Begin by linking here to a summary of the plot of the Odyssey. Review the events of the first five books and preview the action of Books 6-8.
Book 6: Plot Situation
In Book 5, the scene shifts from Telemachus back to Calypso's island, Ogygia. Athena extracts from Zeus permission to start Odysseus on his way home, and Zeus sends the messenger-god Hermes to Calypso, with instructions to help him depart.
Odysseus eventually sails off in a raft, and is buffetted by storms aroused by Poseidon, who is on his way home from visiting the Ethiopians.
At the end of Book 5, Odysseus reaches land (Phaeacia) ; he had completed the last part of the voyage by shedding his clothes and swimming to shore. This explains why he is naked when he is aroused from sleep by Nausicaa and her companions in Book 6.
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Book 6: Phaeacia
Odysseus, according to legend, came ashore on Phaeacia at the place known today as Palaiokastrista --an area on the northwest coast of Corfu formed by six rocky bays. On its northern promontory stands today a Byzantine monastery, built, according to tradition, on the site once occupied by the acropolis of Phaeacia and King Alcinous' palace.
On this map you can see the bays which make up Palaiokastritsa, and in these photographs you can see the geographical layout of the area, as well as the location of the monastery (marked with an arrow). A closer view of the monastery is shown here. And this close-up of the shoreline at Palaiokastritsa shows why Odysseus had so much trouble making it to shore: "There were....only jutting cliffs and rocks and barnacled crags" (13.407-8).
In the sea just beyond the monastery, a group of rocks forms Petrokaravo ("rock-ship"), and these are held to be the ship of the Phaeacians which Poseidon turned to stone (Book 13.160ff.).
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Book 8: Odysseus' Wanderings
At the end of Book 8, King Alcinous asks Odysseus to identify himself. He does so at the beginning of Book 9, and then launches into the tale of "the voyage fraught with hardship / Zeus inflicted on me, homeward bound from Troy..."
In the ancient world, there were three main schools of thought about the account of Odysseus' adventures in the Odyssey:
1. Eratosthenes (3rd century bce) thought the voyages were entirely fictitious but that "Homer intended to put the wanderings of Odysseus in the western regions" (i.e., along the coasts and islands of the Ionian, Libyan, Sicilian and Tyrrhenian Seas).
2. Crates (2nd century bce) thought the voyages were located in the outer Ocean beyond the Straits of Gibralter.
3. Strabo (late 1st century bce/early 1st century ce) thought that the voyages were real, for, as he said: "it is not Homer's way to present a mere recital of marvels in no way related to reality." Strabo thought the adventures were located in the western basin of the Mediterranean, around South Italy and Sicily.
A number of modern scholars have attempted reconstructions of the wanderings, and some have done so by sailing the hypothetical route. Link here to a movie which shows how modern scholars correlate the mythological places named in the Odyssey with real geographical locations.
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