The poet/bard Homer, reputed to have been blind, is credited with organizing the Odyssey, the epic tale of the Greek hero Odysseus, who was punished by Poseidon (Neptune, the sea god) for ten-long-years after the Trojan War. Homer had lived around the time when alphabets and writing were developed (around 1,000 BC), so the bard’s epic poem was later recorded by educated scribes and exists today in its present form.

In 1184 BC, King Odysseus was returning home from the Trojan War to Ithaca, his native island off the coast of Greece. The Greek hero had an armada of twelve ships upon leaving Troy, and his famous confrontation with the contemptible Cyclops (son of Poseidon, whom Odysseus had blinded) was one major episode in a ten-year mis-adventure after leaving Troy. King Agamemnon of Mycenae, and his brother, King Menelaus of Sparta, had led the great expedition of a thousand Greek ships and 50,000 warriors against the Asia Minor city of Troy. The Trojan War had taken ten-long-years to fight, and the lengthy conflict was finally won by Odysseus, a brilliant schemer, who had designed the famous Trojan Horse. The cunning Greek warriors situated the structure outside the main gates of Troy, which was strategically located at the Hellespont Channel located between Greece and Asia Minor (now Turkey).

Odysseus had been away from Ithaca for 20 years; ten years fighting in the Trojan War, and another ten years being tormented in a series of mis-adventures caused by Poseidon, for the returning Ithacan King blinding the sea-god’s son, the one-eyed Cyclops. Homer’s epic poem the Iliad is the story of the Trojan War, and the Odyssey recounts the fantastic challenges endured by the hero Odysseus, who survived an incredible ten-year journey home to be reunited with his faithful wife, Queen Penelope.