In the funeral games at the pyre of Patroclus, he contended with Odysseus and Antilochus for the prize in the footrace ; but Athena, who was hostile towards him and favored Odysseus, made him stumble and fall, so that he won only the second prize.

Later, when Achilles dies, killed by Paris ( with help from Apollo ), Ajax and Odysseus are the heroes who fight against the Trojans to get the body and bury it next to his friend, Patroclus.

Briefly, the first Aeolus was a son of Hellen and eponymous founder of the Aeolian race ; the second was a son of Poseidon, who led a colony to islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea ; and the third Aeolus was a son of Hippotes who is mentioned in Odyssey book 10 as Keeper of the Winds who gives Odysseus a tightly closed bag full of the captured winds so he could sail easily home to Ithaca on the gentle West Wind.

Only Eurylochus, suspecting treachery from the outset, escaped to warn Odysseus and the others who had stayed behind at the ships.

Odysseus set out to rescue his men, but was intercepted by his great grandfather, Hermes, who had been sent by Athena.

Towards the end of Hesiod's Theogony ( 1011f ), we find that Circe bore Odysseus three sons: Ardeas or Agrius ( otherwise unknown ); Latinus ; and Telegonus, who ruled over the Tyrsenoi, that is the Etruscans.

Circe eventually informed him who his absent father was and, when he set out to find Odysseus, gave him a poisoned spear.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus ( 1. 72. 5 ) cites Xenagoras, the second century BC historian, as claiming that Odysseus and Circe had three sons: Romus, Anteias, and Ardeias, who respectively founded three cities called by their names: Rome, Antium, and Ardea.

In Greek legend, for instance, it was Poseidon ( god of the sea ) who raised the storms which blew Odysseus ' craft off course on his return journey, and Japanese tradition holds that a god-sent wind saved them from Mongol invasion.

Critics have long taken as self-referential a passage in the Odyssey describing a blind bard, Demodocus, in the court of the Phaeacian king, who recounts stories of Troy to the shipwrecked Odysseus.

There, on the island of Pharos, Menelaus encountered the old sea-god Proteus, who told him that Odysseus was a captive of the nymph Calypso.

She is persuaded to release him by Odysseus ' great-grandfather, the messenger god Hermes, who has been sent by Zeus in response to Athena's plea.

He first encountered the spirit of crewmember Elpenor, who had gotten drunk and fallen from a roof to his death, which had gone unnoticed by others, before Odysseus and the rest of his crew had left Circe.

Next Odysseus met the spirit of his own mother, who had died of grief during his long absence.

Notably he encountered the spirit of Agamemnon, of whose murder he now learned, and Achilles, who told him about the woes of the land of the dead ( for Odysseus ' encounter with the dead, see also Nekuia ).

All of the sailors except for Odysseus, who was tied to the mast as he wanted to hear the song, had their ears plugged up with beeswax.

Having listened with rapt attention to his story, the Phaeacians, who are skilled mariners, agree to help Odysseus get home.

Odysseus and Telemachus hang twelve of their household maids, who had betrayed Penelope or had sex with the Suitors, or both ; they mutilate and kill the goatherd Melanthius, who had mocked and abused Odysseus.

The next day he and Telemachus visit the country farm of his old father Laertes, who likewise accepts his identity only when Odysseus correctly describes the orchard that Laertes had previously given him.

After Achilles, Ajax is the most valuable warrior in Agamemnon's army ( along with Diomedes ), though he is not as cunning as Nestor, Diomedes, Idomeneus, or Odysseus, he is much more powerful and just as intelligent.

In Sophocles ' play Ajax, a famous retelling of Ajax's demise takes place — after the armor is awarded to Odysseus the hero Ajax falls to the ground, exhausted.

Homer is somewhat vague about the precise manner of Ajax's death but does ascribe it to his loss in the dispute over Achilles's shield: when Odysseus visits Hades, he begs the soul of Ajax to speak to him, but Ajax, still resentful over the old quarrel, refuses and descends silently back into Erebus.

We possess two declamations under his name: On Sophists, directed against Isocrates and setting forth the superiority of extempore over written speeches ( a more recently discovered fragment of another speech against Isocrates is probably of later date ); Odysseus ( perhaps spurious ) in which Odysseus accuses Palamedes of treachery during the siege of Troy

" In an Etruscan bronze mirror relief, a common barnyard pig is depicted at the feet of Circe: Odysseus and Elpenor approach her, swords drawn.

Some Boeotian vase-paintings show a caricature version of the episode, acted out by dwarf pygmies with negroid attributes, and an aged and lame Odysseus leaning on a staff ; they are the mute survivors of some rustic comedy tradition that is impenetrable to us.

Throughout the poem, Odysseus is hindered by the efforts of Poseidon and the sea monsters throughout the ocean.

Thus, for example, Odysseus is represented in Hecuba ( lines 131-32 ) as " agile-minded, sweet-talking, demos-pleasing " i. e. a type of the war-time demagogues that were active in Athens during the Peloponnesian War.

There is a strong aristocratic bias in the poems demonstrated by the lack of any major protagonists of non-aristocratic stock, and by episodes such as the beating down of the commoner Thersites by the king Odysseus for daring to criticize his superiors.

Even earlier, a kind of primitive haggis is referred to in Homer's Odyssey, in book 20, ( towards the end of the eighth century BC ) when Odysseus is compared to " a man before a great blazing fire turning swiftly this way and that a stomach full of fat and blood, very eager to have it roasted quickly.

The Odyssey begins ten years after the end of the ten-year Trojan War that is the subject of the Iliad, and Odysseus has still not returned home from the war.

Odysseus ' son Telemachus is about 20 years old and is sharing his absent father ’ s house on the island of Ithaca with his mother Penelope and a crowd of 108 boisterous young men, " the Suitors ", whose aim is to persuade Penelope to marry one of them, all the while enjoying the hospitality of Odysseus ' household and eating up his wealth.

Odysseus ’ protectress, the goddess Athena, discusses his fate with Zeus, king of the gods, at a moment when Odysseus ' enemy, the god of the sea Poseidon, is absent from Mount Olympus.

Penelope is recognizable in Greek and Roman works, from Attic vase-paintings — the Penelope Painter is recognized by his representations of her — to Roman sculpture copying or improvising upon classical Greek models, by her seated pose, by her reflective gesture of leaning her cheek on her hand, and by her protectively crossed knees, reflecting her long chastity in Odysseus ' absence, an unusual pose in any other figure.

Telemachus (;, Tēlemakhos, literally " far-fighter ") is a figure in Greek mythology, the son of Odysseus and Penelope, and a central character in Homer's Odyssey.

Nausicaa is also a mother figure for Odysseus ; she ensures Odysseus ' return home, and thus says " Never forget me, for I gave you life ," indicating her status as a " new mother " in Odysseus ' rebirth.

Dennis R. MacDonald, in The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, notes that a similar episode to the one that occurs in Mark — of a crowd picking one figure over another figure similar to the other — occurred in The Odyssey, where Odysseus entered the palace disguised as a beggar and defeated his wife's suitors to reclaim his throne.

In the first thread, the figure of Pound / Odysseus reappears in the guise of " OY TIS ", or No Man, the name the hero uses in the Cyclops episode of the Odyssey.

It opens with a passage in which we see the Odysseus / Pound figure, homecoming achieved, reconciled with the sea-god.

Despite difficult weather conditions they went on to uncover a fountain with its own tank at a depth of three metres, and a marble figure of Apollo, as well as another mosaic pavement with nine figures depicting Achilles being taken by Odysseus to fight in the Trojan War.

Homer gives a literary account of love never expressed: while she is presented as a potential love interest to Odysseus – she says to her friend that she would like her husband to be like him, and her father tells Odysseus he would let him marry her – nothing would result between the pair.

For example, Odysseus narrates much of the Odyssey to the Phaeacians, but, even though this recollection forms a great part of the poem, the events after and before the interpolated recollection are of greater interest than the memory.