THE ODYSSEY

BOOK I

Tell me, O Muse The Muse was one of the nine goddesses of inspiration. Traditionally, the poet invokes Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry, to speak through him., of the man of many devices original: "polytropon." This famous Greek epithet describes Odysseus as a man of many turns—both in his wide travels and his clever, shifting mind., who wandered full many ways after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy The ancient city in modern-day Turkey. The "sacred citadel" refers to the fortified center of the city destroyed by the Greeks.. Many were the men whose cities he saw and whose mind he learned, aye, and many the woes he suffered in his heart upon the sea, seeking to win his own life and the return of his comrades. Yet even so he saved not his comrades, though he desired it sore, for through their own blind folly they perished—fools, who devoured the kine An archaic word for cattle. of Helios Hyperion The Titan god of the Sun. In the Odyssey, his sacred cattle are a test of restraint that Odysseus’s men fail.; but he took from them the day of their returning. Of these things, goddess, daughter of Zeus The king of the gods and ruler of Mount Olympus., beginning where thou wilt, tell thou even unto us.

Now all the rest, as many as had escaped sheer destruction, were at home, safe from both war and sea, but Odysseus alone, filled with longing for his return and for his wife, did the queenly nymph Calypso A daughter of the Titan Atlas, Calypso is a powerful sea-nymph who detains Odysseus on her island for seven years., that bright goddess, keep back in her hollow caves, yearning that he should be her husband. But when, as the seasons revolved, the year came in which the gods had ordained that he should return home to Ithaca A Greek island in the Ionian Sea, the kingdom and home of Odysseus., not even there was he free from toils, even among his own folk. And all the gods

Odyssey The story of Odysseus; the word has since come to mean any long, wandering journey., Muse, Troy, Helios Hyperion, Zeus, Odysseus, Calypso, Ithaca