Odysseus

Also known as: Ithacus / Laërtes' son / Laërtes' wicked son / Laërtiades / OD / OD. / ODYSSEUS / ULY / ULYSS. / ULYSSES / Ulisses / Ulysses · Family: Greeks · Role: warrior · First appears: Aeschylus, Agamemnon — Scene 4

After Achilles’ death, the judges awarded his Hephaestus-made armour to Odysseus rather than to the more valiant Aias, because they deemed him wiser. Aias became his enemy and wished to kill him, but when Teucer returned, Odysseus joined him in securing an honoured funeral despite opposition from Menelaus and Agamemnon. Under Athena’s guidance he kept watch over the perilous path, and from the burial onward he declared Teucer his friend, offering aid even when Teucer would not admit his direct participation.

At Lemnos, Odysseus had cast out the wounded Philoctetes after the army rejected him. When prophecy required Philoctetes and his bow for the capture of Troy, Odysseus recruited Neoptolemus, instructed him to use deception, and set out with Diomedes to bring Philoctetes back by force if persuasion failed. He had also captured Helenus to obtain the prophecy. Odysseus admitted taking Philoctetes and stealing his bow, ordered him forced aboard, then released him when the bow alone was judged sufficient, though he later declared that Philoctetes would be forced to the Trojan plain. Neoptolemus first resisted this craft, then agreed; he also regarded Odysseus as the man who had taken Achilles’ arms and denied him his father’s heirloom. “Yea. I deny it not. Be sure, 'twas I.”

In the war’s other campaigns, Odysseus persuaded the Greek army to accept Achilles’ demand for Polyxena’s sacrifice and was ordered to escort her, refusing Hecuba’s plea to withdraw the decree or die in her daughter’s place. He was likewise chosen to conduct Iphigenia to sacrifice, though Achilles vowed to restrain him. At Troy, Hecuba had once saved him after he came as a spy, while Helen alone identified him to her; later, his speeches helped secure the deaths of Astyanax and Polyxena and won Hecuba by lot as his slave. During the night operations against Troy, Odysseus stole Athena’s image, entered Ilion in disguise, killed sentinels, and escaped; with Diomedes he slew Rhesus and seized his horses, while Dolon had pledged to kill him and Hector called him a grievous pest. His return was said to take ten years beyond the siege, though he remained alive.