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. Scene 151

   At Eumaeus's hut, disguised as a beggar, Odysseus begins quietly assembling the plan to reclaim his house.

7. Just before
8. Scene 154

   Approaching the temple, the disguised Odysseus — mistaken for a common beggar — tries to warn Telemachus's party he carries a message from Eumaeus, but is shoved aside by guards.

9. Scene 155

   Telemachus and Mentor are led into the temple's inner sanctum, forced to surrender their weapons at the door.

10. Scene 156

    In the inner sanctum, the "head priest" greeting them is revealed to the audience as Irus in disguise, offering suspicious wine.

11. Scene 157

    This scene