Nostos

[2] The theme of nostos is present in Homer's The Odyssey, where the main hero Odysseus tries to return home after battling in the Trojan War.

"[5] Here Nestor made it evident to the audience that his and Diomedes's journey home was a perfect nostos, they had no real issues, which was quite different from Agamemnon's.

In these instances where nostos is simply present and not told by the individual in the Odyssey, there is an intention to reach a specific destination and some other force blowing the characters off course and arrive in unexpected places on their journey to their home.

In one incident, Odysseus' companion lost their nostos by eating the cattle of Helios and were killed, because they were specifically told not to.

[4] Odysseus warned the men when he said "Friends, since there is food and drink stored in the fast ship, let us then keep our hands off the cattle, for fear that something may befall us.

Each meaning is evident in the hero's return, at which point the idea of escaping death from war remained in his forethought.

It uses the word νόστος along with another Greek root, ἄλγος or algos, meaning pain, to describe the psychological condition of longing for the past.

In James Joyce's Ulysses, the final part (episodes 16–18), during which Leopold Bloom returns home, is called the Nostos.

[9] The TV series Star Trek: Voyager, in which the titular spacecraft is stranded 70,000 light-years from Earth and encounters numerous hostile and friendly aliens and strange phenomena on its way home, has been described by classicists as a nostos.