The Homecoming Deception — The Odyssey

After Ulysses finished telling his story, King Alcinous asked every noble Phaeacian to give him a tripod and a cauldron for the journey home. They loaded the gifts on the ship, spread a rug for Ulysses in the stern, and rowed out while he fell into a deep sleep. The ship raced across the sea faster than any bird and reached the harbor of Ithaca at dawn. The crew lifted him, still asleep, onto the sand beside all his treasure, then sailed away.

Poseidon was angry that the Phaeacians had brought Ulysses home safely. He asked Zeus for permission to punish them, and Zeus agreed. As their ship neared Scheria, Poseidon turned it into a rock rooted in the sea. The Phaeacians were terrified and sacrificed twelve bulls to him, and Alcinous remembered his father's old prophecy. From that day they stopped escorting travelers across the ocean.

Ulysses woke on his own beach but Athena had covered Ithaca in mist so he could not recognize his homeland. He thought the Phaeacians had cheated him and left him somewhere else. He counted his gold, bronze, and clothes until he knew nothing was missing, then wandered the shore in grief. Athena met him dressed as a young shepherd. Before he knew who she was, he told a detailed false story about fleeing Crete after killing a king's son.

Athena laughed, changed into her true shape, and told him he was home. She helped him hide the Phaeacian gifts in the cave of the nymphs and warned him not to tell anyone he had returned. Suitors had been eating his food and chasing Penelope for three years. Telemachus was safe in Sparta, but enemies were waiting to ambush him on the voyage home. Athena touched Ulysses with her wand and aged him into a filthy beggar with torn clothes and weak eyes. She told him to go to the swineherd Eumaeus while she sailed to Sparta to fetch his son.