Odysseus

Greek mythology – Present

The mortal hero of Homer’s Odyssey: king of Ithaca, famed for his cunning and endurance, who spends ten years fighting his way home from the Trojan War.

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Odysseus was the hero of Homer's Odyssey and one of the most beloved figures in all of Greek mythology. He was the king of the small island of Ithaca, husband of the faithful Penelope, and father of Telemachus. Unlike heroes prized for raw strength, Odysseus was celebrated for metis, cunning intelligence. His nickname was 'Odysseus of many wiles,' and his greatest weapons were his wits and his silver tongue. During the ten-year Trojan War, it was Odysseus who devised the trick of the Trojan Horse, the giant wooden horse that finally let the Greeks capture Troy. But the war was only half his story. The Odyssey follows his ten-year struggle to sail home afterward, a voyage stretched from weeks to a decade after he blinds the Cyclops Polyphemus and earns the fury of the sea god Poseidon. Along the way Odysseus outwits the witch Circe, resists the deadly song of the Sirens, sails between the monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis, visits the land of the dead, and endures seven years trapped by the nymph Calypso, all while the goddess Athena quietly aids him. When he finally reaches Ithaca, he arrives in disguise and cleverly reclaims his home and family. Odysseus endures because he is deeply human: clever, curious, sometimes proud, and driven by one universal longing, nostos, the desire to go home. How we know. Homer’s Odyssey is the poem. The city of Troy is archaeological; the wooden horse is literature. Follow the Trojan Horse, Polyphemus, the Underworld, and the return.

Odysseus

Further reading

Odysseus

Further reading