Odysseus in Greek Mythology: The Cunning Hero of Ithaca

Odysseus was the king of Ithaca and the cleverest Greek hero at Troy, the man behind the Trojan Horse. His ten-year struggle to get home after the war, past the Cyclops, Circe, the Sirens and the anger of Poseidon, is the subject of Homer's Odyssey. The Romans called him Ulysses (Latin Ulixes), and his name gave English the word odyssey.

Odysseus quick facts

Who were Odysseus' parents?

In Homer he is the son of Laertes and Anticleia. His grandfather Autolycus, whom Odyssey 19 calls unmatched at thieving and oaths, named him; on a boar hunt with Autolycus' sons the young Odysseus got the scar by which his old nurse Eurycleia recognizes him twenty years later.

Later writers used his cunning against him: in Sophocles' Ajax and Philoctetes, enemies sneer that he is really the son of Sisyphus, the arch-deceiver. Homer knows nothing of it.

Why did Odysseus fake madness?

Odysseus did not want to go to Troy, so when the Greek leaders came for him he pretended to be mad. Palamedes saw through it, and the sources disagree on how:

• Hyginus, Fabulae. Odysseus plows with a horse and an ox yoked together; Palamedes puts the infant Telemachus in front of the plow, and Odysseus swerves.
• Apollodorus, Epitome. Palamedes snatches Telemachus from Penelope and draws his sword as if to kill him.

Odysseus took revenge: in Apollodorus and Hyginus he hides gold in Palamedes' tent and forges a letter from Priam, and the Greeks stone Palamedes as a traitor.

What did Odysseus do at Troy?

In the Iliad he is an envoy to Achilles in Book 9 and, with Diomedes, captures the Trojan spy Dolon in Book 10.

His most famous idea ended the war. In Odyssey 8 the bard Demodocus sings of the wooden horse that Epeius built with Athena's help and that Odysseus brought into the citadel full of Greek fighters. Virgil's Aeneid 2 tells the same night from the Trojan side, with Sinon's lie and Laocoön's ignored warning.

What happened on the ten-year voyage?

Odysseus narrates most of it himself at the Phaeacian court, in Books 9 to 12.

Why was Poseidon angry with Odysseus?

Polyphemus was Poseidon's son. Sailing away, Odysseus shouted his real name, and the blinded Cyclops prayed that he would reach home late, alone, on a stranger's ship, to find trouble in his house. All of it comes true. In Book 5 Poseidon wrecks his raft, and in Book 13 he turns the Phaeacian ship to stone.

What did Odysseus learn in the Underworld?

Book 11 is the nekyia, the summoning of the dead. Tiresias warns him to spare the cattle of Helios and foretells a last journey: after the suitors, he must walk inland with an oar until someone mistakes it for a winnowing fan, sacrifice to Poseidon, and die gently in old age. He also meets his mother Anticleia and the shades of Agamemnon and Achilles in the realm of Hades and Persephone.

How did Odysseus defeat the suitors?

Athena is with him throughout. In Book 13 she tells him she favors him because he is as crafty as she is, and disguises him as an old beggar.

On Ithaca, more than a hundred suitors are eating through his estate and pressing Penelope to remarry. She stalled them for years by unraveling by night the shroud she wove by day. Odysseus reveals himself to Telemachus and the loyal swineherd Eumaeus, and is recognized by his old dog Argos and by Eurycleia.

In Book 21 Penelope sets a contest: whoever strings Odysseus' bow and shoots through twelve axe heads will marry her. No suitor can string it. The beggar does, and in Book 22 he, Telemachus and two loyal herdsmen kill them all. Penelope tests him one last time with the secret of their bed, built around a living olive tree, and Athena ends the feud with the suitors' families in Book 24.

How did Odysseus die?

Homer does not say. Tiresias promises a gentle death, and the Greek phrase can mean coming either from the sea or far away from it.

The Telegony, a lost epic known from a later summary, gives a darker ending. Telegonus, his son by Circe, raids Ithaca without knowing whose island it is and kills Odysseus in the fight. Apollodorus adds that the spear was tipped with a stingray spine.

In the sources

• Homer, Odyssey — the voyage, the nekyia, the return and the suitors; Iliad — Books 9 and 10, among others.
• Epic Cycle summaries — the Little Iliad and Sack of Ilion on the Horse; the Telegony on his death.
• Sophocles, Ajax and Philoctetes; Apollodorus, Library and Epitome; Hyginus, Fabulae; Virgil, Aeneid 2.

Where the sources disagree:

• His father. Laertes in Homer; Sisyphus in the insults of Sophocles' characters.
• The feigned madness. The plow in Hyginus; a drawn sword in Apollodorus; nothing in Homer.
• His character. Wise and long-suffering in Homer; a smooth, ruthless schemer in Sophocles and Virgil.
• His death. A gentle old age in Tiresias' prophecy; death at his own son's hand in the Telegony.

In popular culture

• O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). The Coen brothers loosely borrow the poem's sirens, a one-eyed villain and a wife about to remarry.
• Circe (2018). Madeline Miller tells his year on Aeaea from Circe's side and follows the Telegony tradition of their son Telegonus.
• Epic: The Musical. Jorge Rivera-Herrans' song cycle retells the voyage from the fall of Troy, compressing and reshaping many episodes.
• The Odyssey (2026). Christopher Nolan's film casts Matt Damon as Odysseus.

For more adaptations, see Greek mythology movies, and for the creatures he faced, mythological monsters.

Keep exploring

Meet his protector in Athena, his enemy in Poseidon, and the messenger who saved him from Circe in Hermes. Compare him with Achilles, see how his name became Ulysses in Greek vs Roman gods, or test yourself with the Greek mythology quiz.