In 4 to 5 sentences please summarize the situation at the beginning of Homer's epic poem The Odyssey.

Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey begins,
as epics traditionally begin, with an invocation to (a “calling upon”) some source of
inspiration. In this case the source of inspiration is the “muse,” one of the goddesses
who were traditionally thought to inspire human
creativity.

Odysseus is described as
an

ingenious
hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of
Troy.

Notice how even this
brief sentence epitomizes many major themes of the poem, including the famed ingenuity
of Odysseus (who was valued at least as much for his cleverness as for his physical
strength); Odysseus’s travels (which are described in much of the poem and from which we
get both the title The Odyssey and the word
“odyssey,” usually defined as a long and difficult journey); and the fall of Troy, for
which Odysseus, more than perhaps anyone else, was responsible because of his
ingenuity.

Odysseus is one of the great Greek heroes who,
with a huge army, had participated in the ten-year-long siege of the ancient city of
Troy. The Greeks had destroyed Troy because a Trojan prince had committed adultery with
Helen, wife of a Greek king and had refused to give Helen back to the Greeks. After the
fall of Troy, Odysseus himself had spent ten more long, arduous years of journeying,
delayed by an offended deity, as he tried to get back to his home in
Ithaca:

Many
cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was
acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring
his men safely home . .
.

During the decade that
Odysseus is at sea, his virtuous wife, Penelope, is being courted by numerous suitors
who want to marry her and thus acquire Odysseus’s power and property. They tell her that
Odysseus is surely dead. To postpone giving a decision (since she is intensely loyal to
her husband), Penelope weaves a funeral shroud for Odysseus’s aging father, but each
night she undoes her weaving, so that completion of the project is stalled and
delayed.

Telemachus is Odysseus’s brave and loyal son, now
a courageous and energetic young man, who is disgusted by the suitors. Visited by the
disguised goddess Athena (Minerva) and with her encouragement and help, he goes in
search of news about his long-lost father.