Timeline
A day-by-day chronology of the Iliad and Odyssey, derived from each book’s scene apparatus. Summarized spans — stretches the poem itself compresses into a handful of lines — draw narrower and hatched, with their day-count labeled; dramatized days draw full width.
Day-counts vary in the scholarship — this timeline follows the traditional reading of 51 Iliad days (also cited as 50, 52, or 54 by inclusive/exclusive counting of the summarized spans) and a Day 1–41 Odyssey calendar, one day ahead of Delebecque’s reported Day-33 telling; treat totals as citable convention, not settled consensus.
Iliad 51 days
- 8 days compressed Nine days of plague
ἐννῆμαρ … τῇ δεκάτῃ
Apollo’s arrows range through the camp for nine days; on the tenth, Achilles calls the host to assembly.
Il. 1.53–54 — jump to the passage
- 10 days compressed Twelve-day divine absence
ἀλλ᾽ ὅτε δή ῥ᾽ ἐκ τοῖο δυωδεκάτη γένετ᾽ ἠώς
The gods return from feasting among the Aethiopians on the twelfth dawn, and Thetis makes her plea to Zeus.
Il. 1.493–494 — jump to the passage
- 11 days compressed Twelve-day maltreatment of Hector
ἀλλ᾽ ὅτε δή ῥ᾽ ἐκ τοῖο δυωδεκάτη γένετ᾽ ἠώς
The same twelfth-dawn formula recurs: Achilles drags Hector’s body around Patroclus’s tomb each night for twelve days, until Apollo protests. A further nine-day quarrel among the gods runs inside this span.
Il. 24.31 (= 1.493); cf. 24.107 — jump to the passage
- 10 days compressed The truce: nine days, then the burial
τῇ δὲ δυωδεκάτῃ πολεμίξομεν εἴ περ ἀνάγκη
Priam’s terms: nine days of mourning, burial and feast on the tenth, a mound on the eleventh, battle again on the twelfth if it must be. The poem narrates the nine days of wood-gathering and the cremation on the tenth, but ends before reaching its own stated twelfth-day deadline — the compression is the poet’s own.
Il. 24.667 (deadline, quoted); cf. 24.664–667, 781, 784–787 — jump to the passage
Odyssey 41 days
Days 1–6 (the Telemachy, Books 1–4) and Book 5’s second divine council may narrate overlapping, not strictly sequential, time — ancient epic tends to tell simultaneous events one after another rather than in parallel (Zieliński’s Law).
Day 34 — the telling
“Morning of the 34th day of the action of the poem”… “the dawn of the 35th day.” — Monro, on Od. 13.18 and 13.93 (Sources)
“The date is given with a precision most unusual in epic poetry.” — Gilbert Murray, 1924 (Sources)
Told on Day 34 — the decade recounted at the Phaeacian feast
- The Cyclops’ cave (Od. 9.105ff.)
- Circe: a year’s stay — ἐνιαυτός (Od. 10.469–474)
- The house of Hades (Od. 11.1ff.)
- Thrinacia: the cattle of the Sun (Od. 12.260ff.)
- Calypso: seven years (Od. 7.253–260)
- Ashore on Scheria (Od. 5.313–493)
Calypso: seven years: Recounted by Odysseus to Arete on Day 33, the evening before the Apologoi — not part of the Day-34 telling itself, but the same chronological decade.
Ashore on Scheria: Dramatized directly in Book 5 (Days 29–33), not part of the Day-34 retelling — the frame the Apologoi eventually catches up to.
This decade, as told in one evening — see the voyage strip below.
- 3 days compressed Building the raft
Calypso gives Odysseus an axe and shows him timber; he builds his raft over four days.
Od. 5.228–262 — jump to the passage
- 17 days compressed Seventeen days at sea
Odysseus sails alone, steering by the stars, until Poseidon spots him on the eighteenth day and raises the storm.
Od. 5.263–281 (cf. 5.278–279) — jump to the passage
- 2 days compressed Two nights adrift
The raft destroyed, Odysseus is tossed at sea for two nights and days; on the third day he sights land and swims ashore.
Od. 5.313–388 — jump to the passage
The voyage — Troy to Ithaca (approximate)
Where the day strips above dramatize the poem’s narrative present, this strip approximates the decade the Odyssey compresses into that present: the ten years’ wandering from the fall of Troy to the beach at Ithaca. Stretches the poem numbers — nine days here, a month there, Circe’s year, Calypso’s seven — draw wide, sized to their stated length; stretches it never numbers draw as narrow hatched gaps. Each station is labeled and deep-linked to its first line in the reader.
- unstated Ismarus (the Cicones)
The wind bears the fleet from Troy straight to Ismarus; the Cicones' city is sacked at once. No duration is stated for the passage or the sack.
- unstated Cape Malea
Wave, current, and North Wind drive the fleet off its course rounding Malea -- the last point on the direct road home. No duration stated.
- unstated Cythera
Swept past Cythera before the nine-day storm proper begins. No duration stated for this leg itself.
- 9 days Land of the Lotus-eaters
ἐννῆμαρ — 9 days, Od. 9.82
Nine days driven by deadly winds over the fish-filled sea; on the tenth (δεκάτῃ, 9.83) they land among the Lotus-eaters.
- unstated Land of the Cyclopes
Polyphemus's cave. No duration is stated for the stay, though the blinding and its aftermath (escape under the rams, the taunting from the ships) clearly cover more than a single day.
- 1 month Aeolia -- Aeolus's floating island (first landfall)
μῆνα — 1 month, Od. 10.14
Aeolus loves and questions Odysseus for a full month (μῆνα δὲ πάντα φίλει με, 10.14) before granting passage and the bag of bound winds.
- 9 days In sight of Ithaca -- the bag opened
ἐννῆμαρ — 9 days, Od. 10.28
Nine days under sail, Odysseus himself steering; on the tenth their own land comes in sight (10.28-29). His crew, believing the bag holds treasure, opens it while he sleeps (10.47); the freed winds drive the fleet back to Aeolia. Not a landfall -- no placeId -- but chronologically load-bearing, so it is kept as its own station rather than folded silently into Aeolia.
- unstated Aeolia (second landfall, turned away)
Aeolus refuses further aid, judging Odysseus hateful to the gods, and sends him off at once. No duration stated for this second, brief landfall.
- 6 days Laestrygonia (Telepylus)
ἑξῆμαρ — 6 days, Od. 10.80
Six days' sail (ἑξῆμαρ, 10.80), landfall on the seventh (ἑβδομάτῃ, 10.81). The Laestrygonians destroy eleven of the twelve ships; only Odysseus's own escapes.
- 1 year Aeaea -- Circe's island
ἐνιαυτός — 1 year, Od. 10.467-470
A full year (ἐνιαυτός, 10.467, resumed at 10.469 ὅτε δή ῥʼ ἐνιαυτὸς ἔην) of feasting before the crew presses Odysseus to remember his own country.
- unstated Land of the Cimmerians / the Underworld
The nekyia. No duration is stated for the crossing of Ocean or the time spent at the trench; this station carries no real-world coordinates (mythical tier, per apparatus/places.json).
- unstated Aeaea (return from the Underworld)
Circe gives sailing directions for the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, and Thrinacia. No duration stated for this second stay.
- unstated Island of the Sirens
Passed under sail, Odysseus bound to the mast, the crew's ears sealed with wax. No duration stated.
- unstated Scylla's rock
Six of Odysseus's men are seized in passing. No duration stated -- the strait-transit with Charybdis is effectively continuous.
- unstated Charybdis
The far side of the same strait as Scylla. No duration stated.
- 1 month Thrinacia -- the Cattle of the Sun
μῆνα — 1 month, Od. 12.325-326
A month (μῆνα, 12.325) of unrelenting South Wind pins the ship ashore. Starving, the crew kills the Sun's cattle while Odysseus sleeps; Zeus wrecks the ship on departure.
- 9 days Ogygia -- Calypso's island
ἐννῆμαρ — 9 days, Od. 12.447
Sole survivor of the wreck at Thrinacia, Odysseus drifts nine days (ἐννῆμαρ, 12.447) before washing up on Ogygia. Calypso keeps him seven years (ἑπτάετες, 7.259, Odysseus's own retelling to Arete and Alcinous) before Hermes intervenes. Ogygia carries no coordinates in apparatus/places.json (mythical tier).
- 7 years kept by Calypso
ἑπτάετες — 7 years, Od. 7.259
Sole survivor of the wreck at Thrinacia, Odysseus drifts nine days (ἐννῆμαρ, 12.447) before washing up on Ogygia. Calypso keeps him seven years (ἑπτάετες, 7.259, Odysseus's own retelling to Arete and Alcinous) before Hermes intervenes. Ogygia carries no coordinates in apparatus/places.json (mythical tier).
- 4 days Building the raft
τέτρατον ἦμαρ — 4 days, Od. 5.262
Calypso supplies axe, adze, and timber; the raft is finished on the fourth day (τέτρατον ἦμαρ ἔην, 5.262), and Calypso sends Odysseus off on the fifth (τῷ δʼ ἄρα πέμπτῳ, 5.263). Still on Ogygia -- no placeId of its own.
- 17 days Seventeen days under sail
ἑπτὰ καὶ δέκα — 17 days, Od. 5.278
Odysseus sails alone, steering by the stars as Calypso instructed. Seventeen days out (ἑπτὰ δὲ καὶ δέκα μὲν πλέεν ἤματα, 5.278); on the eighteenth (ὀκτωκαιδεκάτῃ, 5.279) the shadowy mountains of Scheria come in sight.
- 2 days Poseidon's storm -- two nights adrift
δύω νύκτας δύο τʼ ἤματα — 2 days, Od. 5.388-389
Poseidon's wave shatters the raft (5.313-314, no number given there). Odysseus is tossed for two nights and two days (δύω νύκτας δύο τʼ ἤματα, 5.388) before the third dawn brings calm and he sights land (5.390-392). The brief's alternative citation, 5.313, is the wave-strike itself, not a duration statement -- the number is given at 5.388-389, verified here.
- unstated Scheria (Phaeacia)
Odysseus swims ashore and is found by Nausicaa; several days of hospitality, feasting, and games follow (Books 6-13) before the Phaeacians carry him home. No single number of days is stated for this whole stay.
- 1 night Ithaca
No counting-word in the Greek here — this span is read off the poem’s narrative framing, not a stated numeral.
The Phaeacian ship sails through the night: the crew falls into a magic, deathlike sleep at the oars (13.78-80), and landfall comes as the brightest star -- herald of dawn -- rises (13.93-95). No counting-word for 'one night' appears in the Greek, unlike ἐννῆμαρ or μῆνα elsewhere on this table; the single-night span is the poem's narrative frame (evening departure to dawn arrival), not a stated numeral, and is marked approximate here.
An honesty note. These stated spans — the nine-day storms, Aeolus’s month, Thrinacia’s month, the raft’s four days building and seventeen sailing and two nights adrift, one night’s crossing to Ithaca, Circe’s year, and Calypso’s seven — already sum to about 8.3 years, not the full ten the poem implies for the wandering. The poem itself never itemizes a ten-year total for the return: it simply asserts, four times, that Odysseus comes home in the twentieth year overall — counting, by tradition, the ten years of the war at Troy plus this decade of wandering (ἄγνωστον πάντεσσιν ἐεικοστῷ ἐνιαυτῷ — Od. 2.174-176; ἤλυθον εἰκοστῷ ἔτεϊ ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν — Od. 16.205-206; ἤδη γάρ οἱ ἐεικοστὸν ἔτος ἐστὶν ἐξ οὗ κεῖθεν ἔβη — Od. 19.222-223; αὐτίκʼ ἰδόντʼ Ὀδυσῆα ἐεικοστῷ ἐνιαυτῷ — Od. 17.327) — while leaving the remaining months of this table entirely unstated, drawn here as the hatched gaps above. The strip’s year-scale layout is a display convention built to make that arithmetic visible, not a claim to have solved it.
Sources
-
“Morning of the 34th day of the action of the poem… the dawn of the 35th day.”
David B. Monro, note to Od. 13.18 and 13.93, in Homer's Odyssey, Books XIII–XXIV (1901). -
“The date is given with a precision most unusual in epic poetry.”
Gilbert Murray, The Rise of the Greek Epic, 3rd ed. (1924).
- Leaf, Walter. The Iliad. 2nd ed. 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1900–1902. Full text ↗ PD
Full text on Perseus. Running notes gloss each day transition (1.493, 24.31, 24.107) — the closest thing to a consolidated day-table found in the public domain.
- Whitman, Cedric H. Homer and the Heroic Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958.
Argues a 21-day ring (1 + 9 + 12) opening the Iliad mirrored by a 21-day close (12 + 9 + burial) — the structural basis for the traditional ~51-day count.
- Olson, S. Douglas. Review of Homeric Soundings: The Shaping of the Iliad, by Oliver Taplin. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 1993.01.21. https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/1993/1993.01.21/.
Cited for Taplin's three-performance-section framing (1.1–9.13; 11.1–18.353; 18.354–24.804), each a day/night of performance — Taplin's own book (Homeric Soundings, Oxford 1992) is not PD, so this open review is the citable path to his thesis. Not quoted verbatim on this page.
- de Jong, Irene J. F. Narrators and Focalizers: The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad. 2nd ed. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2004.
First published 1987. Organizes the Iliad around "four days of battle," distinguishing scenic from panoramic narration — support for reading the traditional frame-spans as schematic rather than dramatized.
- de Jong, Irene J. F. A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Via Scodel's BMCR review (2002.06.12): flags Athena's Ithaca–Sparta trip, spanning the end of Book 13 into the start of Book 15, as a chronological oddity — a soft spot in every day-count of the Odyssey, including this timeline's.
- Monro, David B. Homer's Odyssey, Books XIII–XXIV. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901. Full text ↗ PD
Labels narrative days in his running notes. Independently corroborates this timeline's Day 34/35 boundary at Book 13 (see the two quoted notes above).
- Merry, W. Walter, and James Riddell. Homer's Odyssey. Vol. 1, Books I–XII. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1886. Full text ↗ PD
Companion PD commentary to Monro's for Books XIII–XXIV, covering the Telemachy and Apologoi (Books 1–12).
- Murray, Gilbert. The Rise of the Greek Epic. 3rd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924. PD
PD (pre-1931, US rules); a verified open full-text link has not yet been located — draft. Source of the epigraph quote used by Baikouzis and Magnasco 2008.
- Baikouzis, Constantino, and Marcelo O. Magnasco. "Is an Eclipse Described in the Odyssey?" Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105, no. 26 (2008): 8823–28. Full text ↗
Open access (PMC2440358), though not public domain (2008, in copyright). Builds a day-numbered Odyssey chronology (backward count from the slaying), with both sequential and parallel (Zieliński's Law) numbering to handle simultaneity — the honest-display model this timeline's Days 1–6 annotation follows.
- Delebecque, Édouard. Construction de l'Odyssée. Paris: Belles Lettres, 1980.
In copyright; content here is via Lenaerts's review (L'Antiquité Classique 52 [1983]: 297–300), not independently checked against the primary text. Reportedly places the Apologoi telling on Day 33 evening (a one-day offset from this timeline's Day 34) and argues the poem's original ending is 23.296 — the source of this page's honesty note on day-count variance. Unverified secondary report; flagged, not adopted.
- Heubeck, Alfred, Stephanie West, J. B. Hainsworth, Arie Hoekstra, Joseph Russo, and Manuel Fernández-Galiano. A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988–1992.
The standard scholarly day-scheme reference for the Odyssey; in copyright and not extractable via the open web at this pass — a library/manual pull remains a gap.
- Stanford, W. B. The Odyssey of Homer. 2nd ed. 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1958–1959.
In copyright; same open-web extraction gap as Heubeck et al.
- Zieliński, Tadeusz. "Die Behandlung gleichzeitiger Ereignisse im antiken Epos." Philologus, Supplementband 8 (1901): 405–49. PD
Founding statement of Zieliński's Law — that ancient epic narrates simultaneous events sequentially, never in parallel. The basis for reading the Telemachy (Days 2–6) and the Ogygia/second-divine-council strand as chronologically overlapping rather than strictly consecutive. Exact wording not yet verified against the German; cited for the thesis, not quoted.
- Strabo. Geography. Translated by Horace Leonard Jones. 8 vols. Loeb Classical Library. London: William Heinemann; New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1917–1932. Full text ↗ PD
The single most-cited ancient source for the Wanderings map's station identifications (Ismarus 7 fr. 44a; Lotus-eaters via Eratosthenes/Polybius, cited at Pliny NH 5.41; Sirens 1.2.12–13, 5.4.8; Dulichium 10.2.19; Scheria/Corcyra via 1.25 background; Pylos's ancient three-way dispute at 8.3.7; Erembi/Arabs at 1.2.34). Also the source of Eratosthenes's programmatic skepticism at 1.2.15: 'You will find the scene of the wanderings of Odysseus when you find the cobbler who sewed up the bag of the winds' (Strabo quoting Eratosthenes via Polybius's rebuttal) — the founding statement of the ancient debate this audit surveys. LacusCurtius hosts the complete PD Loeb text.
- Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. Translated by Richard Crawley. London: J. M. Dent, 1910. Full text ↗ PD
Source for the classical (5th-c. BC) identifications this gazetteer records as 'traditional': Cyclopes/Laestrygonians as Sicily's earliest inhabitants and Sicily's older name Trinacria (6.2.1–2); the Aeolian/Lipari islands as Aeolus's home (3.88); Scylla and Charybdis at the Strait of Messina (4.24.5); and, more obliquely, Corcyra's Phaeacian associations underlying the Scheria identification (1.25, describing the Phaeacians as Corcyra's 'old inhabitants' — not a literal 'Scheria=Corcyra' equation, but the earliest surviving link).
- Pliny the Elder. Natural History. Translated by John Bostock and H. T. Riley. 6 vols. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1855–1857. Full text ↗ PD
NH 5.41 records Meninx (modern Djerba/Gerba, Tunisia) as the Lotus-eaters' island per both Eratosthenes and Polybius — the source behind this gazetteer's 'lotus-eaters-land' tradition note.
- Pausanias. Description of Greece. Translated by W. H. S. Jones. 4 vols. Loeb Classical Library. London: William Heinemann; New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1918–1935. Full text ↗ PD
4.30.2 explicitly glosses Od. 3.488's 'house of Diocles [son of Ortilochus]' as 'the city of Pherae in Messene' — the ancient testimony behind the new places.json entry 'pherae-messenia' (Telemachus's overnight stop, Od. 3.488-497).
- Horace. The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace. Translated by John Conington. London: George Bell and Sons, 1882. Full text ↗ PD
Odes 3.17, addressed to Aelius Lamia, invokes Laestrygonian ancestry at Formiae — the Roman literary tradition already cited in places.json's existing 'laestrygonia' entry; added here as a bibliography record for that citation.
- Theophrastus. Enquiry into Plants. Translated by Arthur Hort. 2 vols. Loeb Classical Library. London: William Heinemann; New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1916. PD
HP 5.8.3 is the source already cited in places.json's existing 'aeaea' entry for the Circaeum promontory (Monte Circeo) tradition; a full open-text section link was not independently re-verified in this pass (flagged, not a blocking concern — the citation itself is long-standing and uncontested in the secondary literature).
- Talbert, Richard J. A., ed. Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
In copyright; the standard modern print reference for ancient-place location and confidence, cited by id/map-page in several existing places.json 'tradition' fields (e.g., Ismarus, 'Barrington Atlas lists as unlocated'). Not independently re-verified page-by-page in this audit pass (no open digital edition) — cited on the strength of the existing apparatus entries' own citations, which this audit did not find reason to doubt.
- Bittlestone, Robert, with James Diggle and John Underhill. Odysseus Unbound: The Search for Homer's Ithaca. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
In copyright. Source of the minority 'Paliki thesis' already cited in places.json's existing 'ithaca' entry (arguing Homer's Ithaca is the Paliki peninsula of Kefalonia, once a separate island); added here as a bibliography record for that citation. This audit did not find reason to elevate it above the mainstream Ithaki identification.