Characters
- Alcinous — conveyers home (background of Books 6–13)
- Argos — aged dog; recognizes Odysseus and dies
- Eumaeus — loyal swineherd; host and ally
- Melanthius — disloyal goatherd; insults the beggar
- Odysseus — landed by Phaeacians; disguised beggar; reveals himself to Telemachus
- People of Crisa — disguises and restores Odysseus; guides Telemachus home
- Suitors — still feasting; ambush failed
- Telemachus — returns from Sparta; recognizes father; co-planner
Places
- Eumaeus’s steading — recognition and plotting
- Ithaca — secret landing
- Ithaca palace road — Melanthius; Argos at the gate
- Scheria — departure of the Phaeacian escort
Themes
Narrative
The Phaeacians, after hearing Odysseus’s tale and loading him with gifts, conveyed him sleeping to Ithaca and laid him ashore in the harbor of Phorcys; Poseidon turned their returning ship to stone as warning. Odysseus woke not knowing his own land until Athena revealed it, transformed him into a ragged beggar, and sent him to the loyal swineherd Eumaeus while she fetched Telemachus home from Sparta, past the suitors’ ambush.
At Eumaeus’s hut Odysseus tested the swineherd’s loyalty with false Cretan tales; Eumaeus spoke of his lost master with steadfast love and of the suitors’ insolence. Telemachus arrived; Athena restored Odysseus’s true form in private, and father and son wept and planned: Telemachus would return to the palace; Odysseus would enter as beggar, endure insult, and await the signal for vengeance. Melanthius the goatherd abused him on the road; the dog Argos recognized his master and died. Books 13–16 thus reunite the household’s free men in secret and move the beggar into the hall where the bow contest will end the suitors’ feast.