The Odyssey

Homer c. 700 BCE

This epic poem follows Odysseus on his long journey home after the Trojan War. In one encounter, he escapes a one-eyed giant by hiding beneath a ram.

419 pages 8h 8m reading time

  • One of the oldest and most important works of Western literature, and a model for nearly every journey story that came after it.
  • Shows a hero who wins not by strength alone but by cleverness, patience, and the ability to lie and hide when he must.
  • Treats home and loyalty as worth any struggle, setting Odysseus's long trip beside his wife Penelope's faithful wait and his son's search for him.
  • Gave English the word "odyssey," meaning any long and difficult journey.
  • Inspired major works across the centuries, including Virgil's Aeneid and James Joyce's novel Ulysses.

  • Translator's bold theory

    The translator, Samuel Butler, argued that the poem was really written by a young woman living in Sicily.

  • Sung before it was written

    The poem grew out of a tradition of singers who performed long stories from memory, before anyone wrote them down.

  • Split into 24 parts

    Ancient scholars later divided it into 24 books, one for each letter of the Greek alphabet.

  • Nearly lost to the West

    In medieval Western Europe almost no one could read Greek, so the poem was little known there until the 1400s.

Translated from Greek by Samuel Butler 1900

From the 1922 second edition