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them. Even a seeming stroke of
luck—when King Aeolus gave
Odysseus the gift of a leather bag
in which all the winds of the world
were stored—turned out to only
delay them further. The ship was in
sight of Ithaca when the crewmen,
thinking the bag might contain
gold, opened it. The winds blew
out, taking them away from Ithaca
and into the unknown, where they
wandered for several more years.Witchcraft and prophecy
Next, Odysseus traveled to Aeaea,
where the witch-goddess Circe
turned a band of his men into pigs.
He forced her to change his men
back and became her lover. After a
year, Odysseus asked Circe how to
get back to Ithaca, and she advised
him to sail to Hades to seek a blind
prophet named Tiresius to direct
them home.
Odysseus and his crew set
off from Aeaea and he blocked his
men’s ears to save them from the
seductive songs of the Sirens as
they sailed past their isle. Next,
his crew steered a course through
a fiendishly narrow strait (Messina).
On one side was the whirlpool
Charybdis, eager to suck ships
down; on the other was a crag,
on which the six-headed maiden-
monster Scylla sat, ready to seize
and swallow passing sailors. When
Odysseus finally met Tiresius, the
seer explained Poseidon's grudge.
Against Tiresius's advice,
Odysseus and his men stopped to
rest in Thrinakia, after which he
was caught by Calypso. After
leaving Calypso, Odysseus's ship
was caught in a mighty stormcreated by Zeus, and washed up on
the shores of Scheria, where they
were rescued by Athena.A hero’s homecoming
When the crew finally made it home
to Ithaca, Odysseus was disguised
so he would not be recognized by
any of Penelope’s suitors and could
plan to win his "widow" back. His
old swineherd Eumaeus took him
in, and in the old servant’s cottage
he met his son Telemachus, who
was overjoyed to see him.
By this time, the suitors had
tired of Penelope’s tapestry ruse,
and so she set a new challenge. She
agreed to marry only the man who
could string her husband’s bow and
shoot an arrow accurately through a
row of 12 axeheads. Penelope knew
that Odysseus alone had the skill
and strength for this. Still disguised,
Odysseus succeeded with his first
arrow and killed a suitor with his
next. The angry suitors drew their
weapons against the hero, who,
with his son's help, killed them all. ■Odysseus's waiting wife, seated
at her loom, is besieged by requests for
her hand in marriage. Penelope with
the Suitors was painted by the Italian
Renaissance artist Pinturicchio (1509).“Shapely ships”
Homeric text is full of insight
into the construction and
importance of swift ships for
the early Greeks. The ancient
galley of Homer’s day was
long and slender, rising
gracefully at bow and stern,
like the horns of an ox (Iliad
XVIII, 3). Adjectives such as
“hollow” (Iliad I,25) seem to
imply the absence of a
covering deck. The "black
ships" in the Odyssey were
covered in pitch that made
them watertight. Odysseus
himself built a vessel to leave
Calypso's island, felling 20
trees and smoothing them into
a keel, ribs, and planking. The
central sail provided
propulsion out at sea, while
25 men rowing on each side
allowed progress in weak or
adverse winds and gave the
vessel maneuverability and
speed close to shore.ANCIENT GREECE
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