The Journey

Ten years, twelve ships, and one man left at the end of it. This is the voyage in the order it happened. Homer never gives coordinates and the places have never been identified, so this is a chart of a story, not of a sea — where later writers guessed at a real location, each stop says so.

The world the Odyssey describes: known land, the river Ocean running round the rim, and the wanderings happening somewhere outside all bearings. Once a storm drives him past Cape Malea, Homer stops giving directions — so this chart shows a story's geography, not a sea's.

THE RIVER OCEAN1Troy2Cicons3Lotus-eaters4Cyclopes5Aeolus6Laestrygonians7Circe8Hades9Sirens10Scylla11Thrinacia12Ogygia13Scheria14Ithaca
the world the poem gives bearings for — everything outside it is elsewheretold as it happensOdysseus's own flashback (Books IX–XII)

Hover or tap a stop. The numbers run in the order he sailed them — which is not the order the poem tells them: stops 1 to 11 are a story he tells at a dinner party on stop 13.

The whole route as a list
  1. 1. Troy — Book IX; tradition: Hisarlik, north-west Turkey
  2. 2. The Cicons — Book IX; tradition: the Thracian coast; cost: six men from every ship
  3. 3. The Lotus-eaters — Book IX; tradition: Djerba, off Tunisia
  4. 4. The land of the Cyclopes — Book IX; tradition: the Sicilian coast below Etna; cost: six men eaten
  5. 5. The island of the winds — Book X; tradition: the Aeolian islands
  6. 6. The Laestrygonians — Book X; tradition: Bonifacio, between Corsica and Sardinia; cost: eleven of twelve ships
  7. 7. Aeaea — Circe's island — Book X; tradition: Monte Circeo, west Italy
  8. 8. The house of Hades — Book XI; beyond the world
  9. 9. The Sirens — Book XII; tradition: Li Galli, off the Amalfi coast
  10. 10. Scylla and Charybdis — Book XII; tradition: the Strait of Messina; cost: six men, one per head
  11. 11. Thrinacia — the cattle of the Sun — Book XII; tradition: Sicily; cost: the last ship and every remaining man
  12. 12. Ogygia — Calypso's island — Book V; tradition: Gozo, by Malta
  13. 13. Scheria — the Phaeacians — Book VI; tradition: Corfu
  14. 14. Ithaca — Book XIII; tradition: Ithaki, in the Ionian islands

The arithmetic of the voyage

The losses are worth reading in order, because the poem is quietly keeping score: six men per ship at the Cicons, six eaten in the cave, eleven ships of twelve destroyed in a single afternoon by the Laestrygonians, six more to Scylla, and finally the last ship and every remaining man for the sake of one meal of stolen beef. Odysseus reaches Scheria with nothing — no fleet, no crew, no plunder, not even clothes. Everything he sailed from Troy with is gone before the poem's halfway point.

Want the other half of the story? The timeline shows how the poem rearranges this route in the telling, and the relationship map shows who is who.