseus’s recent wanderings.
35. Odysseus’s identity is discovered by the housekeeper, Eurycleia, when he
undresses for a bath and reveals an old thigh wound; he swears her to secrecy.
36. Next day, at Athena’s prompting, Penelope maneuvers the suitors into
competing for her hand with an archery competition using Odysseus’s bow.
37. He takes part in the competition himself; he alone is strong enough to string the
bow and therefore wins. Immediately he turns his arrows on the suitors, and all
are killed.
38. Odysseus and Telemachus kill (by hanging) twelve of their household maids,
who had slept with the suitors; they mutilate and kill the goatherd Melanthius,
who had favored them.
39. Now at last Odysseus identifies himself to Penelope. She is hesitant, but accepts
him when he correctly describes to her the bed he built for her when they
married.
40. Next day he and Telemachus visit the country farm of his old father Laertes,
who likewise accepts his identity only when Odysseus correctly describes the
orchard that Laertes once gave him.
41.