Homer · 700 BCE · mediterranean

Homer's epic of the long way home. Ten years after Troy falls, Odysseus is still not back in Ithaca - held by gods, monsters, enchantresses and his own crew's appetites, losing every ship and every man he sailed with. The stops have been argued over for millennia; these are the traditional identifications across the Mediterranean.

1. 1
   Troy

   Troy falls after ten years and the Greek fleet scatters for home. Odysseus sails with twelve ships and every expectation of a short crossing to Ithaca - and will arrive alone, on someone else's boat, twenty years after he left.

2. 2
   Ismaros (Maroneia)

   The first landfall is a raid on the Cicones of Thrace, taken for plunder as if the war were still on - and the survivors return with reinforcements at dawn, killing six men from every ship. The voyage begins as it means to go on.

3. 3
   Lotus-Eaters (Djerba)

   Blown south past Cythera to a coast where the people eat the lotus, and the scouts who taste it lose all wish to go home. Odysseus has to drag them back to the ships weeping and tie them under the benches before sailing.

4. 4
   Cyclops (Sicily)

   In the cave of Polyphemus, six men are eaten before Odysseus blinds the giant and rides out under a ram. He cannot resist shouting his real name from the ship - which hands Poseidon the curse that costs him ten years.

5. 5
   Aeolia (Lipari)

   Aeolus, keeper of the winds, gives him a bag holding every gale but the one that will blow him home. Ithaca is in sight when the crew, certain the bag is gold, open it - and the storms carry them the whole way back.

6. 6
   Laestrygonians (Sardinia)

   A sheltered harbour with a narrow mouth turns out to belong to cannibal giants, who stand on the cliffs and sink the ships with boulders. Eleven crews are speared like fish. Only Odysseus, moored outside, gets away.

7. 7
   Circe - Aeaea (Cape Circeo)

   Circe turns the landing party into swine, and Odysseus - protected by a herb from Hermes - forces her to change them back. He stays a year, and it is Circe who tells him he must go to the land of the dead before he can go home.

8. 8
   Sirens (Sorrento)

   Warned by Circe, he plugs the crew's ears with wax and has himself lashed to the mast so he alone can hear the Sirens sing - and orders that whatever he does or signals, the ropes are not to be loosened.

9. 9
   Scylla & Charybdis (Messina)

   The strait offers a choice of disasters: a whirlpool that swallows a ship whole, or a six-headed monster in the cliff that takes six men. Odysseus steers for the monster without telling the crew, and loses the six.

10. 10
    Thrinacia (Sicily)

    Becalmed on the island of the Sun with the food gone, the crew swear not to touch Helios's cattle, then slaughter them while Odysseus sleeps. Zeus breaks the last ship with a thunderbolt and every man but one drowns.

11. 11
    Calypso (Gozo)

    Washed up alone on Ogygia, he is kept seven years by the nymph Calypso, who offers him immortality if he will stay - and he sits on the shore looking at the sea, until the gods order her to build him a raft and let him go.

12. 12
    Scheria (Corfu)

    Wrecked and naked on the Phaeacian shore, he is found by Nausicaa and taken to her father's court - where a bard sings of Troy, Odysseus weeps, and he tells the whole story. They row him home in a single night.

13. 13
    Ithaca

    Landed asleep on his own beach after twenty years, he comes to his hall disguised as a beggar to see who has been loyal - and strings the bow no other man can bend.