The film without the cuts. And the book itself.
With Ulysses ten years missing, insolent suitors devour his household while his son Telemachus is roused to search for him.
Ulysses
A long-absent king returns as a beggar so his own house can reveal who still knows him.
Ithaca
The rocky island whose chimney smoke Ulysses wants more than a goddess offering him eternal life.
A brilliant survivor nears home, yet his men's fatal folly turns victory into loss.
Read →Odysseus and His Lost Men
Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, too, about all these things, oh daughter of Jove, from whatsoever source you may know them.
Homer hands us the ending before the story has even begun: Odysseus makes it home, his men do not. There is no suspense to protect here, so the men's deaths are pinned on them straightaway. They ate the Sun-god's cattle, and the poet is careful to call it their own folly, not their captain's failure, so that the hero we are about to follow carries none of the blame for the empty ships he returns with. The song is his alone, and we are told so at the door.
Telemachus and the Suitors
With Ulysses ten years missing, insolent suitors devour his household while his son Telemachus is roused to search for him.
Ulysses’s Bow
A bow no suitor can even bend will prove which stranger is the king.
Penelope
A queen under siege turns waiting into strategy and recognition into a test.
The Odyssey
The cast, locations, objects of note, core concepts, and selected passages in the Author’s Pen - at your own pace.
The Odyssey World, as it plays on your phone
- Meet the people. 42 characters, each with a portrait, who they are and what they want.
- Walk the places. 27 places, each pictured, and what happens there.
- Follow the plot. The turns of the story, in order, so you always know where you are.
- Taste the original. 49 key passages in Homer’s own words, each with a short reading of what it is doing.
- The complete book. Every word, in a reader made for your phone. From any passage, one tap opens the book at that very page.
Step inside The Odyssey
Free, in your inbox in about a minute: the World and the complete book, on your phone.