Odysseus
（
Ὀδυσσεύς; the Latin equivalent being Ulixes; erroneously written
Ulysses). King of Ithaca, son of Laertes and Anticlea, the daughter of Autolycus. In
post-Homeric legends he is called a son of Sisyphus, conceived by Anticlea before her marriage
with Laertes. According to Homer, his name (“the hater,” from
ὀδύσσομαι) was given him by his grandfather Autolycus, because he
himself had so often cherished feelings of hatred during his life (
Od. xix. 402). His wife Penelopé (or Penelopea),
daughter of Icarius (see
Penelopé), is
said by later legends to have been obtained for him by her uncle Tyndareos in gratitude for
counsel given by him. (See
Tyndareos.) When his
son Telemachus was still an infant, Agamemnon and Menelaüs, as Homer tells us,
prevailed on him to take part in the expedition against Troy. Their task was hard, as it had
been predicted to him that it would be twenty years before he saw his wife and child again.
Later writers relate that he was bound, as one of Helen's suitors, to take part in the scheme,
but tried to escape his obligation by feigning madness, and among other acts yoked a horse and
an ox to his plough and so ploughed a field. When, however, Palamedes, who, with Nestor and
Menelaüs, was desirous of taking him to Troy, proceeded to place Telemachus in the
furrow, he betrayed himself, and had to accompany them to the war. Odysseus led the troops of
Ithaca and the surrounding islands to Troy in twelve vessels. In contrast to the later legend,
which represents him as a cowardly, deceitful, and intriguing personage, he always appears in
Homer among the noblest and most respected of the heroes, and, on account of his good
qualities, he is the declared favourite of Athené. He combines in his person
courage and determined perseverance with prudence, ingenuity, cunning, and eloquence.
Accordingly, he is employed by preference as a negotiator and a spy. Thus, after the
disembarkation, he goes with Menelaüs into the enemy's city to demand the surrender
of Helen. Again, he is among those who are despatched by the Greeks to reconcile with
Agamemnon the enraged Achilles. With Diomedes, who delights in his company, he captures the
spy Dolon and surprises Rhesus; with the same hero he is said by later legend to have stolen
the Palladium from Troy. When Agamemnon faint-heartedly thinks of flight, he opposes this idea
with the utmost decision. Everywhere he avails himself of the right time and the right place,
and, where courage and cunning are needed, is ever the foremost. After Achilles' death, in the
contest with Aiax, the son of Telamon, he received the hero's arms as a recognition of his
services, and by his ingenuity brought about the fall of Troy. Shortly before it, he stole
into the city in the garb of a beggar, in order to reconnoitre everything there; he then
climbed with the others into the wooden horse, and contrived to control the impatient and the
timid alike until the decisive moment. See
Trojan
War.
His adventures during the return from Troy and on his arrival in his native country form the
contents of the
Odyssey of Homer. Immediately after the departure Odysseus was
driven to the Thracian Ismarus, the city of the Cicones, and, though he plundered it, he lost
in a surprise seventy-two of his companions. When he was desirous of rounding the promontory
of Malea, the southeast point of the Peloponnesus, he was caught by the storm and carried in
nine days to the coast of North Africa, on to the land of the Lotophagi (lotus-eaters), whence
he had to drag his companions by force to prevent their forgetting their homes for love of the
lotus-food. Thence the voyage passed into the legendary world of the Western Sea, then little
known to the Greeks. Odysseus came first to the country of the
Cyclopes (q.v.), where, with twelve of his comrades, he was
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Odysseus offering wine to the Cyclops. (Vatican Museum, Rome.)
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shut up in a cavern by Polyphemus. The monster had already devoured half of
Odysseus's companions before the latter intoxicated him, deprived him of his one eye, and by
his cunning escaped with his comrades. From this time the anger of Poseidon, on whom
Polyphemus called for revenge, pursued him and kept him far from his country. On the island of
Aeolus, the Keeper of the
Winds (q.v.), he found
hospitable entertainment, and received on his departure a leathern bag, in which were enclosed
all the winds except the western. The latter would have carried him in nine days to the coast
of Ithaca; but, while Odyssens was resting, his comrades opened the bag, which they imagined
to contain treasure, and the winds thus released carried them back to Aeolus. He ordered them
off from his island, regarding them as enemies of the gods. On coming to Telepylus, the city
of Lamus, King Antiphates and his Laestrygones, cannibals of immense stature, shattered eleven
of their vessels, and the twelfth was saved only by Odysseus's wariness. On the island of
Aeaea the sorceress Circé turned part of his crew into swine, but with the help of
Hermes, who gave him an antidote against her charms, he compelled her to restore them to their
human shape, and spent a whole year with her in pleasure and enjoyment. When his companions
urged him to return home, Circé bade him first sail towards the farthest west, to
the entrance into the lower world on the farther bank of Oceanus, and there question the shade
of the seer Tiresias concerning his return. (See
Hades.) From the latter he learned that it was the malice of Poseidon that prevented
his return, but that nevertheless he would attain his object if his comrades spared the cattle
of Helios on the island of Thrinacia; otherwise, it would be only after a long time, deprived
of all his comrades and on a foreign ship, that he would reach his home. Odysseus next
returned to the isle of Circé and set out on his homeward voyage, supplied by her
with valuable directions and a favouring wind. Passing the isles of the Sirens, who tried to
lure his vessel upon the rocks by their sweet songs, but whom Odysseus resisted by filling his
sailors' ears with wax and lashing himself to the mast, and sailing through Scylla and
Charybdis (q.v.), he reached the island of Thrinacia,
where he was compelled to land by his comrades. They were there detained for a month by
contrary winds; at length his comrades, overcome by hunger, in spite of the oath they had
sworn to him, slaughtered, during his absence, the finest of the cattle of Helios. Scarcely
were they once more at sea, when a terrible storm broke forth, and Zeus split the ship in
twain with a flash of lightning, as a penalty for the offence. All perished except Odysseus,
who clung to the mast and keel, and was carried back by the waves to Scylla and Charybdis, and
after nine days reached the island of Ogygia, the abode of the nymph Calypso, daughter of
Atlas. For seven years he dwelt here with the nymph, who promised him immortality and eternal
youth, if he would consent to remain with her and be her husband. But the yearning for his
wife and home made him proof against her snares. All the day long he sat on the shore gazing
through his tears across the broad sea; anxious to catch a glimpse, were it only of the rising
smoke of his home, and thereafter die. So his protectress, Athené, during
Poseidon's absence, prevailed on Zeus, in an assembly of the gods, to decree his return, and
to send Hermes to order Calypso to release him. Borne on a raft of his own building, he came
in eighteen days near to Scheria, the island of the Phaeacians, when Poseidon caught sight of
him and shattered his raft in pieces. However, with the aid of the veil of Ino
Leucothea (q.v.), he reached land in safety, and met
with Nausicaa, the king's daughter, who conducted him into the Phaeacian city before her
parents
Alcinoüs (q.v.) and
Areté. He received the most hospitable treatment, and was then brought by the
Phaeacians loaded with presents on board one of their marvellous vessels to his own country,
which he reached after twenty years' absence, while asleep. He arrived just in time to ward
off
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Odysseus and the Sirens. (Vase in British Museum.)
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the disaster that was threatening his house. After his mother Anticlea had
died of grief for her son, and old Laertes had retired to his country estate in mourning, more
than a hundred noble youths of Ithaca and the surrounding isles had appeared as suitors for
the hand of the fair and chaste Penelopé, had persecuted Telemachus, who was now
growing up to manhood, and were wasting the substance of the absent Odysseus.
Penelopé had demanded a respite from making her decision until she had finished
weaving a shroud intended for her father-in-law, and every night unravelled the work of the
day. In the fourth year one of her attendants betrayed the secret; she had to complete the
garment, and when urged to make her decision promised to choose the man who should win in a
shooting-match with Odysseus's bow, hoping that none of the wooers would be able even so much
as to bend it. Just before the day of trial, Odysseus landed on the island disguised by
Athené as a beggar. He betook him
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Odysseus and Penelopé. (Pompeian Painting.)
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self to the honest swineherd Eumaeus, one of the few retainers who had remained true
to him, who received his master, whom he failed to recognize, in an hospitable manner. To the
same spot Athené brought Telemachus, who had returned in safety, in spite of the
plots of the suitors, from a journey to Nestor at Pylus, and to Menelaüs and Helen in
Sparta. Hereupon Odysseus made himself known, and, together with his son and retainer,
concerted his plan of revenge. In the shape of a beggar he betook himself to the house, where
he manfully controlled his anger at the arrogance of the suitors which was displayed towards
himself, and his emotion on meeting Penelopé. Next day the shooting-match took
place. This involved shooting through the handles of twelve axes with the bow of
Eurytus (q.v.), which the latter's son Iphitus had once
presented to the young Odysseus. None of the suitors could bend the bow, and so Odysseus took
hold of it, and bent it in an instant, thus achieving the master-shot. Supported by
Telemachus, Eumaeus, and the herdsman Philoetius, and with the aiding presence of
Athené, he shot first the insolent Antinoüs, and then the other suitors.
He next made himself known to Penelopé, who had meanwhile fallen into a deep sleep,
and visited his aged father. In the meantime the relatives of the murdered suitors had taken
up arms, but Athené, in the form of
Mentor
(q.v.), brought about a reconciliation. The only hint of Odysseus's end in Homer is in the
prophecy of Tiresias—that in a calm old age a peaceful death will come upon him from
the sea.
In later poetry Telegonus, the son of Odysseus by Circé, is sent forth by his
mother to seek out his father. He lands at Ithaca, and plunders the island. Odysseus proceeds
to meet him, is wounded by him with a poisonous sting-ray, given by Circé to her
son as a spear-point, and dies a painful death, which thus comes “from the
sea.” On Telegonus discovering that he had killed his father, he carried the dead
body home with him, together with Penelopé and Telemachus, and there the latter
lived a life of immortality, Telemachus becoming husband of Circé, and Telegonus of
Penelopé. Besides Telegonus, the legend told of two sons of Odysseus by
Circé, named Agrius and Latinus, who were said to have reigned over the Etruscans.
Telegonus, in particular, was regarded by the Romans as the founder of Tusculum (Ovid,
Fasti, iii. 92) and Praenesté (
Homer
Od. iii. 29Homer Od., 8). In later times
the adventures of Odysseus were transferred, as a whole, to the coast of Italy: the promontory
of Circeii was regarded as the abode of Circé, and Formiae as the city of the
Laestrygones. Near Surrentum was found the island of the Sirens; near Cape Lacinium that of
Calypso, while near to Sicily were the isle of Aeolus, Scylla, and Charybdis, and, on the
Sicilian shore, the Cyclopes. Odysseus is generally represented as a bearded man, wearing a
semi-oval cap like that of a Greek sailor, as in the first illustration. See
Homerus.
