Polites (Ancient Greek: Πολίτης) is Odysseus' dearest comrade in the Odyssey — the scout who first urges the party to call at Circe's house on Aeaea and is turned to swine with the rest. Later tradition sometimes names him the ghost of Temesa. He is distinct from Polites son of Priam at Troy.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Polites (friend of Odysseus)" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.On Aeaea
Homer mentions Polites only briefly, yet Odysseus calls him dearest of his comrades. When Eurylochus' band finds Circe's hall amid bewitched wolves and lions, Polites — a leader of men — urges them to hail the woman singing at her loom; they enter, drink her potion, and are struck into swine.
Whether he later dies with Scylla or in Zeus' lightning-strike on the ship is left open. A separate folk tradition (Strabo and others) identifies a crewman — sometimes Polites — murdered at Temesa whose ghost exacted tribute until the boxer Euthymus subdued him.
II.Homonyms
This atlas entry (polites-odyssey) is Odysseus' companion alone. Distinct from polites-trojan, the Priamid, and from any later musical or popular retellings that enlarge Polites beyond Homer's two mentions.