Odysseus.
Odysseus · King of Ithaca
Twenty years away from home — ten at Troy, ten on the long way back through monsters, witches, and the wrath of Poseidon.
Son of Laertes, husband of Penelope, father of Telemachus. King of the small island Ithaca. The Odyssey is named after him.
Odysseus · Odysseus · King of Ithaca
Son of Laertes, husband of Penelope, father of Telemachus. King of the small island Ithaca. The Odyssey is named after him.
Odysseus was king of the small, rocky island of Ithaca, husband of Penelope and father of an infant son Telemachus when the Greek host gathered for Troy. He had pretended madness to avoid the war — ploughing salt into a field — until Palamedes set Telemachus down in the furrow and Odysseus turned the plough aside, exposing the trick.
He fought at Troy for ten years, was the architect of the wooden horse that finally took the city, and set sail for home. The journey took ten years more. He blinded the Cyclops Polyphemus, Poseidon's son — earning the sea-god's enduring anger; sailed past the Sirens with his crew's ears stopped with wax and himself bound to the mast; lost ships and men to the cattle of the sun, the witch Circe, and the whirlpool Charybdis. He spent seven years on Calypso's island, kept by the nymph against his will.
"He stopped his crew's ears with wax and bound himself to the mast — so he alone could hear the Sirens' song and live."
Athena finally pleaded his case to Zeus. He reached Ithaca alone, in disguise as a beggar, after twenty years away. The household had been overrun by suitors competing for Penelope's hand. With Telemachus, the loyal swineherd Eumaeus, and his old bow — which only he could string — Odysseus killed every one of them and was reunited with the wife who had recognised him only when he described their olive-tree bedpost, secret known to no one else.
Where this comes from.
Mythology
- Homer Odyssey
- Apollodorus Epitome 7
- Hyginus Fabulae 125
Paintings & illustrations
- Ulysses and the Sirens — Herbert James Draper (1909) · Wikimedia · PD
- Ulysses and the Sirens — John William Waterhouse (1891) · Wikimedia · PD
- Penelope and her Suitors — Pinturicchio (c. 1509) · Wikimedia · PD
For fun · sources cited. We don’t publish horoscopes, personality readings, or compatibility takes — just astronomy + classical mythology, with public-domain art where available. See all 88 constellations.