Odysseus.
Odysseus was one of the most prominent Greek leaders in the Trojan
War. He was known for his cleverness and cunning, and for his eloquence
as a speaker.
Being one of the original suitors of Helen of Troy. When Menelaus
succeeded in winning Helen's hand in marriage, it was Odysseus who
advised him to get all the other suitors to swear to defend his
marriage rights. However, when Menelaus called on the suitors to
help him bring Helen back from Troy, Odysseus was reluctant to make
good on his oath. Pretending to have gone insane he plowed his fields
and sowed salt instead of grain. Palamedes placed Odysseus' infant
son in front of the plow, and Odysseus revealed his sanity when
he turned aside to avoid injuring the child.
However reluctant he may have been to join the expedition, Odysseus
fought heroically in the Trojan War, refusing to leave the field
when the Greek troops were being routed by the Trojans, and leading
a daring nocturnal raid in company with Diomedes. Odysseus was the
originator of the Trojan horse, the strategem by which the Greeks
were finally able to take the city of Troy itself. After the death
of Achilles, he and Ajax competed for Achilles' magnificent armor;
when Odysseus' eloquence caused the Greeks to award the prize to
him, Ajax having lost went mad and killed himself.
On Odysseus' return from Troy, took ten years and was beset by
perils and misfortune. Having freed his men from the pleasure-giving
drugs of the Lotus-Eaters, he rescued them from the cannibalism
of the Cyclopes and the enchantments of Circe. He braved the terrors
of the underworld with them, and while in the land of the dead Hades
allowed Thiresias, Odysseus' mother, Ajax and others to give him
adivice on his next journey. They gave him important advice about
the cattle of the sun (which Apollo herds), Scylla and Charybdis
and the Sirens. From there on the travels were harder for Odysseus,
but they would have been much worse of it wasn't for the help of
the dead.
With this newly acquired knowledge, he steered them past the perils
of the Sirens and of Scylla and Charybdis. He could not however
save them from their final folly, ,when they violated divine commandments
by slaughtering and eating the cattle of the sun-god. As a result
of this rash act, Odysseus' ship was destroyed by a thunderbolt,
and only Odysseus himself survived. He came ashore on the island
of the nymph Calypso, who made him her lover and kept him captive
for seven years. When Zeus finally intervened, Odysseus sailed away
on a small boat, only to be shipwrecked by another storm. He swam
ashore on the island of the Phaeacians, where he was magnificently
entertained and then, at long last, escorted home to Ithaca.
There were problems in Ithaca. During Odysseus' twenty-year absence,
his wife, Penelope, whohad remained faithful to him, was under enormous
pressure to remarry. A whole host of suitors were occupied her palace,
drinking and eating and behaving insolently to Penelope and her
son, Telemachus. Odysseus arrived at the palace, disguised as a
beggar, and observed their behavior and his wife's fidelity. With
the help of Telemachus and Laertes, he slaughtered the suitors and
cleansed the palace. He then had to fight one final battle, against
the outraged relatives of the men he had slain; Athena intervened
and settled this battle, and peace was restored.
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