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The epic follows a resourceful hero's prolonged voyage home after a great war, presenting episodic adventures involving sea passages, enchanted islands, perilous monsters, and divine interventions. Parallel strands depict the struggle at his household with intrusive suitors and the family members who await his return, while themes of cunning, loyalty, hospitality, identity, and fate are explored. Composed in twenty-four books and accompanied by shorter hymns and poems, the work moves between vivid narrative set pieces and reflective passages on human conduct and the gods' influence.
Pallas Minerva only I begin
To give my song; that makes war’s terrible din,
Is patroness of cities, and with Mars
Marshall’d in all the care and cure of wars,
And in everted cities, fights, and cries.
But never doth herself set down or rise
Before a city, but at both times She
All injur’d people sets on foot and free.
Give, with thy war’s force, fortune then to me,
And, with thy wisdom’s force, felicity.