The Odyssey is an epic story of love, war and trials. Told by Homer of ancient Greece, this story is part two following the story called The Iliad. The Odyssey starts off 20 years after Ulysses left for the Trojan War. The Trojan War was started by Paris and his love for Helen who was married to another man. Ulysses had gone with the other kings of the time to fight for Helen and get her back to her rightful husband.
After the war, Ulysses had left for his home back in Ithaca to his wife, Penelope and his son Telemachos. In the story, Ulysses is telling his adventures to the people of the Phaeacians and the true story starts off with Calypso. In his journeys, he is swept to many different places including his first stop to the Cicones, where he and his men attack a city. They kill all of the men and take the women as slaves. Here some of his men are killed in the process.
After this, he and his men are swept to the land of the Lotus eaters where Ulysses is forced to drag his men away because they will not leave on their own. Another big stop in Ulysses way is his encounter with Polyph�mus, a Cyclops that traps Ulysses and his men. Ulysses gets out of the Cyclops� cave by tricking him but not without loosing some of his men here as well.
His escape from Polyph�mus angers Poseidon, god of the sea and father to Polyph�mus. From then on, Poseidon holds a grudge against Ulysses and makes his travels even harder then they were before.
Ulysses next comes into contact with Aelios, the master of the wind, who gives him a bag of wind to help guide him back to his home as fast as he could. Within ten day, they were almost home, but Ulysses men became jealous thinking that the bag of wind carried gold and treasures and opened it while he slept and blew them off course and back to rowing for home.
The next island to cross Ulysses path was a grim island indeed. There at the land of the Laestrygonians, Ulysses lost all of his men except for his own ship and that ships crew.
Circe was the next encounter on Ulysses road. She is an enchantress who turns men into pigs including half of Ulysses� crew. Ulysses gets stuck on the island for a year as her lover but gets let go. But upon getting let go, Circe sends him down to Hades and while there he talks to a few of the dead including his mother, Achilles, who he fought with at Troy, and Tiresias, the seer of Thebes. From the seer he learns of what his voyage home will entail.
The next few events happen quickly compared to the other events he has encountered. He ended up sailing past the Sirens who sing their sweet song of enchantment and try to make men seer into the rocks. He also sails past Scylla and Charybdis, but loses men in the process.
Once past these dangers, they came across the island of the Sun, where the Sun God Helios keeps his heard of fine beasts. There they stop to rest and sleep but are stuck there for a month and the hunger pains drive the men to steal the cattle and eat them. Upon this Helios becomes very angry and demands the blood of the men in return for the blood of the cattle from Zeus and Zeus grants his wish. All but Ulysses dies.
�I drifted along nine days. On the tenth, at night, the gods cast me up on Ogygia, Calypso�s island, home of the dangerous nymph with glossy braids who speaks with human voice, and she took me in, she loved me...� (Pagles 12.484). This was the next stop for Ulysses.
Once released by Calypso from pressure from the Gods, Ulysses drifted past Charybdis and Scylla once again, and ended up at the Phaeacians� city. There he was found by the princess and presented himself to the King and Queen where he tells his story of his travels and is promised a boat to take him home.
Finally, the promised day for Ulysses came, and home he arrived. Ithaca, his home land, finally safe and with great gifts from the Phaecians. But still there are things for him to encounter.
Finally home, he has to witness the hoard of suitors that have come for his sweet Penelope, and defeat them all with the help of his son Telemachos, now 20 years old.
The tale of Ulysses and the Odyssey is a great one at that, but all tales come to an end, and this one is no different. All throughout his travels, Ulysses shows a great deal of strength and wit. All throughout the story he is called a man of �twists and tricks� (Pagles 13.332), able to deceive immortals and gods, escape treacherous situations, and above all else still be the king that he was.
Deceiving immortals is one of the first things that Ulysses dose on his trip back home. In his visit to the Cyclops� coast he takes 12 of his best men and goes to the cave of Polyph�mus where he gets trapped inside for twonights and lost 4 men to him. Polyph�mus is not an immortal, but his stature is much bigger then that of Ulysses and he is even stronger than that.
