Odysseus | Myth, Significance, Trojan War, & Odyssey - Britannica

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• Introduction & Top Questions
• The oath of Tyndareus and Odysseus’s marriage
• Role in the Trojan War
• Role in the Odyssey
• Odysseus’s death
• Character
• In popular culture

References & Edit History Quick Facts & Related Topics Images & Videos For Students Odysseus summary Quizzes From Athena to Zeus: Basics of Greek Mythology Gods, Goddesses, and Greek Mythology A Study of Greek and Roman Mythology An Odyssey of Grecian Literature Related Questions

• What is Odysseus known for?
• Who are some of the major figures of Greek mythology?
• What are some major works in Greek mythology?
• What started the Trojan War?
• Was the Trojan War real?

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External Websites

• UEN Digital Press with Pressbooks - Mythology Unbound: An Online Textbook for Classical Mythology - The Odyssey � An Introduction
• BBC Tech - Odysseus and Penelope
• International Journal of Science and Research - A Study on the Heroic Traits of Odysseus (PDF)
• Perseus Digital Library - A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology - Odysseus
• World History Encyclopedia - Odysseus
• Pressbooks Create - ItÂ’s All Greek to Me! - The Odyssey
• Mythopedia - Odysseus
• CORE - Revitalization of Mosque Role and Function Through Development of �Posdaya� in the View of Structuration Theory
• Heritage History - The Wanderings of Odysseus
• Encyclopedia Mythica - Odysseus

Britannica Websites Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.

• Odysseus - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

Odysseus Greek mythology Ask Anything Also known as: Ulixes, Ulysses Written by Gitanjali Roy Gitanjali Roy is senior editor, Encyclopaedia Britannica. She has over two decades of editorial experience across digital and broadcast media. Gitanjali Roy Fact-checked by Britannica Editors Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree.... Britannica Editors Last updated Jan. 16, 2026 •History Britannica AI Ask Anything Table of Contents Table of Contents Ask Anything Top Questions

What is Odysseus known for?

Odysseus, also known as Ulysses, is a central character in Homer’s epic poems; he is the hero of the Odyssey and features prominently in the Iliad. He known for his wisdom, resourcefulness, and strategic planning, which were crucial in the Greeks’ success in the Trojan War. His wanderings between Troy and Ithaca after the war are chronicled in the Odyssey.

Is Odysseus a child of Zeus?

No, Odysseus was not one of Zeus’s sons. He is the son of Laertes, from whom he inherits the throne of Ithaca, and Anticleia. In later traditions he was regarded as the son of Sisyphus.

Was Odysseus in love with Calypso?

During his adventures in the Odyssey, Odysseus is kept captive on the island of Ogygia by the nymph Calypso. Her offer of immortality cannot overcome his longing for home. His release is secured after seven years by divine intervention.

Odysseus, hero of Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey and one of the most frequently portrayed figures in Western literature. According to Homer, Odysseus is king of Ithaca, son of Laertes and Anticleia (the daughter of Autolycus of Parnassus), and father, by his wife, Penelope, of Telemachus. (In later tradition, Odysseus is instead the son of Sisyphus and fathered sons by Circe, Calypso, and others.) A favorite of the goddess Athena, Odysseus is both wise and wily, a man of exceptional resourcefulness, courage, and eloquence. His skill in strategic planning is invaluable to the Greek success in the 10-year-long Trojan War, subject of Homer’s Iliad. A series of adventures befall him on the journey home from Troy, chronicled in the Odyssey. His circuitous route takes him another 10 years, resulting in a 20-year absence from Ithaca. In modern parlance the word odyssey is used to refer to travels of inordinate length or difficulty.

The oath of Tyndareus and Odysseus’s marriage

Odysseus is descended from men who are characterized in Greek mythology as cunning and crafty: His maternal grandfather, Autolycus, was a legendary thief and gave Odysseus his name in some versions of the story, and his father in post-Homeric traditions, Sisyphus, attempted to cheat Death. Odysseus’s facility for creative thinking is illustrated in the oath of Tyndareus, an episode from Greek mythology that helped originate the Trojan War. Odysseus, one among the many Greeks competing for the hand of the beautiful Helen, provides her father, Tyndareus, with a solution that will prevent her rejected suitors from rioting after failing to win her as a bride. On Odysseus’s advice Tyndareus makes each suitor swear an oath to defend Helen’s marriage regardless of who is chosen to be her husband. When she marries Menelaus, heir to the throne of Sparta, the disgruntled suitors are forced to honor their vow. Odysseus is rewarded for his assistance with the hand of Helen’s cousin Penelope, whom he had wanted to marry all along.

Odysseus’s Children

• Telemachus is the son born to Odysseus and Penelope before the Trojan War. During his father’s absence from Ithaca, he visits Pylos and Sparta to learn of Odysseus’s fate and, on his return home, evades an ambush set by Penelope’s suitors.
• Telegonus is the son of Odysseus and Circe. He is eventually responsible for Odysseus’s death and later marries Penelope. In some traditions Odysseus and Circe had other children as well.
• Acusilaus and Poliporthes, in some myths, are sons born to Odysseus and Penelope after his return to Ithaca.
• Nausithous and Nausinous are sons of Odysseus and Calypso, who is also regarded as the mother of Telegonus in some myths.
• Polypoetes is the son of Odysseus and Callidice, queen of Thesprotia, where Odysseus traveled to after his return to Ithaca.
• Euryalus is a son of Odysseus and Euippe, daughter of King Tyrimmas of Epeiros. Euryalus was killed in Ithaca by Odysseus, who did not recognize his son.
• Leontophonus is a son of Odysseus and an unnamed daughter of King Thoas of Aetolia, where Odysseus dies of old age in some versions.

Role in the Trojan War

When Helen is seduced by the Trojan prince Paris, a Greek force is assembled from the kings who had sworn the oath of Tyndareus. Odysseus, who had also sworn the oath, is reluctant to join the expedition because of a prophecy that he will not return home for many years. When a recruiting party arrives in Ithaca, Odysseus feigns insanity to avoid military service. However, he is forced to abandon his pretense when Palamedes, one of the recruiting party, places the infant Telemachus in harm’s way. As a result Odysseus sails to Troy with the Greek fleet and plays a crucial role in the Trojan War. His exploits include:

Britannica Quiz From Athena to Zeus: Basics of Greek Mythology

• Recruitment of Achilles: The Greek hero Achilles, for whom a glorious death in battle had been prophesied, had been sent by his parents, Thetis and Peleus, to the court of King Lycomedes of Scyros in female disguise. However, Achilles’ participation in the war is vital for a Greek victory. Odysseus visits the court with weapons that he has placed with some women’s garments, and Achilles reveals himself by ignoring the garments and handling the weapons instead. Toward the end of the war Odysseus plays a leading part in achieving a reconciliation between the Greek commander Agamemnon and Achilles, who had withdrawn from fighting after a dispute between the two men.
• Partnership with Diomedes: Odysseus’s many exploits with Diomedes, king of Argos, include a night raid against the Thracians, allies of Troy, in which they kill several warriors, among them King Rhesus, and steal their horses.
• Capture of Helenus: The Greek triumph is set in motion when Odysseus takes as prisoner the Trojan prince and seer Helenus. Helenus reveals that a Greek victory depends on the fulfillment of certain conditions, which Odysseus then helps carry out: removal of the Palladium, or guardian statue of Athena, from Troy; recruiting Achilles’ son, Neoptolemus; and retrieving the archer Philoctetes, who possesses the bow and arrows of Heracles and had been left on the island of Lemnos after a snakebite.
• Rivalry with Ajax the Greater: After Achilles’ death, his mother, Thetis, announces that his armor will be awarded to the best of the Greek warriors. The prize is claimed by both Odysseus and Ajax, who had together brought back Achilles’ body from the battlefield for burial. After Odysseus uses his rhetorical skill to convince a panel of judges to decide in his favor, Ajax descends into insanity and dies by suicide.
• The Trojan horse: Odysseus’s greatest influence on the course of the war is to devise the stratagem by which the Greeks ultimately penetrate the city of Troy. A large and hollow wooden structure is constructed and left at the gates of Troy while the Greek forces appear to withdraw and sail away. The unsuspecting Trojans bring the horse into the city, unaware that an elite group of Greek warriors is concealed within. At nightfall the warriors emerge from their hiding place, admit the returning Greek troops, and sack Troy.

Role in the Odyssey

Odysseus’s wanderings and the recovery of his house and kingdom are the central theme of the Odyssey, which also relates how Penelope and Telemachus struggle to maintain their authority in his absence. Below are Odysseus’s adventures in chronological order:

• Odysseus and his crew depart Troy and stop at Ismarus, where they attack the local tribe, called the Cicones. At first victorious, they are eventually overwhelmed and suffer great losses.
• He then comes to the land of the Lotus-Eaters and only with difficulty rescues some of his companions from their lōtos-induced lethargy.
• He encounters and blinds Polyphemus, a Cyclops and a son of Poseidon, escaping from his cave on the coast of Sicily by clinging to the belly of a ram.
• He visits Aeolus, master of the winds, who gives him a bag containing a favorable wind to aid his journey. However, his mistrustful crew opens the bag while Odysseus is sleeping and the wind escapes, blowing them off course.
• He loses 11 of his 12 ships to the Laestrygones, cannibalistic giants who fling massive boulders at the ships and eat most of Odysseus’s men.
• He reaches Aeaea, the island of the enchantress Circe, where he has to rescue some of his companions whom she had turned into swine.
• He visits the Land of Departed Spirits, where he speaks to the spirit of Agamemnon and learns from the Theban seer Tiresias how he can expiate Poseidon’s wrath over the blinding of Polyphemus.
• He then encounters the Sirens and sails past their island unharmed by tying himself to the mast of his ship and having his men block their ears with beeswax.
• He successfully navigates the strait between the monstrous Scylla and Charybdis. The first is a female creature with six heads that snatches up six of Odysseus’s men, and the latter is a deadly whirlpool personified.
• He reaches Thrinacia, an island on which live the Cattle of the Sun. Despite warnings, his companions plunder the cattle for food. He alone survives the ensuing storm that Zeus sends after being entreated by the enraged sun god, Helios.
• He reaches Ogygia, the idyllic island of the nymph Calypso, who keeps him captive for seven years. Her promise of immortality cannot overcome Odysseus’s longing for home, and his release is eventually secured by divine intervention.
• He sails from Ogygia on a raft and is shipwrecked on Scheria, the island of the Phaeacians. He is found by their princess, Nausicaa, and finally gets to Ithaca with the assistance of the Phaeacians, who furnish him with a ship.

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Disguised by Athena as an elderly beggar, Odysseus reveals himself to the swineherd Eumaeus and to Telemachus. At the palace he is recognized by his faithful dog, Argos, who dies after greeting him, and his nurse, Eurycleia (or Euryclea), who identifies him from a scar. Still in disguise, Odysseus wins a contest for Penelope’s hand by stringing and shooting with his old bow. He then slays Penelope’s suitors with the help of Telemachus. Penelope still does not believe him and gives him one more test. When he successfully evades her trick question about their marriage bed, she at last knows it is he and accepts Odysseus as her long-lost husband and the king of Ithaca.

Odysseus’s death

In later accounts Odysseus’s trials continue even after his reunion with Penelope. To appease Poseidon, he travels to northern Greece, carrying an oar on his shoulder. When the oar is mistaken for a winnowing fan, he plants it in the ground and performs a sacrifice to Poseidon, completing his expiation. He returns to Ithaca by way of the kingdom of the Thesprotians, where he marries the queen, Callidice. Odysseus finally meets his end in Ithaca after confronting a stranger who had been raiding cattle in the countryside. The stranger kills Odysseus with a spear poisoned by a stingray’s barb and is revealed to be Telegonus, son of Odysseus and Circe.

Character

Odysseus is a complicated figure whose bravery, wisdom, and eloquence are equaled by a capacity for deception, cunning, and ruthlessness. In the Iliad he emerges as a diplomat, problem solver, and strategic thinker and the man most suited to cope with crises in personal relations. However, he also shows himself capable of pitiless savagery. In some accounts he engineers the death of Palamedes during the course of the war and instigates the killing of Hector’s infant son, Astyanax. In the Odyssey Odysseus has many opportunities to display his talent for ruses and deceptions, but at the same time his courage, loyalty, and magnanimity are constantly attested.

Classical Greek writers presented him sometimes as an unscrupulous politician and sometimes as a wise and honorable statesman. Philosophers usually admired his intelligence and wisdom. Some Roman writers (including Virgil and Statius) tended to disparage him as the destroyer of Rome’s mother city, Troy; others (such as Horace and Ovid) admired him. The early Christian writers praised him as an example of the wise pilgrim. Dramatists have explored his potentialities as a man of policies, and romanticists have seen him as a Byronic adventurer. In fact, each era has reinterpreted “the man of many turns” in its own way, without destroying the archetypal figure.

In popular culture

Odysseus has been famously rendered in literature by James Joyce, whose novel Ulysses (1922) is constructed as a modern parallel to the Odyssey with the character of Leopold Bloom corresponding to that of Odysseus. Alfred Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses,” composed in 1833, imagines Odysseus after his return to Ithaca, yearning for a life of adventure. An alternate view of Odysseus is offered in Madeline Miller’s Circe (2018), told from the point of view of the witch who changes Odysseus’s men into swine but also advises him on how to escape the lure of the Sirens.

Latin: Ulixes English: Ulysses (Show more) Role In: Trojan War (Show more) On the Web: Heritage History - The Wanderings of Odysseus (Jan. 16, 2026) (Show more) See all related content

Actor Sean Bean played Odysseus in the Hollywood film Troy (2004), starring Brad Pitt in the lead role as Achilles. The character is played by Matt Damon in The Odyssey, directed by Christopher Nolan and scheduled to release in July 2026.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Gitanjali Roy