The True Story of Odysseus (Ulysses)
Few characters have travelled as far, across the sea and through time, as Odysseus. King of Ithaca, hero of the Trojan War and protagonist of Homer’s Odyssey, his figure has fascinated poets, historians and, more recently, filmmakers for almost three thousand years. But what is the true story of Odysseus, the man the Romans called Ulysses?
In short: Odysseus, king of Ithaca, was the Greek hero who devised the Trojan Horse and took ten years to return home after the Trojan War, facing cyclopes, sirens and sorceresses along the way. The Romans called him Ulysses, and his story — told by Homer almost three thousand years ago — remains the great literary model of the journey and the return.
The Hero of a Thousand Wiles
Odysseus was neither the strongest nor the fastest of the Greek heroes. His weapon was metis: intelligence, cunning, the ability to devise deceptions. It was he who conceived the Trojan Horse, the stratagem that ended ten years of siege. Spy, diplomat, strategist and survivor, he embodies a heroism different from that of Achilles: mind over strength.
King of the small island of Ithaca, he left behind his wife Penelope and his newborn son Telemachus to fight at Troy. He did not go willingly: according to an ancient tradition, he tried to escape recruitment by feigning madness, ploughing the beach with salt. Only when little Telemachus was placed in front of the plough did he reveal that he was sane. When the war ended, his true odyssey had only just begun.
The Story of Odysseus in the Iliad: Before the Journey
The Iliad shows us Odysseus in action long before he sets out on his celebrated journey home. It was he who travelled to Skyros to unmask the young Achilles, hidden among the daughters of King Lycomedes disguised as a woman: while the girls chose fabrics and jewels, Achilles could not help seizing the weapons, and so gave himself away. It was he who led the embassy that tried to persuade Achilles to return to battle after his famous quarrel with Agamemnon. And it was he who, together with Diomedes, slipped into the Trojan camp by night to steal the Palladium, the sacred statue of Athena on which, according to the oracle, the fate of Troy depended, one of the most dangerous missions of the entire war.
In the Iliad, Odysseus always appears where he is most needed: not for open combat, but for impossible negotiations, secret missions and the moments when war is decided with words rather than spears. He is the hero of politics and of thought, and perhaps that is why Athena, goddess of wisdom, protects him with particular favour.
A Ten-Year Journey Home
The Odyssey tells of his troubled return, which lasted another decade and took him to the edges of the mythical Mediterranean: the Cyclops Polyphemus, whom he blinded after getting him drunk, drawing upon himself the wrath of Poseidon; the sorceress Circe, who turned his men into swine; the song of the Sirens, which he heard tied to the mast so as not to succumb; the monsters Scylla and Charybdis; the descent into Hades; and seven years of gilded captivity with the nymph Calypso. When he finally returned to Ithaca, disguised as a beggar, he found his palace overrun by suitors courting Penelope and devouring his wealth. Only he was able to string his old bow, in the celebrated contest of the bow, and win back his home and kingdom.
Geographers ancient and modern have tried to place each stage of the voyage on the real map of the Mediterranean. The Cyclopes would be located in Sicily; Aeaea, Circe’s island, at the promontory of Circeo in Latium; the Sirens between Sicily and Calabria; Scylla and Charybdis in the Strait of Messina; Ogygia, Calypso’s island, perhaps in Malta or Gibraltar. No hypothesis is definitive, but the geography of the poem breathes the same Mediterranean sailed by the Greek seafarers of the eighth century BC, and that is enough to anchor it in a recognisable world.
Discover history in miniature: the Museo L’Iber in Valencia, the largest toy soldier museum in the world, brings epics like the Odyssey to life through thousands of miniatures. Plan your visit · Buy your ticket online
About the author — Alejandro Noguera Borel, Director of the Museo L’Iber and the Fundación Libertas 7. In the world of toy soldiers since the 1970s.
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