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. Scene 167

   Penelope announces the trial of the axes and the bow — whichever suitor can string Odysseus's bow and thread the axes wins her hand, forcing the endgame.

8. Just before
9. Scene 170

   Telemachus watches the disguised Odysseus and Eumaeus approach the palace, and sees his father recognize the dying Argus on the dung heap.

10. Scene 171

    Telemachus offers the disguised Odysseus a seat and food among the beggars in the hall; Antinous mocks the gesture.

11. Scene 172

    Late that night, the disguised Odysseus finally speaks with Penelope through the screen, who, unaware of his identity, invokes her missing husband's rule of hospitality.

12. Scene 173

    This scene