Ulysses, << yoo LIHS eez, >> was king of Ithaca and a brave and cunning hero in Greek mythology. His name is Odysseus in Greek and Ulysses in Latin. Ulysses was especially noted for his cleverness. In early Greek writings, he also was generous and noble. Some later Greek writers portrayed him as a sly, deceitful trickster.
Most of the stories about Ulysses tell about his life during and after the Trojan War, a conflict between Greece and the city of Troy. Ulysses is a major character in the Iliad and the hero of the Odyssey, the two great epics attributed to the Greek poet Homer. The Iliad deals with events that occurred in the last year of the Trojan War. The Odyssey describes Ulysses’s adventures as he returns home after the Trojan War.
The Trojan War.
Ulysses was the son of Laertes, the king of Ithaca, and Anticleia. But just before her marriage to Laertes, Anticleia had been seduced by Sisyphus, the king of Corinth. Some Greeks believed that Sisyphus was Ulysses’s father.
Ulysses married Penelope, the daughter of Icarius, the king of Sparta. Soon after the birth of their son, Telemachus, a group of Greek leaders tried to recruit Ulysses to fight Troy. But Ulysses did not want to go to war. To avoid joining the army, Ulysses pretended to be insane. He yoked an ox and a donkey to a plow and then sowed his fields with salt. Palamedes, a member of the group, suspected that Ulysses was faking insanity. Palamedes took Telemachus and put him in the path of Ulysses’s plow. Ulysses turned the plow aside to protect the baby and thus proved that he was sane.
Ulysses reluctantly agreed to sail with the Greek army for Troy, but he never forgave Palamedes. After the Greeks arrived at Troy, Ulysses tricked them into believing that Palamedes was a traitor. The Greek soldiers then killed Palamedes.
During the Trojan War, Ulysses was a valiant fighter and a wise counselor to the Greek leaders. He went on dangerous missions to spy on the Trojan forces. The Greeks honored him by giving him the armor of Achilles, the greatest Greek warrior, after Achilles’s death.
Return to Ithaca.
The Greeks finally defeated the Trojans after 10 years of fighting, and Ulysses set sail for Ithaca. During his return voyage, he visited the land of Cyclopes (one-eyed giants). Ulysses was captured by Polyphemus, a Cyclops, but he escaped after blinding the Cyclops with a heated stake. Polyphemus prayed for revenge to his father, the sea god Poseidon. Poseidon then tried to make Ulysses’s return home as difficult as possible. With some help from the goddess Athena, Ulysses finally reached home after 10 years of wandering and many thrilling adventures. See Odyssey.
During Ulysses’s long absence, several noblemen had moved into his palace. The men claimed that Ulysses must have died, and they demanded that Penelope marry one of them. Penelope finally agreed to marry the man who could string Ulysses’s huge bow and shoot an arrow through 12 axes.
Ulysses arrived at the palace the day before the archery contest, disguised as a beggar. Penelope allowed him to enter the contest. He was the only one who could perform the feat. After revealing his identity, he killed the noblemen with the help of Athena, Telemachus, and loyal servants. He then was reunited with his wife.
