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Thetis says that the arms of Achilles will go to the bravest of the Greeks, but only these two warriors dare lay claim to that title. The two Argives became embroiled in a heavy dispute about one another's merits to receive the reward. The Greeks dither out of fear in deciding a winner, because they did not want to insult one and have him abandon the war effort.
Nestor suggests that they allow the captive Trojans decide the winner. Enraged and humiliated, Ajax is driven mad by Athena. When he returns to his senses, in shame at how he has slaughtered livestock in his madness, Ajax kills himself by the sword that Hector had given him after their duel.
Together with Diomedes, Odysseus fetches Achilles' son, Pyrrhus , to come to the aid of the Achaeans, because an oracle had stated that Troy could not be taken without him. A great warrior, Pyrrhus is also called Neoptolemus Greek for "new warrior". Upon the success of the mission, Odysseus gives Achilles' armour to him.
It is learned that the war can not be won without the poisonous arrows of Heracles , which are owned by the abandoned Philoctetes. Odysseus and Diomedes or, according to some accounts, Odysseus and Neoptolemus leave to retrieve them. Upon their arrival, Philoctetes still suffering from the wound is seen still to be enraged at the Danaans , especially at Odysseus, for abandoning him. Although his first instinct is to shoot Odysseus, his anger is eventually diffused by Odysseus' persuasive powers and the influence of the gods.
Odysseus returns to the Argive camp with Philoctetes and his arrows. Perhaps Odysseus' most famous contribution to the Greek war effort is devising the strategem of the Trojan Horse , which allows the Greek army to sneak into Troy under cover of darkness. It is built by Epeius and filled with Greek warriors, led by Odysseus. Some late Roman sources indicate that Odysseus schemed to kill his partner on the way back, but Diomedes thwarts this attempt.
Homer's Iliad and Odyssey portray Odysseus as a culture hero , but the Romans, who believed themselves the heirs of Prince Aeneas of Troy, considered him a villainous falsifier. In Virgil 's Aeneid , written between 29 and 19 BC, he is constantly referred to as "cruel Odysseus" Latin dirus Ulixes or "deceitful Odysseus" pellacis , fandi fictor.
Turnus, in Aeneid , book 9, reproaches the Trojan Ascanius with images of rugged, forthright Latin virtues, declaring in John Dryden 's translation , "You shall not find the sons of Atreus here, nor need the frauds of sly Ulysses fear. In Euripides' tragedy Iphigenia at Aulis , having convinced Agamemnon to consent to the sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia, to appease the goddess Artemis , Odysseus facilitates the immolation by telling Iphigenia's mother, Clytemnestra , that the girl is to be wed to Achilles.
Odysseus' attempts to avoid his sacred oath to defend Menelaus and Helen offended Roman notions of duty, and the many stratagems and tricks that he employed to get his way offended Roman notions of honour. Odysseus is probably best known as the eponymous hero of the Odyssey. This epic describes his travails, which lasted for 10 years, as he tries to return home after the Trojan War and reassert his place as rightful king of Ithaca. On the way home from Troy, after a raid on Ismarus in the land of the Cicones , he and his twelve ships are driven off course by storms. They visit the lethargic Lotus-Eaters and are captured by the Cyclops Polyphemus while visiting his island.
After Polyphemus eats several of his men, Polyphemus and Odysseus have a discussion and Odysseus tells Polyphemus his name is "Nobody". Odysseus takes a barrel of wine, and the Cyclops drinks it, falling asleep. Odysseus and his men take a wooden stake, ignite it with the remaining wine, and blind him.
While they escape, Polyphemus cries in pain, and the other Cyclopes ask him what is wrong. Polyphemus cries, "Nobody has blinded me! Odysseus and his crew escape, but Odysseus rashly reveals his real name, and Polyphemus prays to Poseidon, his father, to take revenge. They stay with Aeolus , the master of the winds, who gives Odysseus a leather bag containing all the winds, except the west wind, a gift that should have ensured a safe return home.
However, the sailors foolishly open the bag while Odysseus sleeps, thinking that it contains gold. All of the winds fly out, and the resulting storm drives the ships back the way they had come, just as Ithaca comes into sight. After pleading in vain with Aeolus to help them again, they re-embark and encounter the cannibalistic Laestrygonians.
Odysseus' ship is the only one to escape.
He sails on and visits the witch-goddess Circe. She turns half of his men into swine after feeding them cheese and wine. Hermes warns Odysseus about Circe and gives him a drug called moly , which resists Circe's magic. Circe, being attracted to Odysseus' resistance, falls in love with him and releases his men. Odysseus and his crew remain with her on the island for one year, while they feast and drink.
Finally, Odysseus' men convince him to leave for Ithaca. Guided by Circe's instructions, Odysseus and his crew cross the ocean and reach a harbor at the western edge of the world, where Odysseus sacrifices to the dead and summons the spirit of the old prophet Tiresias for advice. Next Odysseus meets the spirit of his own mother, who had died of grief during his long absence.
From her, he learns for the first time news of his own household, threatened by the greed of Penelope 's suitors. Odysseus also talks to his fallen war comrades and the mortal shade of Heracles. Returning to Circe's island, she advises them on the remaining stages of the journey. They skirt the land of the Sirens , pass between the six-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis , where they row directly between the two. However, Scylla drags the boat towards her by grabbing the oars and eats six men.
They land on the island of Thrinacia. There, Odysseus' men ignore the warnings of Tiresias and Circe and hunt down the sacred cattle of the sun god Helios.
Helios tells Zeus what happened and demands Odysseus' men be punished or else he will take the sun and shine it in the Underworld. Zeus fulfills Helios' demands by causing a shipwreck during a thunderstorm in which all but Odysseus drown.
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He washes ashore on the island of Ogygia , where Calypso compels him to remain as her lover for seven years. He finally escapes when Hermes tells Calypso to release Odysseus. Odysseus is shipwrecked and befriended by the Phaeacians. After telling them his story, the Phaeacians, led by King Alcinous , agree to help Odysseus get home. They deliver him at night, while he is fast asleep, to a hidden harbor on Ithaca. He finds his way to the hut of one of his own former slaves, the swineherd Eumaeus , and also meets up with Telemachus returning from Sparta.
Athena disguises Odysseus as a wandering beggar to learn how things stand in his household. When the disguised Odysseus returns after 20 years, he is recognized only by his faithful dog, Argos. Penelope announces in her long interview with the disguised hero that whoever can string Odysseus' rigid bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axe shafts may have her hand. According to Bernard Knox , "For the plot of the Odyssey , of course, her decision is the turning point, the move that makes possible the long-predicted triumph of the returning hero". Odysseus swears her to secrecy, threatening to kill her if she tells anyone.
When the contest of the bow begins, none of the suitors is able to string the bow of Apollo but then, after all the suitors have given up, the disguised Odysseus comes along, bends the bow, shoots the arrow, and wins the contest. Having done so, he proceeds to slaughter the suitors beginning with Antinous whom he finds drinking from Odysseus' cup with help from Telemachus and two of Odysseus' servants, Eumaeus the swineherd and Philoetius the cowherd.
Odysseus tells the serving women who slept with the suitors to clean up the mess of corpses and then has those women hanged in terror. He tells Telemachus that he will replenish his stocks by raiding nearby islands.
Odysseus has now revealed himself in all his glory with a little makeover by Athena ; yet Penelope cannot believe that her husband has really returned—she fears that it is perhaps some god in disguise, as in the story of Alcmene mother of Heracles —and tests him by ordering her servant Euryclea to move the bed in their wedding-chamber. Odysseus protests that this cannot be done since he made the bed himself and knows that one of its legs is a living olive tree.
The citizens of Ithaca follow Odysseus on the road, planning to avenge the killing of the Suitors, their sons. The goddess Athena intervenes and persuades both sides to make peace. Odysseus is one of the most recurrent characters in Western culture. According to some late sources, most of them purely genealogical, Odysseus had many other children besides Telemachus , the most famous being:. Most such genealogies aimed to link Odysseus with the foundation of many Italic cities in remote antiquity.
He figures in the end of the story of King Telephus of Mysia. The supposed last poem in the Epic Cycle is called the Telegony and is thought to tell the story of Odysseus' last voyage, and of his death at the hands of Telegonus , his son with Circe. The poem, like the others of the cycle, is "lost" in that no authentic version has been discovered. Odysseus figures centrally or indirectly in a number of the extant plays by Aeschylus , Sophocles Ajax , Philoctetes and Euripides , Hecuba , Rhesus , Cyclops and figured in still more that have not survived.
In his Ajax , Sophocles portrays Odysseus as a modern voice of reasoning compared to the title character's rigid antiquity. Plato in his dialogue Hippias Minor examines a literary question about whom Homer intended to portray as the better man, Achilles or Odysseus. As Ulysses, he is mentioned regularly in Virgil 's Aeneid written between 29 and 19 BC, and the poem's hero, Aeneas , rescues one of Ulysses' crew members who was left behind on the island of the Cyclops.
He in turn offers a first-person account of some of the same events Homer relates, in which Ulysses appears directly. Virgil's Ulysses typifies his view of the Greeks: Ovid retells parts of Ulysses' journeys, focusing on his romantic involvements with Circe and Calypso, and recasts him as, in Harold Bloom 's phrase, "one of the great wandering womanizers. Greek legend tells of Ulysses as the founder of Lisbon , Portugal , calling it Ulisipo or Ulisseya , during his twenty-year errand on the Mediterranean and Atlantic seas. Olisipo was Lisbon's name in the Roman Empire. In a famous passage, Dante has Odysseus relate a different version of his voyage and death from the one told by Homer.
He tells how he set out with his men from Circe's island for a journey of exploration to sail beyond the Pillars of Hercules and into the Western sea to find what adventures awaited them. Men, says Ulisse, are not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge. After travelling west and south for five months, they see in the distance a great mountain rising from the sea this is Purgatory , in Dante's cosmology before a storm sinks them.
Dante does not have access to the original Greek texts of the Homeric epics, so his knowledge of their subject-matter was based only on information from later sources, chiefly Virgil 's Aeneid but also Ovid ; hence the discrepancy between Dante and Homer. Alfred, Lord Tennyson 's poem " Ulysses " published in presents an aging king who has seen too much of the world to be happy sitting on a throne idling his days away. Leaving the task of civilizing his people to his son, he gathers together a band of old comrades "to sail beyond the sunset".
Frederick Rolfe 's The Weird of the Wanderer has the hero Nicholas Crabbe based on the author travelling back in time, discovering that he is the reincarnation of Odysseus, marrying Helen, being deified and ending up as one of the three Magi. James Joyce 's novel Ulysses first published — uses modern literary devices to narrate a single day in the life of a Dublin businessman named Leopold Bloom. Bloom's day turns out to bear many elaborate parallels to Odysseus' ten years of wandering.
Nikos Kazantzakis ' The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel , a 33, line epic poem, begins with Odysseus cleansing his body of the blood of Penelope 's suitors.
Odysseus soon leaves Ithaca in search of new adventures. Before his death he abducts Helen, incites revolutions in Crete and Egypt , communes with God, and meets representatives of such famous historical and literary figures as Vladimir Lenin , Don Quixote and Jesus. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
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