The Places of Homer’s Odyssey

The twenty-one grounds of the poem: the island Odysseus spends twenty years trying to reach, the shores that keep him from it, and the cities his son sails to for news of him.

The grounds of the poem21

• IthacaOdysseus' rugged island kingdomA small, stony, goat-grazing island in the western sea, and the thing Odysseus turns down immortality to get back to.
• OgygiaCalypso's far, secluded isleThe island where Calypso keeps Odysseus for seven years, off every sea-road and far from the other gods. It is where…
• Scheria PhaeaciaLast landfall before homeThe seafarers' kingdom where Odysseus washes up naked and from which he leaves loaded with bronze and gold. Its people…
• Hades Pluto's RealmWhere the dead are questionedAcross the stream of Océanus, past the Cimmerians' permanent dusk. Odysseus digs a trench there, lets the shades…
• AeaeaCircè's wooded islandCircè's island, where half the crew spend a while as pigs and the whole company then spends a year feasting. They come…
• Cyclops-landLawless country of giantsA rich, unploughed coast where one-eyed herdsmen live in caves with no laws, no assemblies, and no ships. Odysseus…
• Thrinacia TrinacriaPasture of Helios' cattleThe island where Hyperion's herds graze under the eye of his daughters. Both Tiresias and Circè warn Odysseus to sail…
• Lotus-landShore of the forgetting flowerA coast reached after nine days driven off course, where the local food takes away any wish to go home.
• LaestrigoniaCliff-walled harbour, a trapA narrow, deep, rock-ringed port that looks like perfect shelter from the sea. Eleven ships moor inside it and none of…
• The Aeolian IsleFloating island of the windsA brass-walled island that drifts on the water, where Aeolus lives with his six sons and six daughters. Odysseus is…
• PylosNestor's sandy shoreTelemachus' first stop, where he lands in the middle of a great sacrifice to Poseidon and gets his first welcome as a…
• SpartaMenelaus' rich hallThe second and far grander stop of Telemachus' journey, where Menelaus and Helen feast him and tell him his father is…
• TroyThe war behind everythingThe city whose ten-year siege took Odysseus away and whose fall scattered the Greeks over the sea. It is remembered…
• OlympusWhere the gods decideThe gods' unshaken mountain house, above wind and weather. Athena argues Odysseus' case there twice and gets her way…
• Cave of the NaiadsGrotto above Ithaca's harbourThe nymphs' sea-cave where the Phaeacians lay the sleeping Odysseus ashore with his treasure. Athena helps him hide…
• Eumaeus's lodgeThe swineherd's hillside steadingA stone-walled farmstead the swineherd built himself, well above the town. Odysseus spends three books there in rags…
• ArgosAgamemnon's realm over the waterThe realm Agamemnon ruled and the horse-country the war-stories keep returning to — in the poem's mouth 'Argos' can be…
• CreteHundred-towned island of the talesA broad, rich island of ninety towns and mixed tongues, ruled from Cnossus, where Minos spoke with Zeus. It is the…
• EgyptRich detour of the homecomingsThe river-land where Menelaus' five surviving ships were blown off course, and where he spent seven years gathering…
• DulichiumGrain-rich island of the wooersA grain-rich, grassy island counted beside Ithaca, Same and Zacynthus whenever the suitors are numbered: two-and-fifty…
• SamosWooded isle across the straitThe wooded island across the strait from Ithaca — Same, as the catalogue of the wooers also calls it — sending…

Every ground links to its own page, with the scenes set there. See also the characters of the Odyssey and the map of bonds.