The Odyssey holds two journeys at once. A father is trying to get home from a war that ended ten years ago, and a son who has never met him is sailing out to ask whether he is even alive. Both maps are below, in order, with what happened at every stop.
The first journey is legend. The Odyssey never charts real waters, and people have argued for centuries over where, if anywhere, each island lies — so the stops here sit at the traditional identifications and the shape of the voyage is the thing to look at: out from fallen Troy in the east, blown far west into a world of monsters, then the long, costly haul back to Ithaca.
Tap any numbered stop to read what happened there.
The fourteen stops, in order
Odysseus tells most of this himself, as a guest at a Phaeacian dinner table — which is why the wandering is told out of order in the poem, and why the book numbers below jump about. He leaves Troy with twelve ships and reaches Ithaca alone.
1 Troy
Where it all begins. The ten-year war is won and the city burned; Odysseus sails for home with twelve ships heavy with plunder. Book 9 →
2 Ismarus (the Cicones)
His men sack the coastal town of the Cicones, then linger to feast instead of fleeing. The Cicones rally and kill six men from every ship — the first lesson, ignored. Book 9 →
3 The Lotus-Eaters
A gentle shore whose flower makes men forget home. Those who taste it lose all wish to leave, and Odysseus drags them back to the ships in tears. Book 9 →
4 The Island of the Cyclops
Trapped in the cave of the one-eyed giant Polyphemus, Odysseus blinds him with a sharpened stake and escapes — but the boast he cannot resist earns him Poseidon's lasting hatred. Book 9 →
5 Aeolia (the Bag of Winds)
Aeolus gives Odysseus a bag holding every gale but the one that blows him home. In sight of Ithaca his crew open it, and the storm hurls them all the way back. Book 10 →
6 The Laestrygonians
A harbor ringed by cannibal giants. They smash eleven of the twelve ships with boulders and spear the men like fish; only Odysseus's own ship breaks free. Book 10 →
7 Aeaea (Circe)
The witch Circe turns his men into pigs. Shielded by a god-given herb, Odysseus forces her to change them back — then lingers a full year in her halls. Book 10 →
8 The Land of the Dead
At the edge of the world Odysseus calls up the dead. The blind prophet Teiresias tells him how to reach home — and what it will cost him. Book 11 →
9 The Sirens
Their song lures sailors onto the rocks. Odysseus plugs his crew's ears with wax and has himself lashed to the mast, so he alone can hear it and live. Book 12 →
10 Scylla & Charybdis
A narrow strait between a six-headed monster and a ship-swallowing whirlpool. To get through, Odysseus must let Scylla snatch six of his men. Book 12 →
11 Thrinacia (Cattle of the Sun)
Stranded and starving, the crew slaughter the Sun-god's sacred cattle despite every warning. For that, Zeus destroys the last ship and every man but one. Book 12 →
12 Ogygia (Calypso)
The lone survivor washes up on the nymph Calypso's island, where she keeps him seven years. Even her offer of immortality cannot outweigh his longing for home. Book 5 →
13 Scheria (the Phaeacians)
Shipwrecked once more, Odysseus is taken in by the gentle, seafaring Phaeacians. At their feast he tells his whole story at last — and they carry him home. Books 6–8 →
14 Ithaca
Home. The Phaeacians set the sleeping Odysseus on his own shore. The voyage is over — and the hardest fight, to win back his house, is about to begin. Book 13 →
The other journey: Telemachus goes looking
While his father is stranded on Calypso’s island, Telemachus makes a journey of his own — the first four books of the poem are his, not Odysseus’s. He is about twenty, he has never seen his father, and a hundred suitors are eating the household empty while he does nothing about it. Athena tells him to go and ask.
His route is worth putting beside his father’s, because it is the opposite kind of map. These are real, findable places on the Peloponnese: a short hop by sea to Pylos, then a chariot ride inland to Sparta and back. Where the father is lost among monsters, the son travels a road you could drive today.
Tap any numbered stop to read what happened there.
The six stops of Telemachus
1 Ithaca
Home, and the problem. A hundred suitors are eating his father's house empty and courting his mother. Athena, disguised, tells him to stop waiting like a child and go looking for news. He calls an assembly, gets nowhere, and slips away by night without telling Penelope. Books 1–2 →
2 Pylos
The ship lands at dawn while the whole city is on the beach sacrificing black bulls to Poseidon. Old Nestor feeds him, tells him how the Greeks scattered after Troy and how Agamemnon was murdered on his own doorstep — a warning about what coming home can cost — but has no news of Odysseus. Book 3 →
3 Pherae
Nestor sends him on to Sparta overland, with his son Pisistratus driving. They ride all day and put up for the night at the house of Diocles. One quiet stop, and the only night of the journey that belongs to nobody famous. Book 3 →
4 Sparta
In the valley of Lacedaemon he finds Menelaus mid-wedding-feast, and Helen — the woman the war was fought over — moving through the hall. Menelaus tells him he wrestled the Old Man of the Sea for news, and heard that Odysseus is alive, held on an island by the nymph Calypso. It is the first hard word Telemachus has ever had. Book 4 →
5 Asteris
While he is away the suitors put to sea to kill him on the way back, lying in wait at a rocky islet with twin harbours between Ithaca and Samos. Warned by Athena, he sails a different course and slips past them in the dark. Book 4 →
6 Ithaca — the far shore
He lands away from the town, sends the ship ahead without him, and walks up to the hut of Eumaeus the swineherd. The beggar sitting by that fire is his father. The search ends where it started, and the two of them begin planning the killing. Book 15 →
Print or save the maps
Both maps as single images — open one for the full-size version, or right-click to save it. Free to use for schoolwork or teaching.
Prefer the journey in words? The journey guide walks through the voyage as a story, the timeline sets it against the wider Greek world, and the monsters get a page of their own. Or just start reading.