{
  "id": "odysseus",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Odysseus",
  "summary": "King of Ithaca, \"the man of many devices\", son of Laertes; the Iliad's best speaker and the Odyssey's hero, who devised the Wooden Horse, blinded Polyphemus and earned Poseidon's wrath, questioned the dead, passed the Sirens and Scylla, and killed the suitors on his return. Apollodorus adds his feigned madness and four versions of his death.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "greek",
    "heroes",
    "ithaca",
    "trojan-war",
    "homer"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "attested_in",
      "target": "odyssey"
    },
    {
      "rel": "attested_in",
      "target": "iliad"
    },
    {
      "rel": "attested_in",
      "target": "bibliotheca"
    },
    {
      "rel": "fought_in",
      "target": "trojan-war"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "athena"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "poseidon"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "cyclopes"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "greek-underworld"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "achilles"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Who is Odysseus?",
    "Why did Poseidon hate Odysseus?",
    "How did Odysseus escape the Cyclops?",
    "Did Odysseus invent the Trojan Horse?",
    "How did Odysseus pass the Sirens?",
    "What did Teiresias prophesy to Odysseus?",
    "How did Odysseus die?",
    "How did Penelope recognise Odysseus?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The Odyssey opens on \"the man of many devices, who wandered full many ways after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy\", who lost his comrades because \"they devoured the kine of Helios\" (Od. 1.1–10). He introduces himself to the Phaeacians as \"Odysseus, son of Laertes, who am known among men for all manner of wiles, and my fame reaches unto heaven\", lord of \"clear-seen Ithaca\" (Od. 9.19–21).",
      "sources": [
        "homer-odyssey"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "In the Iliad he is the orator. Antenor recalls that when Odysseus rose he stood with eyes on the ground \"in semblance like a man of no understanding\", but once he spoke, \"words like snowflakes on a winter's day\", no mortal could vie with him (Il. 3.216–223). The Horse is Homer's too, though only in the Odyssey: Demodocus sings of \"the horse of wood, which Epeius made with Athena's help, the horse which once Odysseus led up into the citadel\" (Od. 8.492–495), and Menelaus remembers Odysseus silencing Anticlus inside it while Helen imitated the wives' voices (Od. 4.271–289). Apollodorus says outright that Odysseus \"invented the construction of the Wooden Horse and suggested it to Epeus\" (Apollod. E. 5.14).",
      "sources": [
        "homer-iliad",
        "homer-odyssey",
        "apollodorus-epitome"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.93
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "He did not want to go. Apollodorus says that when the envoys came to Ithaca Odysseus \"feigned madness\", and Palamedes exposed him by snatching the infant Telemachus and drawing his sword, at which Odysseus \"confessed that his madness was pretended, and he went to the war\" (Apollod. E. 3.7); he later framed Palamedes with a forged letter and buried gold, and Palamedes was stoned (Apollod. E. 3.8). Homer has none of this.",
      "sources": [
        "apollodorus-epitome"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "Poseidon's wrath comes from the Cyclops. Odysseus called himself \"Noman\" so that Polyphemus's neighbours went away (Od. 9.366–370, 9.408–414), blinded him with a heated olive stake (Od. 9.375–397), then from the ship shouted his real name and lineage (Od. 9.502–505); Polyphemus, \"son\" of Poseidon, prayed that Odysseus might never reach home, or come \"late and in evil case, after losing all his comrades, in a ship that is another's\" (Od. 9.526–535). Zeus confirms it is Poseidon alone who keeps him from home (Od. 1.68–75); Apollodorus epitomises the same tale (Apollod. E. 7.4–9).",
      "sources": [
        "homer-odyssey",
        "apollodorus-epitome"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "In the house of Hades Teiresias tells him what the Cyclops's curse means: Poseidon is angry \"that thou didst blind his dear son\"; if the kine of Helios are spared he may reach Ithaca \"though in evil plight\", he must kill the suitors, then carry an oar inland until a wayfarer calls it a winnowing-fan, sacrifice to Poseidon, and \"death shall come to thee thyself far from the sea, a death so gentle\" in sleek old age (Od. 11.100–137).",
      "sources": [
        "homer-odyssey"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "Following Circe's instructions he stopped his comrades' ears with wax and had himself bound upright to the mast to hear the Sirens, who promised that a man who hears them \"goes his way a wiser man\" and claimed to know \"all the toils that in wide Troy the Argives and Trojans endured\" (Od. 12.39–54, 12.165–200); Scylla then took six men from the ship (Od. 12.245–259). Apollodorus names the Sirens Pisinoe, Aglaope and Thelxiepia, daughters of Achelous and the Muse Melpomene, and says they died once a ship had passed them (Apollod. E. 7.18–19).",
      "sources": [
        "homer-odyssey",
        "apollodorus-epitome"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.93
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The return: he strips off his rags, declares the contest ended and shoots Antinous through the throat as he lifts his cup (Od. 22.1–16); Penelope tests him with the bed, and he answers that he built it himself round a living olive tree, \"a great token\", at which \"her knees were loosened\" and she accepts him (Od. 23.181–230). Apollodorus compresses the same sequence, adding that Penelope wove Laertes's shroud for three years (Apollod. E. 7.31–33).",
      "sources": [
        "homer-odyssey",
        "apollodorus-epitome"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.94
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "Homer stops before his death, which Teiresias placed \"far from the sea\" (Od. 11.134–135). Apollodorus gives the sequel and its variants: Telegonus, his son by Circe, came to Ithaca and \"wounded him with the spear he had in his hands, which was barbed with the spine of a sting-ray, and Ulysses died of the wound\" (Apollod. E. 7.36–37); others said he was exiled by Neoptolemus's judgement to Aetolia and \"died in old age\" there (Apollod. E. 7.40). Hesiod knows the Circe children, Agrius and Latinus and Telegonus, and sons by Calypso (Theog. 1011–1018).",
      "sources": [
        "homer-odyssey",
        "apollodorus-epitome",
        "hesiod-theogony"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [
    "The Horse is not in the Iliad; it is sung in the Odyssey (8.492–520) and credited to Odysseus's invention by Apollodorus.",
    "Poseidon's wrath has a single cause in Homer, the blinding of Polyphemus, confirmed by Zeus (Od. 1.68–75) and by Teiresias (Od. 11.100–103).",
    "The feigned madness, the framing of Palamedes and every version of his death are post-Homeric and come from the Epitome.",
    "Teiresias promises a gentle death far from the sea; the Epitome's sting-ray spear is the tradition that contradicts it."
  ],
  "faqs": [
    {
      "q": "Why did Poseidon hate Odysseus?",
      "claim": "c4"
    },
    {
      "q": "Did Odysseus invent the Trojan Horse?",
      "claim": "c2"
    },
    {
      "q": "How did Odysseus pass the Sirens?",
      "claim": "c6"
    },
    {
      "q": "What did Teiresias prophesy to Odysseus?",
      "claim": "c5"
    },
    {
      "q": "How did Odysseus die?",
      "claim": "c8"
    },
    {
      "q": "How did Penelope recognise Odysseus?",
      "claim": "c7"
    }
  ],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "theoretical",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "Marks the line between what Homer says of Odysseus and what only Apollodorus's Epitome adds (madness, Palamedes, four deaths), with the Odyssey lines for every episode people actually ask about.",
  "confidence": 0.92,
  "last_verified": "2026-09-03",
  "media": [],
  "x": {
    "myth": {
      "pantheon": "greek",
      "kind": "hero",
      "domains": [
        "cunning",
        "speech",
        "seafaring",
        "homecoming"
      ],
      "symbols": [
        "bow",
        "wooden horse",
        "olive-tree bed"
      ],
      "wikidata": "Q47231"
    }
  },
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    "name": "Odysseus",
    "description": "King of Ithaca, \"the man of many devices\", son of Laertes; the Iliad's best speaker and the Odyssey's hero, who devised the Wooden Horse, blinded Polyphemus and earned Poseidon's wrath, questioned the dead, passed the Sirens and Scylla, and killed the suitors on his return. Apollodorus adds his feigned madness and four versions of his death.",
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    "dateModified": "2026-09-03",
    "citation": [
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        "@type": "CreativeWork",
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