Odysseus
Mortal Ithacan king, master strategist of the Greek-side Trojan War, and the wandering ten-year returnee whose homecoming structures the Odyssey. The Homeric tradition treats him as paradigm of metis — the cunning practical-intelligence that wins through obstacle. Husband of Penelope, father of Telemachus by her and (during the Odyssean wandering) Telegonus by the goddess Circe. Killed by the unrecognized Telegonus on Ithaca per the post-Homeric Telegony epic — the stingray-spine-spear killing-by-son closing the heroic-tradition's arc with a recognition-too-late tragic coda. The variant Sisyphus-paternity tradition (preserved in Apollodorus and used by tragedy) shifts the cunning-genealogy from Hermes-via-Autolycus to Sisyphus-the-trickster but does not change his mortal classification under either tradition.
Parentage
Children
Powers
- Pass unrecognized in disguise to deceive
- Outwit enemies through cunning intelligence
- String the great bow no other man could bend
- Devised the stratagem of the Wooden Horse
Epithets
- πολύτροπος
- πολύμητις Ὀδυσσεύς
- πολύτλας δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς
Relations
- spouse: Penelope