One big chart: deaths in the Odyssey

If you have watched or read the Odyssey then you are aware that – SPOILER (do you need spoiler warnings on a 2,700-2,800 year-old poem?) – all of Odysseus’s crew die, some in strange and horrible ways.

In this chart, I have tracked the decline in the crew over time, as well as the causes of death, until only one man is left.

The casualties include the most well known of deaths, such as the men who are eaten by the Cyclops Polyphemus: “He ripped them limb by limb to make his meal, then ate them like a lion on the mountains, devouring flesh, entrails, and marrow bones, and leaving nothing”.

And then there is the most unlikely and unlucky, being poor Elpenor, who drunkenly falls from Circe’s rooftop: “He fell down crashing headlong from the roof, and broke his neck, right at the spine. His spirit went down to Hades”.

Notes on the data

These are not all exact numbers (it is, after all, a work of fiction), and the timeline is even less exact.

To arrive at the numbers we have, I have used a few sources helpfully gathered by others. This includes this excellent Literature Stack Exchange answer, as well as the text itself. Many events do give an exact number of casualties, but we don’t know the overall number of Odysseus’s men at the start. We are however told that Odysseus has twelve ships, and in the Iliad, the crews of ships ranges between 50 and 120.

When they arrive at Circe’s island in a single ship, the survivors likely number two bands of 22, plus one leader each, including Odysseus: so 46 in total. I have based my estimate of the crew of each ship on this, plus the six for each boat killed by the Cicones, which gives 52. This is in line with the amount of oarsman you would need for a penteconter plus a couple of extra crew, so it works for me but I have also shown the possible range based on 50 to 120 for each ship.

For the timeline, I have weighted the period on Calypso’s island and Circe’s island to seven years and one year respectively, and all the other events divide up the remaining time equally.

Many thanks to associate professor Greta Hawes at Macquarie University for providing feedback on an earlier version of this chart. All errors are mine.

For even more Homeric datavis, check out Death in the Iliad and this interactive version of the catalogue of ships!