Day 12, Book 12

Leon Belly (1870)

Again, many of the children's retellings of The Odyssey elaborate upon these brief episodes, as if they were almost the entirety of the epic – whereas by the next book, we're already back in Ithaca, with half of the poem as yet to unfold. The proto-picaresque escapades are all related in the past tense during the narration that consumes books 9–12. 

Odysseus' resoluteness (some would say stubbornness) charts this book. Returning from the underworld, listening to the seductive sirens, not fully revealing his plans for the path between (the since proverbial) Scylla and Charybdis – all are actions characterized by defiant isolation. Not surprisingly, the insubordination by his starving "headstrong men" (349) leads to the catastrophic consumption of the "oxen of the sun." By the end of the book, we have returned to the narrative present of the Phaeacian banquet: "His tale was over now" (13.1).