Penelope was having a baby. Everybody was really excited. It’s a boy!
Lots of ships started coming. The people told Odysseus about the war in Troy. He comforted his wife. Then the army left.
On the ship Athena told Odysseus not to worry. Finally they came to Troy. The battle went on for a long time. Hector and Achilles got killed.
Odysseus thought of the idea of the Trojan Horse. One of the Greeks said the horse was a gift. Soothsayer did not believe him. He was strangled by a sea serpent.
The Trojans brought the horse in and had a big ceremony. That night the remaining Greek warriors got out of the horse and won the war.
Poseidon got angry. He wanted revenge.
Back home Penelope was really, really upset. She was very sad about how Odysseus had left. His mother said he was probably dead.
Out on the sea, Odysseus spotted land. It was not his home. They had gotten lost. Hopefully they would find someone that would help them.
When they were searching the men reached a cave. A Cyclops, named Polyphemus, trapped them. He ate a man. The other men put a stick in Polyphemus’s only eye. Then they escaped when he opened the door.
Aeolus, god of the wind, made it so only the West Wind blew. The other winds he gave to Odysseus in a sack.
Odysseus and the men got back home very quickly. Right before they reached shore one of the men opened the bag. Wind burst out in every direction and blew them away. They came to shore very far from home. The ship was wrecked.
Some men went out to hunt. They found nothing. Back at the shore a pig came running. A man came and said not to kill it, for it was on of the men. At a palace, a woman had put a spell on most of the men. Odysseus went to find her. Hermes gave him something to eat that made it so he would not turn into an animal.
At the palace Odysseus got the woman to turn his men back into humans.
Back home Odysseus’s mother killed herself. She could not stand life without Odysseus.
At the palace the woman said that Odysseus had to travel to the land of the dead. A man there knows how to get him back home.
So he traveled down to the underworld with a dead sheep. He learned how to get back home. Climbing back up he saw his mother.
The men traveled between two rocks. A hydra was there. It ate all of the men except for Odysseus.
He got caught on Calypso’s island. Calypso would not let him go. Hermes came and made her let him go.
Meanwhile, Odysseus’s son set out to find Odysseus.
Poseidon was angry. He wanted Odysseus to suffer. Odysseus fell unconscious, and woke up again on dry land.
The people there took Odysseus to see the king. When he heard that the man really was Odysseus, the king was very excited. He gave Odysseus his finest ship to take home.
When he reached home, Odysseus found his house. At first his son did not recognize him. After a while, though he realized that it really was his father.
At the fire, Athena made Odysseus an old man. Only his son would know it was him now.
Penelope set up a task for all of the men that wanted to marry her. If they could use Odysseus’s bow and shoot it through a whole row of little hoops, they would get to take Odysseus’s place.
Odysseus had a turn. He was the only man who made it through all of the little hoops. After that, he killed all of the other men. He then turned back into his original self.
Penelope was very happy to see him! Finally, after a long time, she and Odysseus were reunited.
The end
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