Son of Laertes, king of rocky Ithaca and lord of the Cephallenians — the peer of Zeus in counsel whose ten-year wandering home from Troy is the matter of the Odyssey.1
Homer reared him in rugged Ithaca and made him captain of twelve ships: the great-souled Cephallenians who held Ithaca and forested Neriton, Crocyleia, rugged Aegilips, wooded Zacynthus, and the mainland shores over against the isles. At Troy he is Zeus-born son of Laertes, of many wiles, whose heart knows kindly thoughts — and whose wrath, when he returns, will scatter the suitors devouring his house.2
Before ever he sailed for Troy, Apollodorus tells how he came among the suitors of Helen and counselled Tyndareus to bind them all by oath to defend whichever man won her — a shrewd device that later mustered the whole Greek alliance. When Palamedes exposed his feigned madness by threatening the infant Telemachus in Penelope's arms, Odysseus contrived Palamedes' ruin with a forged letter and buried gold.3
At Troy he is the peer of Zeus in counsel. When Thersites reviled Agamemnon before the host, Odysseus checked him with harsh words and struck his back with the golden staff until the army shouted praise for the king's defender. In the muster he stood among the chieftains beside Nestor, Idomeneus, the two Aiantes, and Diomedes; and when Achilles nursed his wrath in his hut, it was Odysseus whom Agamemnon sent with Phoenix and Ajax to offer gifts and persuade the son of Peleus back to battle.4
On the night raid of the Doloneia he paired with Diomedes: the two crossed the plain in darkness, slew the Thracian king Rhesus in his sleep along with twelve of his men, and drove off the snow-white horses to the ships. Later, when Achilles fell, the arms wrought by Hephaestus were judged to Odysseus rather than to Ajax — and the loss drove Ajax to madness and suicide.5
Apollodorus credits him with the stratagem that ended the war: Odysseus persuaded Epeius to build the hollow Wooden Horse, and into it he himself climbed with the picked warriors who opened Troy to the Greeks. After the sack he sailed for home — but Poseidon, filled with stubborn wrath because Odysseus had blinded the godlike Polyphemus, son of Poseidon and the nymph Thoosa, set the long wandering against him.6
The Odyssey tells what followed: ten years of wandering through the land of the Lotus-eaters, the Cyclops' cave, Aeolus' bag of winds, the Laestrygonian cannibals, and Circe's isle, where the enchantress turned his men to swine until Hermes gave him the herb moly and he bound her by oath to restore them. In the house of Hades he poured offerings and questioned the shades — among them Elpenor, his mother Anticleia, the seer Tiresias, and the heroes of Troy — before returning to the living world.7
Circe warned him of the perils still ahead: the Sirens whose song no man survives, the clashing rocks, Scylla and Charybdis, and the cattle of the Sun. Odysseus alone heard the Sirens, lashed to the mast while his crew's ears were stopped with wax; he lost six comrades to Scylla's dogs, and on Thrinacia his starving men slaughtered Helios' cattle and paid with their lives when Zeus wrecked the ship. Only he survived, and the sea cast him up on Ogygia, where Calypso kept him seven years until Hermes ordered his release.8
On Scheria the princess Nausicaa found him cast ashore, gave him clothing, and brought him to her father Alcinous; there Demodocus sang of Troy, and Odysseus wept at the tale before the Phaeacians sent him home with treasure. On Ithaca Athena met him in disguise and led him to the swineherd Eumaeus; as a beggar he entered his own halls, strung the great bow, and with Telemachus and loyal servants cut down the suitors who had devoured his substance and wooed his wife.9
While he was long away, Apollodorus says, the suitors journeyed to his palace and consumed his herds at their feasts — and Penelope was compelled to promise that she would wed when the shroud of Laertes was finished. For three years she wove by day and undid the work by night, deceiving the wooers until she was detected.10
Apollodorus compresses the climax of the homecoming: Penelope set before the wooers the bow he had received from Iphitus, son of Eurytus, and promised marriage to whoever could bend it. When none could, Odysseus strung the weapon and shot down the suitors with the help of Eumaeus, Philoetius, and Telemachus; he killed Melanthius and the handmaids who had bedded with the suitors, and made himself known at last to Penelope and Laertes.11
Long before Troy, his mother Anticleia and Laertes sent the boy to her father Autolycus on Parnassus for the gifts the old thief had promised. A boar gored him above the knee on the hunt; Autolycus named him Odysseus for his own wrath against many men, and the scar bound up by his mother's brothers would betray the disguised king to Eurycleia when she washed his feet.12
Penelope tested him with the secret of their immovable bed before she knew him at last; husband and wife were reunited, and Athena stayed the feud when the kin of the slain suitors came against the house.13
Apollodorus adds a further chapter after the homecoming: having sacrificed to Hades, Persephone, and Tiresias, Odysseus journeyed on foot through Epirus to the Thesprotians, offered sacrifice as the seer had directed, and propitiated Poseidon. Callidice, queen of the Thesprotians, urged him to stay and offered the kingdom; he married her, begot Polypoetes, reigned and defeated the neighboring peoples, and when she died handed the realm to their son before returning to Ithaca — where he found Poliporthes, whom Penelope had borne in his absence.14⚖
Apollodorus records an alternate ending: some say that after the kinsfolk of the slain suitors accused Odysseus, he submitted the case to Neoptolemus, king of the islands off Epirus — who, hoping to gain Cephallenia once Odysseus was out of the way, condemned him to exile. Odysseus went to Aetolia to Thoas son of Andraemon, married his daughter, left a son Leontophonus by her, and died in old age.15⚖
In another Apollodorus tradition, Telegonus — the son Odysseus had begotten on Circe — unknowingly killed his father with a spear barbed with a sting-ray spine when he came to Ithaca and drove off cattle; Telegonus then conveyed the corpse and Penelope to Circe, married Penelope, and was sent with her to the Islands of the Blest.16⚖
Apollodorus records yet another variant ending: some say that after Penelope was seduced by Antinous, Odysseus sent her away to her father Icarius rather than keep her as his wife — a closure wholly opposed to Athena's peace and the reunion Homer celebrates.17⚖
In a still darker variant, others say Penelope was seduced by Amphinomus and that Odysseus himself killed her on that account — turning the husband who proves his wife with the immovable bed into her executioner.18⚖
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
