Glossary

Mortals — Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachus, the suitors, the kings.

• Eumaeus The swineherd. Twenty years he's tended the herds of a king he believes will return. Feeds a beggar and tells him stories about the missing master.
• Laertes Odysseus's father. The old king who walked away from the palace when his wife died and his son did not return. Sleeps in dirt now, near his vines.
• Odysseus King of Ithaca. Sacker of cities. The trickster the gods allowed home, eventually. Comes back in rags and waits in his own house for the moment to break.
• Penelope Queen of Ithaca. Holds a hundred suitors at arm's length with a loom and a maybe. Grew older alone, learning that hope is a thing you ration.
• Telemachus Odysseus's son. A boy when his father sailed, a man by the time he returns. Watches the suitors devour his birthright and learns to act anyway.
• Tiresias The blind Theban prophet. Walks among the dead with his mind intact while every other shade hungers for the blood. Speaks the great prophecy.

Athena, Poseidon, Zeus, Hermes — the immortals who shape the journey.

• Athena Grey-eyed goddess of cunning. Odysseus's protector. Wears whatever face she needs and pulls strings he never sees.
• Calypso Nymph-goddess of Ogygia. Held Odysseus seven years on her island, fed him, loved him, offered him eternity. He chose Ithaca.
• Circe Sorceress-goddess of Aeaea. Daughter of Helios. Turned Eurylochus's men to pigs. Became Odysseus's lover, then his guide.
• Poseidon God of the sea. Father of the Cyclops. The grudge that kept Odysseus on the water for ten years.
• Zeus King of the gods. The law behind hospitality, the hand behind the lightning, the final word when Olympus speaks.
• Aeolus's Twelve Children Six sons married to six daughters on the bronze island. Aeolus's children, who never left their father's hall and never stopped eating.

Cyclops, sirens, Charybdis — the not-quite-mortal, not-quite-divine.

• Polyphemus One-eyed son of Poseidon. Lives in a cave the size of a hall. Eats men two at a time and washes them down with milk.
• Argos Odysseus's old hunting dog. Once fast enough to run down hare and goat on Ithaca. Now a bag of ribs on a dung heap by the gate.
• Charybdis A whirlpool that breathes. Every forty breaths a column of sea explodes upward, then the water sucks down hard enough to swallow timbers whole.
• Circe's Wolves and Mountain Lions The big predators of Aeaea, tame as house dogs. They press their heads into the strangers' thighs and watch from the shade. They were men once.
• Eumaeus's Pigs The swineherd's herd. Penned by size and age, fed and kept for a master twenty years gone. They are the work of loyalty made flesh.
• Polyphemus's Flock Great rams and ewes the size of horses. Penned in the cave by night, driven out at dawn. The escape rides under their bellies.

Ithaca, Troy, the underworld — the geography of the wandering.

• Ithaca Odysseus's island kingdom under the western sky. Sharp rocks, wild weather, olive groves, goat tracks. The thing he chooses over a goddess's eternity.
• Troy The city the Greeks besieged for ten years and burned in a single night. The wound underneath every other wound in the story.
• Acheron, Cocytus, Pyriphlegethon, Styx The four rivers of the dead in Homer. Skipped in the retelling.
• Aeaea Circe's island. Black sand beach, oak forest, a stone house in a tidy clearing. Wolves and mountain lions tame at the door.
• Aeolia A floating island ringed by sheer bronze walls. Home of Aeolus the wind keeper. A month of healing, then ruin.
• Circe's House A stone house in a clearing. A wide terrace, a feast spread on a long table, wolves and mountain lions watching from the shade.

The bow, moly, the obol — things that carry weight in the story.

• Odysseus's Bow The bow no other man can string. Hung in the storeroom for twenty years. Penelope sets it as the contest. The string sings like a lyre when the right hand finds it.
• The Marriage Bed of Olive Built around a living olive tree. The roots in the earth beneath the floor. No man could move it without cutting the life out of it. Two people knew that.
• Obol A small ancient Greek coin — the fee paid to Charon to ferry the dead across the river Styx into the underworld.
• Achilles's God-forged Armor The armor Hephaestus made for Achilles. After he fell at Troy the army awarded it to Odysseus, not Ajax. The choice broke Ajax. He fell on his own sword.
• Ambrosia Food of the gods. Calypso eats it at her own table. She offers Odysseus immortality in the same breath, and he says no.
• Antinous's Cup Raised to his lips. Never reaches them. The wine spills across stone, mixing with the blood that runs darker and faster.

Xenia, nostos, hubris, kleos — the Greek ideas threading the poem.

• Hubris The boast at the wrong moment. Odysseus, safely off the Cyclops's island, shouts his real name back over the waves. Poseidon hears. Ten more years.
• Kleos The reputation that outlives a man. The story bards sing after he's bones. Achilles chose it over a long life. Odysseus chose nostos over it. Both choices cost.
• Metis Cunning. Not just smarts — sideways thinking, trick-craft, the angle no one else sees. Odysseus's defining gift. The wooden horse. "Nobody." The bed.
• Nostos The hero's return home. Not a victory lap. Not a parade. The slow, brutal, ten-year second war of getting back to a wife, a son, a rocky island, and a self.
• The Bow Contest String the bow. Shoot an arrow through twelve axes. The hand that does it gets Penelope. Only one man alive can do it.
• Xenia The sacred bond between host and guest, watched over by Zeus. Feed the stranger before you ask his name. Honor it and you live well. Break it and the gods come down.