Palamedes – who was the man sent to recruit Odysseus from Ithaca – did not believe the hero one bit in order to test his sanity, he put Telemachus in front of the plow. So, he decided to feign madness by harnessing a donkey and an ox to a plow and sowing salt on a field. Ironically – since he had been the one to propose the oath in the first place – Odysseus did not want to join the expedition and he had a good reason for it: the seer Halitherses had informed him that if he participated, it would take him a long time to return home. Calling upon the oath sworn by Helen’s suitors, Menelaus summoned all of them to help him in his quest to bring her back. However, while the boy was still a baby, Helen was abducted by Prince Paris of Troy. Palamedes’ PloyĪfter marrying Penelope, Odysseus took her to Ithaca where the couple lived a happy life, made even happier after the birth of their only son, Telemachus. In exchange for some help from Tyndareus regarding the hand of Penelope, Odysseus advised him to make all the suitors swear an oath that they would respect his final choice and that they would support the husband and wife in any ill fate that the two may face in the future.Īnd so, when Menelaus was chosen, all the other suitors peacefully left Sparta except for Odysseus, that is, who stayed there until Tyndareus fulfilled his part of the promise and talked his brother into giving Penelope’s hand to Odysseus in marriage. Fortunately, Odysseus thought up an excellent little solution.
With or without Odysseus, the suitors were just too many to please, and Tyndareus justifiably feared an outbreak of violence regardless of his final choice. However, he was undoubtedly the most reluctant among them, not only because he was reasonably sure that Menelaus would be the chosen bridegroom, but also because, as beautiful as Helen was, he was much more profoundly smitten by her cousin, Penelope, the daughter of Tyndareus’ brother, Icarius. Odysseus was one of the suitors of Helen, step-daughter of King Tyndareus of Sparta. However, the boar did hurt him, leaving a deep recognizable scar on his leg, one which will play an important part in the memorable drama of his later life. Many years later, while visiting his grandfather, Odysseus joined his uncles on a boar-hunting trip and, even though he was still an inexperienced adolescent, he managed to kill the boar himself, after coming face to face with it. “Inasmuch as I am come hither as one that has been angered with many” – supposedly said Autolycus upon being asked to be the godfather, “therefore let the name by which the child is named be Odysseus.” By this etymology, Odysseus comes from odussesthai, “to be wrought against, to be at odds with someone, to hate.” Odysseus’ Scar Odysseus seems to have spent some of the most defining moments of his childhood with Autolycus, who, in addition to passing on to him his craft, may have even given Odysseus his famous name. Now, this Autolycus, Odysseus’ grandfather, was a son of Hermes and was widely renowned as so skillful a thief that he could not be caught, being “able to change whatever he stole into some other form – from white to black, or from black to white, from a hornless animal to a horned one, or from horned one to a hornless.” However, later authors didn’t seem too content with a genealogy which makes the cunning Odysseus a relative of a thief only on his mother’s side, so they started spreading a rumor according to which his father wasn’t Laertes, but none other than the master-trickster Sisyphus, who supposedly bargained a night with Anticlea from her father after he had finally caught Autolycus stealing his cattle. Odysseus was – almost certainly – the only son of Laertes of Ithaca, a former Argonaut, and Anticlea, the only daughter of Autolycus. Odysseus Before the Trojan War Odysseus’ Family
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