The Greeks had no illusion that the characteristic cleverness of Odysseus had a sinister aspect to it, not the least in the way that he deals with the Trojans after the war. Penelope keeps her suitors at bay by spinning a shroud for three years. She is eventually betrayed by one of the maids in the house, and forced by the suitors to complete it, although the ruse does last for three years. The suitors agree to this, but little do they know that she weaves the shroud by day, and un-weaves it by night. She tries to avoid re-marriage and delays the event by a clever ruse: she agrees to marry a suitor only after she has finished weaving a death shroud for Odysseus’s father Laertes. Just as Odysseus is too clever for the Trojans - and the suitors - so his wife Penelope is a model of cleverness and circumspection. One might say that Achilles wins his Trojan war by killing Hector, with Athena’s support, but it is Odysseus who is the real destroyer of the city by virtue of a new and different kind of heroism. Achilles never sees the fall of Troy because he dies beforehand (unless one watches the 2004 film Troy). This kind of heroism is very different from Achilles in the Iliad, whose renown is built on his use of the spear and shield in single combat in the bright light of day. His heroism is characterised by these two elements – his cunning intelligence, and his courage in the darkness of confined spaces. He is a kind of “breaker of sieges” in early Greek epic. His role in breaking the siege at Troy is a precursor to breaking the stalemate in his own house. Odysseus can rightly claim to be the conqueror of Troy based on his creative thinking in dreaming up the idea of the horse in the first place, not to mention his courage in going into its belly with the other men. His reaction to the bard prompts his host, the king Alcinous, to ask him who he is and what is his story? And so well does Demodocus sing the story of the horse that tears run down Odysseus’s cheeks and he groans heavily. Odysseus is more than keen to hear about his own heroic exploits. On the last leg of his return he is entertained by the Phaeacians on the island of Scheria (perhaps modern Corfu), where Odysseus, his identity unknown to his hosts, rather cheekily asks the local bard Demodocus to sing the story of the wooden horse, which Odysseus had used to hide the Greek soldiers and surprise the city of Troy. It is very important in the Odyssey that the hero’s renown as the destroyer of Troy has quickly entered into the oral tradition of the world through which he travels.

There is a strong element of the trickster figure about Homer’s Odysseus. All of Odysseus’s men are eventually killed, and he alone survives his return home, mostly because of his versatility and cleverness. Polyphemus is blinded but survives the attack and curses the voyage home of the Ithacans. He and his men enter into the cave of the Cyclops, get him drunk on some seriously potent wine, and then stick a large burning stake into his eye.

The critical episode on the way home is Odysseus’s encounter with Polyphemus, a Cyclops and son of Poseidon (told in Book 9).

Epic poem