An essential guide to The Odyssey
This week, Matt Damon hits the big screen as Odysseus, King of Ithaca, in Christopher Nolan’s long-anticipated adaption of The Odyssey. This epic tale has been told and retold, translated and adapted many times over the last 3,000 years, and now Nolan is giving it its most lavish cinematic treatment yet. If you’re thinking of going back to explore Homer’s original poem, here is your essential guide to The Odyssey.
What is The Odyssey?
The Odyssey is an epic poem that was first written down in the 7th or 8th centuries BC, in an archaic form of Ionian Greek, although it very likely originated earlier, a rare survival from a pre-literate oral tradition. The Odyssey and its companion poem The Iliad are attributed to the poet Homer, but it’s unlikely they had a single author and ‘Homer’ probably didn’t exist.
Together they are the foundation stones of western culture and they have had an unparalleled influence on subsequent literature, from Apollonius of Rhodes and Virgil to James Joyce and Margaret Atwood. These two poems are still read today because they are vast, dramatic myths featuring monsters, battles, witches and gods, but also because they contain universal human stories of courage, cunning, loyalty, love and homecoming.
What is The Odyssey about?
Ten years after the Trojan War has ended, Queen Penelope of Ithaca is still waiting for her husband, Odysseus, to return. She is besieged by dozens of increasingly rowdy suitors but she refuses to remarry. With the help of the goddess Athena, her son Telemachus leaves home and learns that Odysseus, his father, is alive but a captive of the nymph Calypso on the island of Ogygia.
The narrative then switches to Odysseus’s point of view. He has endured ten years of misfortune and adventures with monsters, witches, cannibals and ghosts. Perhaps now, however, with the gods on his side, he will finally make it home to Ithaca and his family.
Who are the main characters?
Humans
- Odysseus: King of Ithaca, known for his cunning
- Penelope: Queen of Ithaca, Odysseus’s faithful wife
- Telemachus: Prince of Ithaca, the son of Odysseus and Penelope
- Menelaus: King of Sparta, brother of Agamemnon, King of Mycenae
- Helen of Troy: Menelaus’s wife, who eloped with the Trojan prince Paris
- Nausicaa: Princess of Phaeacia, who finds the shipwrecked Odysseus
- Eumaeus: a loyal Ithacan swineherd
- Laertes: Odysseus’s father, king of the Cephallenians
- The suitors: more than a hundred men who would like to marry Penelope, led by the arrogant Antinous and Eurymachus
Gods and monsters
- Athena: goddess of wisdom, daughter of Zeus, she disguises herself as Mentes and then Mentor, Telemachus’s advisors
- Poseidon: god of the sea and storms, Odysseus’s enemy
- Helios: god of the sun, whose sacred cattle are eaten by Odysseus’s men
- Hermes: the messenger of the gods, he negotiates with Calypso
- Calypso: a nymph who falls in love with Odysseus
- Polyphemus: a giant one-eyed cyclops, son of Poseidon
- Circe: an amorous witch, daughter of Helios
- Scylla and Charybdis: a many-headed monster and a sea-swallowing monster
- The Sirens: beautiful but deadly creatures, whose singing is impossible to resist
Best translations and retellings of The Odyssey
The short answer
– Best classic translation: The Odyssey translated by E. V. Rieu
– Most beautiful and poetic: The Odyssey translated by Robert Fitzgerald
– Most accurate: The Odyssey translated by Daniel Mendelsohn
– Best audiobook: The Odyssey dramatised by Simon Armitage
– Best for children: The Odyssey retold by Geraldine McCaughrean
– Best retelling: Odyssey by Stephen Fry
What is the best translation for first-time readers?
Date: 1996
Verse or prose? Verse
Of all the English versions available, Robert Fagles’ verse translation of The Odyssey achieves an especially even-handed balance between narrative momentum and poetic grandeur. His language is fresh, capturing both the excitement of the adventures and the pathos of the relationships. Ted Hughes thought it was ‘wonderfully readable’ with ‘just the right blend of roughness and sophistication.’ This edition also includes an excellent introduction by Bernard Knox, which has helpful context for those approaching The Odyssey for the first time.
What is the best classic translation?
Date: 1946
Verse or prose? Prose
E. V. Rieu’s translation of The Odyssey was the first title in the Penguin Classics series and for a long time it was the best-selling of all Penguin books. Rieu became the editor of Penguin Classics and ran the series for twenty years. His straightforward prose focuses on the clarity of the storytelling, which makes for an extremely accessible version of The Odyssey that reads more like a novel than a poem. ‘Something important has happened,’ reported Reynolds’ News in 1946. ‘There is a new translation of The Odyssey, a very contemporary translation, and it costs only one shilling. This is revolutionary.’
What is the most beautiful and poetic translation?
Date: 1961
Verse or prose? Verse
The American poet Robert Fitzgerald’s verse translation of The Odyssey is measured and musical. It prioritises rhythm, tone and elegance over strict accuracy, which makes it a particular pleasure to read, especially out loud. This was the standard translation in America in the second half of the 20th century. As C. S. Lewis said, it has ‘a strong salty flavour of its own. And it makes you see things.’
What is the most accurate translation of The Odyssey?
Date: 2025
Verse or prose? Verse
‘Mendelsohn steers an impeccable course between sounding contemporary and preserving the melancholy and grandeur of the Greek,’ says the Daily Telegraph. In this recent verse translation, Mendelsohn reproduces many of Homer’s formal qualities: his enjambment, alliteration and assonance, his repetitions and formulaic patterns. Mendelsohn even approximates Homer’s dactylic hexameter, recreating the stately, hypnotic pace of the original. His translation is also lucid and highly readable; it’s a remarkable achievement.
What is the best audiobook of The Odyssey?
Date: 2004
Verse or prose? Verse drama
Simon Armitage, the Poet Laureate, created this radio adaptation of The Odyssey for BBC Radio 4. The full cast recording, starring Tim McInnerny as Odysseus, Amanda Redman as Penelope and Benedict Cumberbatch as Telemachus, is a gripping piece of radio drama with an immersive sound design that takes the story back to its roots in oral culture. It’s ‘as irresistible as gravity,’ said the Independent on Sunday, ‘a production so thrilling that it rapidly becomes unthinkable to press the stop – or even the pause – button.’ The running time is three hours and fifty minutes.
What is the best version of The Odyssey for children?
The Odyssey retold by Geraldine McCaughrean
Date: 1993
Verse or prose? Prose
The novelist Geraldine McCaughrean has an impressive track record of reimagining classic literature for children. She has produced versions of The Canterbury Tales, A Pilgrim’s Progress, Oliver Twist, Moby-Dick, The Thousand and One Nights and many others. Her version of The Odyssey makes the story accessible to 12- to 16-year-olds without reducing any of the excitement, humour or wonder of the original. For even younger readers, there is David Walser’s picture book retelling, with illustrations by the great Jan Pieńkowski.
What is the best retelling of The Odyssey?
Date: 2024
Verse or prose? Prose
Many writers have reimagined versions of The Odyssey. James Joyce’s novel Ulysses (1922) is set over a single day in Dublin in 1904, but the structure is intricately based on episodes from The Odyssey. More recently we’ve had Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad (2005) and Madeline Miller’s Circe (2018), and following the success of his other retellings, Stephen Fry published Odyssey in 2024, infusing the epic poem with his characteristic warmth, wit, knowledge and conversational ease. This is a ‘jaunty version of Homer’ said the Guardian: ‘relatable and full of humour’.
Frequently asked questions
Who wrote The Odyssey?
Nobody really knows. The identity of Homer is mysterious. He may have been a blind minstrel from Ionia, or a Babylonian hostage, or a Sicilian princess (as Robert Graves imagines her in his 1955 novel Homer’s Daughter). Most likely, ‘Homer’ is a collective term for an oral storytelling tradition.
Do you need to read The Iliad first?
No. The events of The Odyssey pick up after the events in The Iliad, but the two great poems were most likely composed independently and both can be read as standalone works.
How long is The Odyssey?
In the original Greek, The Odyssey has 120,000 words, similar in length to Wuthering Heights or Sense and Sensibility. In English translation the length varies, but most editions are between 450 and 550 pages. The Odyssey is divided into 24 books, as is The Iliad. And for cinephiles, the Christopher Nolan's 2026 film adaptation is 2 hours 52 minutes long.
Is The Odyssey difficult to read?
The Odyssey isn't difficult to read, if you choose an engaging modern translation. If you are more used to reading novels than poetry, you might find a prose translation easier than verse.