The Odyssey by Homer

The Odyssey by Homer

Finished July 18, 2026

When I was looking up which book to read first, one or more people made the comment to read The Iliad first because The Odyssey is better and so you’re saving the best for last. I have yet to really suss out why but I liked The Iliad way more. Maybe because it had that shonen anime feel (that I really liked) to it..? Maybe because of Patroclus? I’m not sure. Though now that I’m writing this the day after finishing it, maybe The Odyssey is better than I thought at the time. Let’s see what the quotes have to say.

Ah, wait, now I’m laughing thinking “no, this is a shonen anime in its own way—it’s just a harem plot instead.” Because alllll the ladies out there want a piece of Odysseus…Calypso would still have him in her lair if Zeus hadn’t ordered her to let him go:

With that the powerful giant-killer sped away.
The queenly nymph sought out the great Odysseus—
the commands of Zeus still ringing in her ears—
and found him there on the headland, sitting, still,
weeping, his eyes never dry, his sweet life flowing away
with the tears he wept for his foiled journey home,
since the nymph no longer pleased. In the nights, true,
he’d sleep with her in the arching cave—he had no choice—
unwilling lover alongside lover all too willing…

No, darling, you don’t understand—I had to fuck Calypso for seven years. There was just no other way! But I cried every day afterward, I promise!

But it wasn’t all just fucking goddesses or nymphs or whatever. Every once in a while you land on the island of Cyclops:

Not a word in reply to that, the ruthless brute
Lurching up, lunged out with his hands toward my men
and snatching two at once, rapping them on the ground
he knocked them dead like pups—
their brains gushed out all over, soaked the floor—
and ripping them limb from limb to fix his meal
he bolted them down like a mountain-lion, left no scrap,
devoured entrails, flesh and bones, marrow and all!

And yes, that is extremely disgusting but I can’t help but point out it was entirely avoidable. They land on this island, see a bunch of sheep and goats or whatever, kill them and eat them. Great. But rather than just being content with that, they go further inland because Odysseus is dying of curiosity, go into the deadly giant gross man’s cave house, eat all his cheese and drink his milk and how is that appropriate? And you may be saying to yourself, “Yes, but eating all his cheese and drinking all his milk doesn’t merit bashing their brains out and eating them.” And you might be right—but they could have also—since the journey hadn’t exactly been easy so far—just, I dunno, not have courted more disaster than absolutely necessary? Just a thought?

Anyway, we get a fantastically gruesome description of Odysseus and his remaining men stabbing the Cyclops’ eye:

Hoisting high that olive stake with its stabbing point,
straight into the monster’s eye they rammed it hard—
I drove my weight on it from above and bored it home
as a shipwright bores his beam with a shipwright’s drill
that men below, whipping the strap back and forth, whirl
and the drill keeps twisting faster, never stopping—
So we seized our stake with its fiery tip
and bored it round and round in the giant’s eye
till blood came boiling up around that smoking shaft
and the hot blast singed his brow and eyelids round the core
and the broiling eyeball burst—
its crackling roots blazed
and hissed—
as a blacksmith plunges a glowing ax or adze
in an ice-cold bath and metal screeches steam
and its temper hardens—that’s the iron’s strength—
so the eye of the Cyclops sizzled round that stake!

So okay, they eat the guy’s food, he eats a couple of them, they stab/broil his eyeball out and escape underneath his sheep and steal those and you’d think, “that was a close one, Odysseus, maybe you should quit while you’re ahead, huh?” Nah. Not when you can taunt him the moment you think you’ve reached safety:

So they begged
but they could not bring my fighting spirit round.
I called back with another burst of anger, ‘Cyclops—
if any man on the face of the earth should ask you
who blinded you, shamed you so—say Odysseus,
raider of cities, he gouged out your eye,
Laertes’ son who makes his home in Ithaca!’

And that’s when I was reminded of my high school English teacher explaining the concept of hubris.

Okay, mostly unrelated to anything, I had to included this:

The king had sired twelve children within his halls,
six daughters and six sons in the lusty prime of youth,
so he gave his daughters as wives to his six sons.

That…sounds like such a bad idea, really.

I had to laugh at this; no one hates women as much as other women. Athena advising Telemachus:

You know how the heart of a woman always works:
she likes to build the wealth of her new groom—
of the sons she bore, of her dear, departed husband,
not a memory of the dead, no questions asked.

Then one of my favorite parts of the whole thing and it’s a relatively small bit, but we have Odysseus’ very old dog Argos, the one being that recognized him when he came home:

But the moment he sensed Odysseus standing by
he thumped his tail, nuzzling low, and his ear dropped,
though he had no strength to drag himself an inch
toward his master.

Speaking of dogs, I thought this was a little excessive but whatever, why not:

Melanthius?
They hauled him out through the doorway, into the court,
lopped his nose and ears with a ruthless knife,
tore his genitals out for the dogs to eat raw
and in manic fury hacked off hands and feet.

Perhaps that isn’t the best quote to precede this next one, of the old nurse telling Penelope that Odysseus has returned (and killed all those pesky suitors):

How it would have thrilled your heart to see him—
splattered with bloody filth, a lion with his kill!

What can I say, old nurse lady knows what’s hot.

Speaking of hot, we get a scene at the end that was described similarly in the beginning, though I don’t remember now what for. But this description is pretty great:

The maid Eurynome bathed him, rubbed him down with oil
and drew around him a royal cape and choice tunic too.
And Athena crowned the man with beauty, head to foot,
made him taller to all eyes, his build more massive,
yes, and down from his brow the great goddess
ran his curls like thick hyacinth clusters
full of blooms. As a master craftsman washes
gold over beaten silver—a man the god of fire
and Queen Athena trained in every fine technique—
and finishes off his latest effort, handsome work…
so she lavished splendor over his head and shoulders now.
He stepped from his bath, glistening like a god,
and back he went to the seat he had left […]

I just love that Athena’s like, “he’s finally home, he needs to impress his wife, let’s make him really hot.” I also love that “really hot” means “tall and beefy”…”massive” even, which is delightful. Who even needs Aphrodite when Athena is out here, blessing the world with tall, massive beefcakes.

Now that I’ve typed all that out, maybe this book was better than I thought. By all accounts it really should be “better” than The Iliad but for me, I think The Iliad is still better by a smidge.

Rating: 4 beefy stars