Character List Odysseus The epic hero of The Odyssey, Odysseus is a fascinating character full of contradictions.

While he is intent on returning home to his faithful wife, Penelope, and his adult son he has barely seen, Telemakhos, Odysseus also willingly beds down with not one but two beautiful goddesses during his travels and expresses little remorse for his infidelities - though he rails against the suitors who are trying to capture his wife. The contradictions extend to Odysseus' intellect. Blessed with great physical strength (which he amply demonstrates, despite his years, at several moments), he has an equally keen mind that bails him out of many dire straits. There is no better "improviser" or "strategist" in Greek mythology, though the label attached is often "cunning" or "deceiver"; indeed, many Greeks saw Odysseus' habit of lying as a vice and a weakness. His penchant for disguise complements his ability to make up plausible stories about his background. Although Odysseus' ingenuity comes across as his chief weapon, his Achilles' heel of sorts is the frequency with which he falls victim to temptation and makes grave tactical errors, none more so than when adding insult to injury to Polyphemos and revealing his true name. Still, Odysseus is aware of this flaw, and bids his men to tie him up when they pass by the Seirenes, the paragons of temptation. By the end of his journey, he has learned to resist temptation, willingly suffering abuse by the suitors to meet his eventual goal of destroying them. Despite his occasional gaffe, Odysseus is a courageous and just leader who inspires admiration and respect from his shipmates and servants; the faithfulness of his dog and swineherd after so many years says as much. The nearconstant protection he enjoys from the goddess Athena seems justifiable for a man who has endured so many hardships, and cast away so many luxuries, to reunite with his beloved family. ` TelemakhosOdysseus' son, Telemakhos, undergoes a miniature odyssey of his own. A callow 20year-old afraid to challenge the suitors at the start of the poem, by the end, thanks in part to Athena's grooming, he is an assured, mature young man ready to take on the suitors. During his short journey to learn about the father he does not know, Telemakhos is the beneficiary of "xenia," the Greek term for hospitality. He repays the favor to others who need help and is a respectful traveler. The respect extends to his father; Telemakhos most likely can string his father's bow during the contest, but he holds back under Odysseus' watchful gaze. Though he has not inherited his father's gift for cunning, The Odyssey ends with the promise that Telemakhos will one day make a fine ruler of Ithaka. Penelope The beautiful wife of Odysseus, Penelope has always given critics difficulty. Does she refrain from expelling the suitors only because she fears their retribution, as she claims, or does she in some ways enjoy the attention? Though she weeps for Odysseus nightly, she does not even force the suitors to act

with proper decorum. However, her faithfulness to her husband does remain steadfast, and she even shares his proclivity for trickery, promising to remarry once she has finished weaving a shroud for Laertes, but unraveling it each night (the suitors catch on after a few years). Penelope is also fiercely protective of Telemakhos, and speaks out against the suitors when she hears of their plans to murder him. After Odysseus' disguised arrival, Penelope's loyalty to her husband is more evident, as is her sadness over his presumed death. Athena Daughter of Zeus and goddess of wisdom and battle (and of the womanly arts, though this is barely touched upon), Athena is Odysseus' most powerful ally. Frequently appearing throughout The Odyssey in disguise, she offers instructions, encouragement, and magical protection to Odysseus and Telemakhos, whom she grooms in the ways of a prince. Yet she also tests Odysseus at times; when he is disguised as a beggar, she provokes the suitors to abuse him to see, ostensibly, if Odysseus will give in to temptation and fight back. She also does not intervene in the climactic battle until the end, once Odysseus has proven his mettle. The suitors Led by the manipulative Antinoos, the hotheaded Eurymakhos, and the rational, somewhat decent Amphinomos, the suitors, numbering over one hundred, ungratefully live off Odysseus' estate in their pursuit of the beautiful and wealthy Penelope. They revel nightly with Odysseus' food and his willing female servants and bully around Telemakhos, defying the sacred Greek value of "xenia" (hospitality). Homer's unsympathetic portrait of them ensures that the audience enjoys the suitors' extremely violent end. Poseidon God of the sea, Poseidon is Odysseus' central antagonist for the middle section of The Odyssey. Enraged over Odysseus' blinding of his Kyklops son Polyphemos, Poseidon is directly responsible for most of Odysseus' troubles at sea. Servants of Odysseus Odysseus' servants are split into two camps according to loyalty. His swineherd Eumaios and old nurse Eurkyleia epitomize the loyal servants while the siblings Melanthius and Melantho lead the backstabbing group that sides with the suitors. The Odyssey Summary Ten years after the fall of Troy, the victorious Greek hero Odysseus has still not returned to his native Ithaka. A band of rowdy suitors, believing Odysseus to be dead, has overrun his palace, courting his faithful though weakening wife, Penelope, and going through his stock of food. With permission from Zeus, the goddess Athena, Odysseus' greatest immortal ally, appears in disguise and urges Odysseus' son Telemakhos to seek news of his father at Pylos and Sparta. However, the suitors, led by Antinoos, plan to ambush him upon his return. As Telemakhos tracks Odysseus' trail through stories from his old comrades-in-arms, Athena arranges for the release of Odysseus from the island of the beautiful goddess Kalypso, whose prisoner and lover he has been for the last

eight years. Odysseus sets sail on a makeshift raft, but the sea god Poseidon, whose wrath Odysseus incurred earlier in his adventures by blinding Poseidon's son, the Kyklops Polyphemos, conjures up a storm. With Athena's help, Odysseus reaches the Phaiakians. Their princess, Nausikaa, who has a crush on the handsome warrior, opens the palace to the stranger. Odysseus withholds his identity for as long as he can until finally, at the Phaiakians' request, he tells the story of his adventures. Odysseus relates how, following the Trojan War, his men suffered more losses at the hands of the Kikones, then were nearly tempted to stay on the island of the drug-addled Lotos Eaters. Next, the Kyklops Polyphemos devoured many of Odysseus' men before an ingenious plan of Odysseus' allowed the rest to escape but not before Odysseus revealed his name to Polyphemos and thus started his personal war with Poseidon. The wind god Ailos then provided Odysseus with a bag of winds to aid his return home, but the crew greedily opened the bag and sent the ship to the land of the giant, man-eating Laistrygonians, where they again barely escaped. On their next stop, the goddess Kirke tricked Odysseus' men and turned them into pigs. With the help of the god Hermes, Odysseus defied her spell and metamorphosed the pigs back into men. They stayed on her island for a year in the lap of luxury, with Odysseus as her lover, before moving on and resisting the temptations of the seductive and dangerous Seirenes, navigating between the sea monster Skylla and the whirlpools of Kharybdis, and plumbing the depths of Hades to receive a prophecy from the blind seer Teiresias. Resting on the island of Helios, Odysseus' men disobeyed his orders not to touch the oxen. At sea, Zeus punished them and all but Odysseus died in a storm. It was then that Odysseus reached Kalypso's island. Odysseus finishes his story, and the Phaiakians hospitably give him gifts and ferry him home on a ship. Athena disguises Odysseus as a beggar and instructs him to seek out his old swineherd, Eumaios; she will recall Telemakhos from his own travels. With Athena's help, Telemakhos avoids the suitors' ambush and reunites with his father, who reveals his identity only to his son and swineherd. He devises a plan to overthrow the suitors with their help. In disguise as a beggar, Odysseus investigates his palace. The suitors and a few of his old servants generally treat him rudely as Odysseus sizes up the loyalty of Penelope and his other servants. Penelope, who notes the resemblance between the beggar and her presumably dead husband, proposes a contest: she will, at last, marry the suitor who can string Odysseus' great bow and shoot an arrow through a dozen axeheads. Only Odysseus can pull off the feat. Bow in hand, he shoots and kills the suitor Antinoos and reveals his identity. With Telemakhos, Eumaios, and his goatherd Philoitios at his side, Odysseus leads the massacre of the suitors, aided only at the end by Athena. Odysseus lovingly reunites with

Penelope, his knowledge of their bed that he built the proof that overcomes her skepticism that he is an impostor. Outside of town, Odysseus visits his ailing father, Laertes, but an army of the suitors' relatives quickly finds them. With the encouragement of a disguised Athena, Laertes strikes down the ringleader, Antinoos' father. Before the battle can progress any further, Athena, on command from Zeus, orders peace between the two sides. #1 The twelve adventures refer to the delays and the obstacles that Odysseus had to overcome in order to return home from the Trojan war. First, they arrive in the land of the Cicones. In the Land of the Lotus-eaters, his men forget their longing for home when they eat flower-food. Second, at the Cyclops' cave, his men escape being eaten only by blinding the one-eyed Polyphemus. As a result, Poseidon threatens Odysseus with much suffering and the ultimate loss of all of his men. Third, King Aeolus bags all of the storm winds. On a stormless sea, Odysseus may get safely home soon. But his men open the bag, and thereby let out a terrible storm. Fourth, at the Land of the Laestrygens, giant cannibals eat all but one of Odysseus' ships. Fifth, the enchantress Circe turns Odysseus' scouting party into pigs. But Hermes, the messenger of the gods, gives Odysseus an herb against a similar fate. Sixth, Odysseus has to meet with the spirit of the prophet Teiresias. Seventh, Odysseus has to get past the Sirens without their songs luring his men to their deaths. Eighth, Odysseus has to get his men past the hateful, deadly monster Scylla. Ninth, Odysseus has to get his men past the whirlpool of Charybdis. Tenth, Odysseus has to meet with the swineherd Eumaeus. Eleventh, Odysseus suffers the death of his faithful old dog. For Argos recognizes his master. But Odysseus pretends not to know him. And twelfth, Odysseus faces the final challenge of being recognized, through a childhood scar on his foot, by his lifelong nurse Eurycleia. These last obstacles are the challenges that he faces in returning home and eliminating all of the rivals for his wife Penelope's affections Major Gods and Goddesses Greek Roman (Aphrodite Venus )(Apollo Apollo )(Ares Mars )(Artemis Diana (Athena Minerva) (Demeter Ceres) (Hades Pluto [conventionally or for a trivia question, but really Pluto, a god of wealth, is the equivalent of a god of wealth called Dis] (Hephaistos Vulcan)( Hera Juno)( Hermes Mercury )Hestia Vesta)( Kronos Saturn)(Persephone Proserpina )Poseidon Neptune (Zeus Jupiter) Minor Gods with Greek or English name on the left and Latin on the right Erinyes / Eumenides (Furies / Kindly Ones) Dirae / Furiae )(Eris Discordia) (Eros Cupid) (Moirai (Fates) Moirae / Parcae) (Charites (Graces) Gratiae) (Helios Sol) (Horai (Seasons) Horae)( Pan Faunus)( Tyche Fortuna)