The other returns

Nestor tells Telemachus how the fleet split at Tenedos over whether to sail or sacrifice first, and how each contingent fared. Proteus tells Menelaus the rest. Between the two accounts the poem gives a survey of returns that runs from uneventful to catastrophic.

Their geography is the mirror of the wanderings': it stays inside the known world. Malea, Crete, Egypt, Pharos, Mycenae, Pylos — every stop is a place the atlas can class as accepted or plausible, and the only speculative element is the order of the legs.

Read against the nostos of Odysseus, this route is the argument that the Odyssey knows perfectly well what a real voyage looks like, and chooses something else for its hero.