Twenty years after leaving for the Trojan War, Odysseus fights his way home across a hostile sea only to find his kingdom overrun — and must return in disguise to reclaim his wife, his son, and his throne from the suitors laying siege to his house.

1. Scenes 1–9

   Ithaca frozen in a decade of waiting: Penelope weaving, the suitors feasting, Telemachus unheard.

2. Scenes 9–27

   Telemachus needs proof of his father's fate; Penelope needs the throne secured before the suitors force her hand.

3. Scenes 28–29

   Telemachus sails from Ithaca in secret, crossing into the unfamiliar world beyond his mother's house.

4. Scenes 30–144

   Odysseus's remembered ordeal — Troy, the Cyclops, Circe, Hades, Charybdis — paid for in men, ships, and years, while Telemachus searches the courts of Sparta.

5. Scene 145

   Odysseus makes landfall on Ithaca at last, alone but alive — what he wanted, stripped of everything else.

6. Just before
7. Scene 149

   Telemachus takes his leave of Menelaus and Helen, still without solid news of his father.

8. Scene 150

   Disguised as a beggar, Odysseus arrives at Eumaeus's farm and learns his old friend's dogs and men have just been killed defending it from raiders.

9. Scene 151

   Tending the wounded Eumaeus, the disguised Odysseus learns Telemachus is in danger and that no one in the palace remains loyal to Odysseus's memory.

10. Scene 152

    This scene