The Odyssey tells how Odysseus, king of Ithaca, returns home in the twentieth year after leaving for the Trojan War, crosses the sea among islands, goddesses, and monsters, arrives in Ithaca disguised as a beggar, kills the men who had occupied his palace, and wins back his wife, son, and father.
The first four books follow Telemachus, the son. In Ithaca, nobles from the neighboring islands court Penelope and eat up their house. The goddess Athena pushes the young man to call an assembly and to set out in search of news of his father, in Pylos and in Sparta. There he learns from Menelaus that Odysseus is alive, held by Calypso, while in Ithaca the suitors prepare an ambush to kill him on his return.
In Books V to VIII, the gods order Odysseus to be freed. He builds a raft, Poseidon destroys it, and he arrives swimming and naked in the land of the Phaeacians, where the princess Nausicaa takes him to the palace of King Alcinous. Pressed to say who he is, he tells in Books IX to XII, in the first person, the voyage: the Cicones, the Lotus-eaters, the Cyclops Polyphemus, Aeolus's bag of winds, the Laestrygonians, Circe, the descent to the world of the dead, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, and the cattle of the Sun, for which he loses all his companions.
Books XIII to XXIV take place in Ithaca. The Phaeacians leave him on the beach, Athena disguises him, and he is welcomed by the swineherd Eumaeus, meets his son again, and enters the palace as a beggar. Penelope proposes the contest of the bow; only he is able to string it and, with the help of Telemachus, Eumaeus, and Athena, he kills the suitors. Penelope recognizes him only when he describes the bed he built around an olive tree. In the last book he meets his father, Laertes, again, and when the relatives of the dead come to demand vengeance, Athena and Zeus impose peace.