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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.
Ye wave-trod watermen, as ill as she
That all the earth in infelicity
Of rapine plunges; who upon your fare
As sterv’d-like-ravenous as cormorants are;
The lives ye lead, but in the worst degree,
Not to be envied more than misery;
Take shame, and fear the indignation
Of Him that thunders from the highest throne,
Hospitious Jove, who, at the back, prepares
Pains of abhorr’d effect of him that dares
The pieties break of his hospitious squares.