Book 9: Odysseus' story begins with some pillaging, but that gets old when the people they're pillaging turn on them, so they hit to road (ocean) and end up in the land of the lotus-eaters. Some of the men go on shore and eat some lotus and forget about home, so Odysseus goes to get them, ties them up, and puts them under benches on the ship. Given what happens to his men during the rest of this voyage, I bet his men would have rather stayed with the lotus eaters. Then they go meet the Cyclops in his cave. You know the drill. The Cyclops bashes out brains and eats some of the men. Odysseus gets him drunk, tells him his name is "No man." Then when the giant falls asleep the men put out his eye with a burning-hot stick. (Twisting it around real good, according to the story.) When the Cyclops cries for help the other giants ask who did it, and he says "No man" and they laugh and go away, thus proving that Cyclopeans are EASILY undone by wordplay. Then Odysseus and his men climb under some sheep and escape the cave in the morning, taunting the giant when they're safely afloat in the sea.
Book 10: Now the surviving members sail to Aeolia and the ruler there (Aeolus) gives them a bag of wind. They get to within a few miles of Ithaca (HOME!) when the soldiers get greedy, thinking there's gold in the bag, then open it only to be blown back by all the wind to Aeolia, where Aeolus says "Okay, obviously the gods hate you, so I'm not helping anymore. Peace out."
Then they go to another cannibal country where a king and mountainous queen eat the men until they flee to the ships, but even when there the giants are throwing rocks at them. Every ship is sunk except for the one carrying Odysseus. (Again, why couldn't he have left those guys with the lotus eaters?)
Now they sail to the island of Circe, where she turns some of the men into pigs. Odysseus, with the help of Hermes, gets them turned back into men (younger, hotter men at that) and they all live a life of luxury with Circe for a year until them men point out to Odysseus that maybe they should go home. Circe tells them that to get home they have to sail to Hades first and talk to some dead guy, who must be really bored because he's the only dead guy who still has any sense of his old self in Hades. When they get on the way, a young guy who was drunk from the night before is startled awake and falls off a roof, breaking his neck. He goes to Hades a little quicker than the rest of them.
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