every named person, god, people, and place in the poem — with pronunciations, epithets, kin, and linked citations
Say: uh-KEE-uh
The Greek mainland, the Achaeans' homeland, named in passing as the country Odysseus's men and Penelope's suitors alike measure their exile or their marriages against.
Refs: 11.166, 11.481, 21.107, 23.68.
See also: Achaeans.
Say: uh-KEE-unz
The poem's default name for the Greeks who sailed to Troy and for their descendants on Ithaca and elsewhere; interchangeable throughout with Argives and Danaans. Invoked constantly as the collective audience, army, or assembly against which individual action is measured.
Epithets: "the long-haired Achaeans" (κάρη κομόωντες Ἀχαιοί, 1.90); "the strong-greaved Achaeans" (ἐυκνήμιδες Ἀχαιοί, 2.72); "the bronze-shirted Achaeans" (χαλκοχίτωνες Ἀχαιοί, 1.286).
Also called: Argives; Danaans — synonyms for the same host, metrically convenient variants, not distinct peoples.
Refs: 1.90, 1.239, 1.272, 1.286, 2.7, 2.72, 3.79, 3.100, 3.137, 4.106, 4.330 …and throughout. Books 1–24.
Say: AK-uh-ron
One of the underworld's rivers, named at the meeting of the waters where Circe directs Odysseus to perform the rites that summon the dead.
Refs: 10.513.
See also: Aeaea.
Say: uh-KIL-eez
Greatest of the Achaeans at Troy, remembered throughout the poem as the standard against which other heroes and other deaths are measured. His ghost, met in the underworld, rejects Odysseus's consolations: he would rather serve as a hired hand to a landless man than rule over all the dead (11.486ff). In the underworld's final scene his shade is reunited with the ghosts of the newly dead suitors, hearing of Odysseus's homecoming vengeance.
Also called: "Aeacides," son of Peleus and grandson of Aeacus (11.471, 11.538); "the blameless son of Peleus."
Kin: son of Peleus.
Refs: 3.106, 3.109, 3.189, 4.5, 8.75, 11.467, 11.471, 11.478, 11.482, 11.486, 11.538, 11.546, 11.558, 24.15, 24.19, 24.36, 24.72, 24.76, 24.94. Books 3–4, 8, 11, 24.
See also: Ajax, Antilochus, Agamemnon.
Say: ak-TOR-is
Penelope's slave-woman, given to her by her father when she first came to Ithaca; she alone knew the secret of the bedchamber door, and Penelope cites her as the one living witness who could confirm the bed's construction — though by the time of the recognition scene she is dead.
Refs: 23.228.
See also: Penelope.
Say: uh-DRES-tee
One of Helen's handmaids in Sparta, who sets out her reclining chair when Helen enters the hall to greet Telemachus.
Refs: 4.123.
Say: ee-EE-uh or ay-EE-uh
Circe's island, where Odysseus's crew lands after the Laestrygonian disaster; the ship returns there after the underworld voyage before the final sailing past the Sirens and through the strait of Scylla and Charybdis.
Refs: 9.32, 10.135, 11.70, 12.3, 12.268, 12.273.
See also: Acheron.
Say: ee-EE-teez
Sorcerer-king of Aea, son of Helios and brother of Circe; named as a genealogical marker of Circe's fearsome bloodline and, in Book 12, as one whose home the sun rises from in Circe's directions.
Kin: son of Helios; brother of Circe.
Say: EE-jee
Poseidon's seat beneath the sea, where he keeps his glittering golden palace; named as the god descends to watch Odysseus's raft from the mountains of the Solymi.
Refs: 5.381.
See also: Poseidon.
Say: ee-JIS-thus
Son of Thyestes and cousin to Agamemnon; while Agamemnon fights at Troy he seduces Clytemnestra, murders the king at his homecoming feast, and rules Mycenae for years until Orestes kills him in vengeance. Zeus opens the poem citing him (1.29–43) as proof that mortals bring ruin on themselves "beyond their portion," and Nestor and Menelaus both retell the story to Telemachus as the poem's standing counter-example to Odysseus's own return.
Epithets: "blameless Aegisthus" (ἀμύμων Αἴγισθος, 1.29); "Aegisthus of the crooked counsels" (Αἴγισθος δολόμητις, 1.300).
Kin: son of Thyestes; paramour of Clytemnestra.
Refs: 1.29, 1.35, 1.42, 1.300, 3.194–198, 3.235–310 (Nestor's telling), 4.518–537, 11.389, 11.409, 24.22, 24.97. Books 1, 3–4, 11, 24.
Say: ee-JIP-tee-us
Aged Ithacan, bent with years, who opens the assembly Telemachus calls in Book 2; his own son Antiphus had sailed to Troy with Odysseus and was later killed by the Cyclops.
Kin: father of Antiphus.
Refs: 2.15.
See also: Antiphus.
Say: EE-oh-lus
Warden of the winds, son of Hippotes; he hosts Odysseus for a month and sends him off with the storm winds bound in a leather bag, keeping only the West Wind free to carry the ships home. His men's greed opens the bag within sight of Ithaca, and when the storm blows them back to his island a second time, Aeolus refuses to help further, certain the gods hate his guest.
Kin: son of Hippotes.
Refs: 10.1–60, 11.237, 23.314. Books 10–11, 23.
See also: Odysseus.
Say: EE-son
Son of Tyro and Cretheus, named among Tyro's sons in the underworld catalogue; father of Jason in the wider tradition, though the poem itself says no more of him.
Kin: son of Tyro and Cretheus; brother of Pheres and Amythaon.
Refs: 11.259.
See also: Amythaon.
Say: EE-thon
The false name Odysseus gives himself in the fictitious autobiography he tells Penelope in Book 19, claiming to be the younger brother of Idomeneus of Crete who once hosted the real Odysseus storm-driven at Amnisus.
Refs: 19.183.
Say: ee-TOH-lee-unz
The people of the mainland stranger who once cheated Eumaeus with a false tale about Odysseus, the memory of which makes the swineherd wary of the next wandering beggar's story.
Refs: 14.379.
See also: Eumaeus.
Say: ag-uh-MEM-non
Overlord of the Achaean host at Troy, elder son of Atreus and brother of Menelaus. Murdered by Aegisthus and Clytemnestra at his homecoming, his shade meets Odysseus in the underworld (11.387ff) and his fate is retold by Nestor, by Proteus through Menelaus, and finally by his own ghost again in Book 24 — the poem's recurring paradigm of the ruined return, set against Odysseus's own.
Epithets: "shepherd of the people" (ποιμὴν λαῶν, 3.156).
Also called: "son of Atreus" / "Atreides" — but so is Menelaus; the referent is Agamemnon in the underworld and homecoming-paradigm scenes, Menelaus in the Telemachy (see canon.md).
Kin: son of Atreus; husband of Clytemnestra; father of Orestes; brother of Menelaus.
Refs: 1.30, 3.143–164, 3.234–264, 4.532–584, 8.77, 9.263, 11.168, 11.387–397, 13.384, 14.70–497, 24.20–186. Books 1, 3–4, 8–9, 11, 13–14, 24.
Say: aj-uh-LAY-us
Son of Damastor and one of the leading suitors in the final fight in the hall; he urges the others on and is among the last killed, cut down by Odysseus after Athena's aegis turns the tide.
Kin: son of Damastor.
Refs: 20.321, 20.339, 22.131, 22.136, 22.212, 22.241, 22.247, 22.327. Books 20, 22.
See also: Antinous, Eurymachus.
Say: AY-jaks
Two heroes share the name. The greater Ajax, son of Telamon, was second only to Achilles among the Achaeans at Troy; in the underworld his shade alone refuses to speak to Odysseus, still raging over the contest for Achilles's armor that Odysseus won against him (11.543–553). A second, lesser Ajax, son of Oileus, drowns at sea on the voyage home after boasting he escaped the gods' will — the wreck Menelaus recounts hearing of from Proteus (4.499).
Kin: the greater, son of Telamon; the lesser, son of Oileus.
Refs: 3.109, 4.499, 11.469, 11.543–553, 24.17. Books 3–4, 11, 24.
Say: al-KAN-dree
Egyptian woman, wife of Polybus of Thebes, who gave Helen a silver basket among the gifts the couple brought back from Egypt.
Refs: 4.126.
Say: AL-sih-mus
Father of Mentor, named once when Mentor's household is identified during the suitors' final assault.
Kin: father of Mentor.
Refs: 22.235.
See also: Mentor.
Say: al-SIN-oh-us
King of the Phaeacians on Scheria and Odysseus's last host before Ithaca. He receives the shipwrecked stranger, presides over the games and feast at which Odysseus is moved to tell his wanderings, and sends him home asleep on a Phaeacian ship laden with gifts — the act for which Poseidon later turns that ship to stone.
Epithets: "great-hearted Alcinous" (μεγαλήτωρ Ἀλκίνοος, 6.17); "the sacred strength of Alcinous" (ἱερὸν μένος Ἀλκινόοιο, 7.167).
Kin: son of Nausithous (himself a son of Poseidon), brother of Rhexenor; marries his niece Arete; father of Nausicaa and Laodamas.
Refs: 6.12–17, 6.139–303, 7.10–346 (the reception and the genealogy), 8.2–421 (games and feast). Books 6–9, 11, 13.
Say: al-SIP-ee
One of Helen's handmaids in Sparta, who brings a rug of soft wool as Helen enters to greet Telemachus.
Refs: 4.124.
Say: alk-MEE-on
Son of the seer Amphiaraus, named alongside his brother Amphilochus in Theoclymenus's account of his own ancestry.
Kin: son of Amphiaraus.
Refs: 15.248.
See also: Amphiaraus, Amphilochus.
Say: alk-MEE-nee
Wife of Amphitryon; lying with Zeus, she bore Heracles. Named among the great women's shades Odysseus meets in the underworld, and invoked earlier by Antinous as a byword for the cunning of legendary women, in his backhanded praise of Penelope's web-trick.
Kin: wife of Amphitryon; mother of Heracles by Zeus.
Refs: 2.120, 11.266. Books 2, 11.
See also: Amphitryon.
Say: uh-LEK-tor
Spartan whose daughter marries Megapenthes, Menelaus's son, in the double wedding feast under way when Telemachus arrives at Sparta.
Refs: 4.10.
See also: Menelaus.
Say: uh-LEE-us or al-OH-yoos
Putative father, by marriage to Iphimedeia, of the giant twins Otus and Ephialtes — though Iphimedeia claims she lay with Poseidon himself. Named in the underworld catalogue of famous women.
Kin: husband of Iphimedeia.
Refs: 11.305.
See also: Poseidon.
Say: al-FEE-us or AL-fee-us
The great river of Elis, treated as a god in its own right; ancestor, several generations back, of Ortilochus and so of the Spartan house that hosts Telemachus.
See also: Achaea.
Say: AL-ih-bas
The distant town Odysseus invents as his home when he tests Laertes in disguise at the poem's end, claiming to be one Eperitus, son of Apheidas, from Alybas.
Refs: 24.304.
See also: Apheidas.
Say: am-NY-sus
Cretan harbor by the cave of Eileithyia, where in the fictitious Aethon-tale Odysseus tells Penelope the storm once drove the real Odysseus ashore on his way to Troy.
Refs: 19.188.
See also: Aethon.
Say: am-fee-uh-RAY-us
Seer and warrior, son of Oicles, beloved of Zeus and Apollo; he dies at Thebes, brought down by a woman's bribe (the necklace given his wife to persuade him into the fatal expedition). Named in Theoclymenus's account of his own descent from the seer's line; father of Alcmaeon and Amphilochus.
Kin: son of Oicles; father of Alcmaeon and Amphilochus.
Refs: 15.244, 15.253. Book 15.
See also: Alcmaeon, Amphilochus, Amythaon.
Say: am-FIL-oh-kus
Son of the seer Amphiaraus, named alongside his brother Alcmaeon in Theoclymenus's ancestral catalogue.
Kin: son of Amphiaraus.
Refs: 15.248.
See also: Amphiaraus, Alcmaeon.
Say: am-FIM-uh-don
Son of Melaneus and one of the suitors killed in the hall; his ghost, arriving in the underworld among the newly dead, narrates the whole courtship and slaughter to the shade of Agamemnon in Book 24 — the poem's last long retelling of its own climax.
Kin: son of Melaneus.
Say: am-FIN-oh-mus
Son of Nisus and the least brutal of Penelope's suitors, well-spoken enough that Odysseus, in disguise, tries to warn him away from the household's doom — advice he cannot bring himself to heed, since Athena has bound him to die by Telemachus's spear.
Kin: son of Nisus.
Refs: 16.351–406, 18.119–424, 20.244–247, 22.89–96 (his death). Books 16, 18, 20, 22.
See also: Antinous, Eurymachus.
Say: am-FY-on
Two men share the name. One, son of Zeus and Antiope, co-founds and walls Thebes with his brother Zethus (11.262). The other, son of Iasus, ruled Minyan Orchomenus and was father of Chloris, Nestor's mother (11.283).
Refs: 11.262, 11.283. Book 11.
See also: Antiope.
Say: am-FITH-ee-uh
Wife of Autolycus and Odysseus's grandmother; she embraces him with joy when he arrives at his grandfather's house as a boy, in the tale of the boar-hunt that gave Odysseus his scar.
Kin: wife of Autolycus.
Refs: 19.416.
See also: Anticleia.
Say: am-fih-TRY-tee
The sea personified as goddess, wife of Poseidon; invoked in descriptions of the deep waters Odysseus must cross, especially in the storm off Scheria.
Kin: wife of Poseidon.
Refs: 3.91, 5.422, 12.60, 12.97. Books 3, 5, 12.
See also: Poseidon.
Say: am-FIT-ree-on
Mortal husband of Alcmene and Heracles's putative father, named alongside his wife in the underworld catalogue of famous women.
Kin: husband of Alcmene.
Refs: 11.266, 11.270. Book 11.
See also: Alcmene.
Say: am-ih-THAY-on
Son of Tyro and Cretheus, named among her sons in the underworld catalogue of women.
Kin: son of Tyro and Cretheus; brother of Aeson and Pheres.
Refs: 11.259.
See also: Aeson, Amphiaraus.
Say: an-DREE-mon
Father of Thoas, named only as a patronymic in the fictitious Trojan-War anecdote Odysseus tells Eumaeus in disguise: Thoas, Andraemon's son, is the one who jumps up to carry a message from a dream.
Kin: father of Thoas.
Refs: 14.499.
See also: Aetolians.
Say: an-tih-KLEE-uh or an-tih-KLY-uh
Odysseus's mother, who died of grief in his long absence without learning of his fate; her shade is the first Odysseus recognizes in the underworld, and their failed embrace — his arms closing three times on empty air — is one of the poem's starkest images of loss.
Kin: daughter of Autolycus; wife of Laertes; mother of Odysseus.
Refs: 11.85.
Say: AN-tih-klus
Achaean hidden with Odysseus inside the wooden horse; when Helen, circling it, calls out in the voices of their wives, Anticlus alone is on the point of answering, and Odysseus clamps his hands over the man's mouth to save them all.
Refs: 4.286.
See also: Odysseus.
Say: an-TIL-oh-kus
Nestor's son and Achilles's close friend, killed at Troy; recalled in Nestor's own account of the war's losses and named among the shades gathered around Achilles in the underworld.
Kin: son of Nestor.
Refs: 3.112, 4.187, 4.202, 11.468, 24.16, 24.78. Books 3–4, 11, 24.
Say: an-TIN-oh-us
Son of Eupeithes and the most violent of Penelope's suitors; with Eurymachus he leads them, openly hostile where Eurymachus is smooth. He masterminds the ambush laid for Telemachus's return (4.660ff, 16.363–418) and hurls a stool at the disguised Odysseus in the hall (17.462ff), the worst outrage of the beggar-baiting.
Kin: son of Eupeithes.
Refs: 1.383–389, 2.84–321, 4.628–773, 16.363–418, 17.374–500, 18.34–292, 20.270–275, 21.84–269. Books 1–2, 4, 16–18, 20–21.
See also: Eupeithes, Eurymachus, Penelope.
Say: an-TY-oh-pee
Daughter of Asopus; lying with Zeus she bore Amphion and Zethus, the twin founders of Thebes. Named in the underworld catalogue of women.
Kin: mother of Amphion and Zethus by Zeus.
Refs: 11.260.
See also: Amphion.
Say: an-TIF-uh-teez
Two men share the name. One is the Laestrygonian king who wrecks Odysseus's fleet, hurling a boulder-sized rock and seizing a scout for his dinner before his people sink all but one ship (Book 10). The other is a mortal seer, son of Melampus's grandson Mantius, named in Theoclymenus's ancestral catalogue as father of Oicles (Book 15).
Refs: 10.106, 10.114, 10.199, 15.242, 15.243.
See also: Amphiaraus.
Say: AN-tih-fus
Two men share the name. One is Aegyptius's son, who sailed with Odysseus to Troy and was later killed and eaten by the Cyclops Polyphemus. The other is a loyal old Ithacan, a companion of Odysseus's father from the beginning, who sits with Mentor and Halitherses as Telemachus slips away from the suitors.
Refs: 2.19, 17.68. Books 2, 17.
See also: Aegyptius, Polyphemus.
Say: uh-PY-ree
The land from which Nausicaa's nurse Eurymedusa was carried off in ships, long before entering the Phaeacian royal household.
See also: Scheria.
Say: uh-FY-das
Invented father — "son of lord Polypemon" — in the false identity Odysseus gives himself when he tests Laertes in disguise, claiming to be Eperitus of Alybas.
Refs: 24.305.
See also: Alybas.
Say: af-roh-DY-tee
Goddess of love, here daughter of Zeus and Dione; her one extended appearance is Demodocus's song at the Phaeacian feast, caught in bed with Ares by Hephaestus's invisible net and displayed to the laughing gods (8.267–362). Elsewhere she is invoked chiefly as a standard of beauty, for Helen, Penelope, and Nausicaa alike.
Epithets: "laughter-loving Aphrodite" (φιλομμειδὴς Ἀφροδίτη, 8.362).
Refs: 4.14, 4.261, 8.267–362, 17.37, 18.193, 19.54, 20.68–73, 22.444. Books 4, 8, 17–20, 22.
See also: Ares, Hephaestus.
Say: uh-POL-oh
Archer-god of the silver bow, invoked as a standard of deadly and beautiful skill throughout — Odysseus prays men could shoot like him, Telemachus is compared to him, and it is on Apollo's own festival day that the suitors are slaughtered. Demodocus sings that Apollo warned Agamemnon of coming strife between Odysseus and Achilles at Troy.
Also called: Phoebus (3.279, 8.79, 9.201).
Refs: 3.279, 6.162, 7.65, 8.79–339, 9.198–201, 15.245–526, 17.132–494, 18.235, 19.86, 20.278, 21.267–364, 22.7, 24.376. Books 3–4, 6–9, 15, 17–22, 24.
See also: Artemis.
Say: ar-SEE-see-us
Odysseus's grandfather and father of Laertes; the line "son of Arceisius" marks Laertes's own royal descent, and Odysseus later prays to Zeus by his grandfather's name before the final battle with the suitors' kinsmen.
Kin: father of Laertes; grandfather of Odysseus.
Refs: 4.756, 14.181, 16.118, 24.270, 24.517. Books 4, 14, 16, 24.
Say: AIR-eez
War-god, Aphrodite's lover in Demodocus's song, caught with her in Hephaestus's net and shamed before the gods (Book 8); elsewhere invoked as the standard of ferocity in battle and the eponym of martial vigor.
Refs: 8.115–355, 8.517, 11.537, 14.216, 15.169, 16.269. Books 8, 11, 14–16.
See also: Aphrodite, Hephaestus.
Say: uh-REE-tee
Queen of the Phaeacians, Alcinous's wife and niece; Athena tells Odysseus his whole reception depends on winning her favor, and it is Arete who first recognizes the clothes she wove as the ones she gave Odysseus, prompting the question of his identity.
Kin: daughter of Rhexenor; wife of her uncle Alcinous.
Refs: 7.54–66, 7.141–335, 8.423–438, 11.335, 13.57–66. Books 7–8, 11, 13.
Say: a-ruh-THOO-zuh
Spring by Raven's Rock where Eumaeus's pigs drink, named in the description of the swineherd's steading.
Refs: 13.408.
See also: Eumaeus.
Say: uh-REE-tus
One of Nestor's sons at Pylos, who helps prepare the bath and the chariot for Telemachus's visit.
Kin: son of Nestor.
See also: Antilochus, Peisistratus.
Say: AR-jyvz or AR-gyvz
One of the poem's three interchangeable names for the Greek host at Troy, alongside Achaeans and Danaans — from Argos, the Peloponnesian homeland of the expedition's leaders. It carries no separate ethnic sense from the others; the poet reaches for whichever fits the meter.
Refs: 1.61, 3.133, 4.184, 8.578, 11.369, 11.500, 17.119, 19.125, 24.61 …and throughout. Books 1–4, 8, 10–12, 15, 17–19, 23–24.
Say: AR-goh
The ship "known to all," Jason's vessel returning from Aeetes' land; among all ships that have ever tried the Wandering Rocks, it alone got through, and only because Hera favored Jason. Circe cites it to Odysseus as the sole precedent for surviving that passage.
Refs: 12.70.
Say: AR-gos
The Peloponnesian city and region ruled by the house of Atreus — distinct from Argus the hound, though the two names collide in English. It anchors the Achaean world geographically: Menelaus's Sparta and Agamemnon's Mycenae both fall within its orbit, and "Argive" derives from it.
Refs: 1.344, 3.180, 4.99, 4.726, 15.80, 15.239, 18.246, 21.108, 24.37. Books 1, 3–4, 15, 18, 21, 24.
Say: AR-gus
Odysseus's old hound, raised as a pup and left behind when his master sailed for Troy. Neglected and dying on a dung-heap outside the hall, he alone among the household recognizes the beggar-disguised Odysseus — he lays back his ears and wags his tail, and the moment he has seen his master again, "the doom of black death took him" (17.326). Not to be confused with the Argus of "slayer of Argus," Hermes's epithet for a different, giant figure (see Hermes).
Refs: 17.292 (introduced), 17.300, 17.326 (dies), 24.99 (recalled). Book 17.
Say: a-ree-AD-nee
Daughter of Minos of Crete; Theseus carries her off from Crete toward Athens but never wins his joy of her — Artemis kills her first, on the island of Dia, on Dionysus's word. Odysseus glimpses her shade among the heroines in the underworld.
Refs: 11.321.
See also: Crete, Minos (see Cnossus).
Say: ar-NEE-us
The real name of the beggar everyone in Odysseus's hall calls Irus, given him by his mother at birth.
Refs: 18.5.
See also: Antinous.
Say: ar-TAY-shee-uh
The spring in the land of the Laestrygonians, where Odysseus's men meet the giant king's daughter drawing water — the first contact before the slaughter of the fleet.
Refs: 10.108.
See also: Cicones.
Say: AR-tuh-mis
Virgin archer-goddess, sister of Apollo; the poem invokes her chiefly as the sender of sudden, painless death to women — Penelope prays for such an end more than once, and the phrase recurs of dead heroines. She also kills Ariadne on Dionysus's word (11.324) and lends her form and grace to similes for Nausicaa and Penelope alike.
Epithets: "of the golden shafts" (4.122 and elsewhere).
Refs: 4.122, 6.102, 6.151, 11.172, 11.324, 15.410, 17.37, 18.202, 19.54, 20.60. Books 4–6, 11, 15, 17–20.
Say: AR-ih-bas
A rich Phoenician named in Eumaeus's life-story — his old nurse's homeland belonged to Arybas before Phoenician traders and a treacherous nursemaid carried the boy Eumaeus off into slavery.
Refs: 15.426.
See also: Eumaeus.
Say: uh-SOH-pus
A river-god, father of Antiope, whom Zeus loves; their sons Amphion and Zethus later found and wall the city of Thebes. Named as Odysseus catalogues the heroines in the underworld.
Refs: 11.260.
See also: Cadmeians.
Say: as-FAL-ee-on
An attendant of Menelaus in his Spartan hall, mentioned once as he serves at the feast.
Refs: 4.216.
See also: Menelaus.
Say: AS-tuh-ris
A small islet in the strait between Ithaca and Same where the suitors lie in wait to ambush Telemachus's ship on his return from Pylos and Sparta.
Refs: 4.846.
See also: Antinous.
Say: uh-THEE-nuh
Daughter of Zeus and Odysseus's divine patron; the intelligence behind the whole plot. She wins his release from Calypso at the gods' council, rouses Telemachus to act and sail, guides him to Pylos and Sparta, transforms and shields Odysseus on Ithaca, fights at his side in the hall, and imposes the final peace between him and the suitors' kin. More than any other god she moves in disguise — as Mentes, as Mentor, as unnamed mortals.
Epithets: "gray-eyed Athena" (γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη, 1.44).
Also called: Pallas / Pallas Athena; "daughter of Zeus." Disguises: Mentes, in Book 1; Mentor, from 2.267 on — canon.md's rule distinguishes the goddess-in-disguise from the mortal Mentor, a real Ithacan who also speaks as himself.
Kin: daughter of Zeus.
Refs: 1.44, 1.80, 1.118, 2.267, 3.12, 4.289, 4.502 …and throughout. Books 1–9, 11, 13–24.
See also: Zeus, Odysseus, Telemachus, Mentor.
City of Erechtheus, whom Athena once guarded in his own temple there; named as a waypoint on legendary voyages, including Theseus's flight with Ariadne.
Say: AT-lus
The Titan who "knows the depths of every sea" and grips with his own hands the tall pillars that hold earth and heaven apart; father of Calypso, whose island prison for Odysseus he thereby stands behind.
Epithets: "the deadly-minded" (1.52).
Kin: father of Calypso.
See also: Calypso.
Say: AY-tree-us or AY-troos
King of Mycenae, father of Agamemnon and Menelaus; his name recurs constantly as the patronymic "son of Atreus," which the poem applies to either brother depending on scene (Menelaus in the Telemachy, Agamemnon in the underworld and homecoming-paradigm passages — see canon.md).
Kin: father of Agamemnon and Menelaus.
Refs: 1.36, 3.156, 3.193, 4.51, 4.316, 9.263, 11.397, 15.51, 17.104, 24.20, 24.121 …and throughout. Books 1, 3–5, 9, 11, 13–15, 17, 19, 24.
Say: aw-TOL-ih-kus
Odysseus's maternal grandfather, "who outdid all men in thievery and the oath" — a gift from his patron Hermes. He names the infant Odysseus at Ithaca ("Man at Odds," playing on the hero's name), and years later, when the grown Odysseus visits Parnassus to claim his promised gifts, a boar gores him on the hunt, leaving the scar by which Eurycleia later recognizes him.
Kin: father of Anticleia, maternal grandfather of Odysseus.
Refs: 11.85, 19.394, 19.399, 19.403, 19.405 (names him), 19.414, 19.437, 19.466 (boar hunt and scar), 21.220, 24.334. Books 11, 19, 21, 24.
Say: aw-TON-oh-ee
One of Penelope's handmaids, named once among those who attend her.
Refs: 18.182.
See also: Penelope.
Say: boh-EE-thoh-us
Father of Eteoneus, Menelaus's herald and attendant at Sparta; named only in the patronymic.
See also: Menelaus.
Say: kad-MEE-unz
The Thebans, people of Cadmus; named as Oedipus's subjects in the underworld catalogue of heroines.
Refs: 11.275.
Say: KAD-mus
Legendary founder of Thebes, father of Ino (later the sea-goddess Leucothea); named once in Ino's introduction as she rises to save Odysseus's raft.
Refs: 5.333.
See also: Cadmeians.
Say: kuh-LIP-soh
The nymph, daughter of Atlas, who holds Odysseus for seven years on her island Ogygia, wanting him for her husband and offering him immortality if he stays. Zeus at last sends Hermes to compel his release; she yields, bitterly, and helps him build the raft that carries him toward Scheria.
Epithets: "shining among goddesses" (δῖα θεάων, 5.77).
Also called: "daughter of Atlas"; her name plays on the Greek for "the Concealer."
Kin: daughter of Atlas.
Refs: 1.14, 4.557, 5.14, 5.116, 5.180, 5.263, 7.245, 9.29, 12.389, 23.333. Books 1, 4–5, 7–9, 12, 17, 23.
Say: kuh-SAN-druh
Priam's daughter, taken by Agamemnon from fallen Troy; Clytemnestra kills her over Agamemnon's body at the homecoming feast. Agamemnon's shade recalls her death-cry as the most pitiful sound of that slaughter.
Refs: 11.422.
See also: Agamemnon, Clytemnestra.
Say: KAS-tor
The name Odysseus invents for his own false father in the Cretan lie he tells Eumaeus and later Penelope — "son of Hylax," a rich Cretan (11.300). Distinct from the mortal Castor, Helen's brother and one of the Dioscuri (Leda's sons by Tyndareus), whom the poem also names but never conflates with the fictional figure.
Also called: "son of Hylax" (in Odysseus's lie).
Say: kaw-KOH-nee-unz
A people of the western Peloponnese, named once as Athena (disguised as Mentor) claims she must visit them to collect a debt, her cover for leaving Telemachus at Pylos.
Refs: 3.366.
Say: SEN-tawrz
The half-horse creatures whose most notorious member, Eurytion, gets drunk at Peirithous's wedding feast among the Lapiths and runs wild — the Lapiths mutilate and drive him out. Antinous cites the tale as a warning against wine's power just before the disguised Odysseus strings the bow.
Also called: "the Centaur" = Eurytion, the exemplary offender.
See also: Antinous.
Say: sef-uh-LEE-nee-unz
Odysseus's own subjects, named for his mainland and island holdings collectively; mustered by Telemachus for the boar-hunt scar story's setting and again as Odysseus's fighting men in the final battle with the suitors' kin.
Say: KAL-sis
A stream in Elis that Telemachus and Peisistratus pass on their overnight sail back from Pylos, avoiding Nestor's son Noemon's territory.
Refs: 15.295.
See also: Crouni.
Say: kuh-RIB-dis
The devouring whirlpool paired with Scylla in the strait Odysseus must run; three times a day she sucks down and spews up the sea, and Circe warns that no ship caught in her draw escapes. Odysseus loses his raft and nearly his life to her on the return past the strait after his crew eats the Sun's cattle, clinging to a fig tree until the mast and keel resurface.
Refs: 12.104, 12.235, 12.428, 12.436, 12.441, 23.327. Books 12, 23.
Say: KY-os or KEE-os
An island off the Ionian coast on the sea-route the Achaean fleet debates at its stormy, divided departure from Troy — part of Nestor's account of who sailed which way home.
See also: Nestor.
Say: KLOR-is
Youngest daughter of Amphion of Orchomenus; Neleus marries her for her beauty with bride-gifts beyond number, and she bears him Nestor, Chromius, Periclymenus, and the much-courted Pero. Seen among the heroines in the underworld.
Kin: wife of Neleus, mother of Nestor, Chromius, Pero.
Refs: 11.281.
Say: KROH-mee-us
A son of Neleus and Chloris, brother of Nestor, named in the underworld genealogy of the Pylian house.
Kin: son of Neleus and Chloris, brother of Nestor.
Refs: 11.286.
Say: sih-KOH-neez
Thracian allies of Troy at Ismarus, Odysseus's first landfall on the way home. He sacks their city, but lingers too long over the plunder; the Cicones rally their inland neighbors and rout his men on the beach, costing six men from each ship — the wanderings' first loss and first lesson in restraint ignored.
Refs: 9.39, 9.47, 9.59, 9.66 (the raid and rout), 9.165, 23.310. Books 9, 23.
See also: Odysseus.
Say: sih-MEER-ee-unz
A people who live at the edge of Ocean, wrapped always in mist and cloud and never seen by the sun — the poem places the entrance to Hades in their sunless land.
Refs: 11.14.
See also: Hades (underworld).
Say: SUR-see
Witch-goddess of Aeaea, daughter of Helios; she drugs Odysseus's men and turns them to swine — bodies of pigs, minds unchanged — until Hermes's counter-herb and Odysseus's drawn sword force her to restore them and take him to her bed instead. He stays a year; she then tells him how to reach the underworld and, on his return, warns him of Scylla, Charybdis, and the Sirens.
Epithets: "of the lovely braids" (ἐυπλόκαμος, 10.221 and elsewhere); "the dread goddess."
Kin: daughter of Helios.
Refs: 9.31, 10.136, 10.221, 10.241 (the transformation), 10.480, 11.8, 12.9, 12.273, 23.321. Books 8–12, 23.
Say: KLY-tus
Grandson of the seer Melampus, carried off by Dawn for his beauty — a brief mythic aside in the genealogy Theoclymenus gives of his own seer's line.
See also: Theoclymenus.
Say: KLIM-uh-nee or kly-MEE-nee
One of the heroines Odysseus glimpses among the crowd of women's shades in the underworld, named without further story.
Refs: 11.326.
See also: Ariadne.
Say: KLIM-uh-nus
Father of Eurydice, Nestor's wife; named only in Nestor's household genealogy at Pylos.
Kin: father of Eurydice, Nestor's wife.
Refs: 3.452.
See also: Nestor.
Say: kly-tem-NES-truh
Agamemnon's wife; she takes Aegisthus as her lover while her husband is at Troy and joins him in murdering Agamemnon at his homecoming feast, killing Cassandra too. Agamemnon's shade holds her up to Odysseus as the standing warning against trusting a wife — the counter-exemplar the poem sets Penelope against.
Also called: "of the crooked counsels" (11.422).
Kin: wife of Agamemnon, mother of Orestes.
Refs: 3.266, 11.422, 11.439. Books 3, 11.
See also: Agamemnon, Aegisthus, Cassandra, Orestes, Penelope.
Say: KLIT-ee-us
Father of Piraeus, the Ithacan friend who houses Theoclymenus for Telemachus; named only in the patronymic.
See also: Theoclymenus.
Say: kly-TOH-nee-us
A son of Alcinous and Arete; he wins the footrace at the Phaeacian games in Book 8.
Kin: son of Alcinous and Arete.
Say: NOS-us or kuh-NOS-us
Minos's capital on Crete, named once as the setting Odysseus invokes in the Cretan lie he tells Penelope.
Refs: 19.178.
Say: koh-SY-tus
A river of the underworld, a branch of the Styx, named by Circe as she gives Odysseus directions to the entrance of Hades.
Refs: 10.514.
See also: Cimmerians.
The stars Odysseus steers by on his solitary raft-voyage from Ogygia, watching them as Calypso instructed: the Wain (the Bear), which alone never bathes in Ocean, Boötes, and the Pleiades, along with Orion. The same star-lore returns as Odysseus lies sleepless before the contest of the bow.
Also called: the Wain / the Bear; Boötes; the Pleiades.
Refs: 5.272, 5.273, 20.18. Books 5, 20.
See also: Calypso.
Say: kruh-TAY-is
Mother of Scylla, named once by Circe in her warning as she describes the monster's lineage.
Kin: mother of Scylla.
Refs: 12.124.
See also: Charybdis.
Say: KREE-on
Theban king, father of Megara, whom Heracles marries; named in the underworld catalogue of heroines as Odysseus sees Megara's mother-in-law's line.
Kin: father of Megara.
Refs: 11.269.
See also: Cadmeians.
The people of Crete, whose polyglot, many-citied island and seafaring reputation make it Odysseus's favorite backdrop for the false identities he improvises for Eumaeus, the suitors, and Penelope alike.
The great southern island, "ninety cities" and many peoples according to Odysseus's own description; it furnishes the recurring setting of the elaborate false autobiographies he tells Athena, Eumaeus, and Penelope on Ithaca, always with a plausible Cretan pedigree.
Refs: 3.191, 3.291, 11.323, 13.256, 14.199, 14.300, 16.62, 19.172, 19.338. Books 3, 11, 13–14, 16–17, 19.
Say: KREE-thee-us
Husband of Tyro, who bears him Aeson, Pheres, and Amythaon even as she secretly bears Poseidon's sons Pelias and Neleus; named in the underworld catalogue as Odysseus meets Tyro's shade.
Kin: husband of Tyro; father of Aeson, Pheres, Amythaon.
Say: KROH-nos
The Titan father of Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, and Hera; almost every occurrence of his name in the poem is the patronymic "son of Cronos," meaning Zeus. Cronos himself never appears as an actor, only as the genealogical root behind the ruling generation of gods.
Also called: "son of Cronos" / Cronion = Zeus (see canon.md).
Kin: father of Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hera.
Refs: 1.45, 3.88, 9.552, 12.399, 16.291, 21.415, 24.539. Books 1, 3–4, 8–22, 24.
Say: KROO-nee
A spring-place in Elis, named alongside Chalcis as a landmark Telemachus's ship passes on the night-run home from Pylos.
Refs: 15.295.
See also: Chalcis.
Say: tih-SIP-us
A suitor from Same, "versed in lawlessness," rich and arrogant; he hurls an ox-hoof at the disguised Odysseus as a mocking "guest-gift," but misses — Telemachus rebukes him for it on the spot (20.288, 20.303–304). In the hall fight he wounds Eumaeus with a spear-graze before Philoetius kills him, crowing over the body and calling it payment for the ox-hoof (22.279, 22.285).
Also called: "son of Polytherses."
Refs: 20.288, 20.303, 20.304, 22.279, 22.285. Books 20, 22.
See also: Antinous, Odysseus, Philoetius.
Say: TEE-see-us
Eumaeus's father, king of Syrie, named once in the swineherd's life-story as the father whose household the Phoenician nursemaid betrayed.
Refs: 15.414.
Say: TIM-uh-nee
Odysseus's younger sister, raised alongside Eumaeus in Laertes' house; the swineherd recalls her in the same breath as Odysseus among the children he tended before her marriage sent her off to Same.
Kin: sister of Odysseus.
Refs: 15.363.
Say: sy-KLOH-peez
The lawless one-eyed race Odysseus's crew meets in Book 9 — herdsmen with no assemblies, no laws, no ships, "trusting in the deathless gods" though they scorn Zeus outright. Polyphemus, Poseidon's son, is one of them; his blinding and the curse he calls down on Odysseus drive the rest of the poem's wanderings. Their island neighbors a fertile, uninhabited isle the poem surveys with a colonist's eye.
Refs: 1.71, 6.5, 7.206, 9.106–125 (the ethnography), 9.166, 9.275, 9.399, 9.510. Books 1, 6–7, 9.
See also: Polyphemus, Poseidon.
Say: sih-DOH-nee-unz
A people of western Crete, named in the false Cretan tale Odysseus spins for Penelope and again by Eumaeus's tale of Crete.
Say: sih-LEE-nee
The Arcadian mountain sacred to Hermes; the poem opens Book 24 with the god leading the suitors' souls out from its heights.
Refs: 24.1.
See also: Hermes.
The island of Aphrodite's Paphian shrine, where the goddess is bathed and anointed after her exposure with Ares; it also figures in the beggar-Odysseus's invented travels, where he claims a king named Dmetor once hosted him.
Say: sih-THEER-uh
Island off Cape Malea; a fierce north wind drives Odysseus's ships past it and off course toward the Lotus-eaters.
Refs: 9.81.
Say: duh-MAS-tor
Father of the suitor Agelaus, named only in the patronymic "Agelaus, Damastor's son" that recurs through the hall-fighting of Book 22.
Refs: 20.321, 22.212, 22.241, 22.293.
See also: Agelaus.
Say: DAN-ay-unz or DAN-uh-unz
One of the poem's three interchangeable names for the Greek host at Troy, alongside Achaeans and Argives; used freely in the underworld catalogue of heroes and in Nestor's and Menelaus's reminiscences.
Refs: 1.350, 4.278, 4.725, 5.306, 8.82, 11.470, 11.526, 24.18, 24.45.
Personified daybreak, whose rising opens nearly every day of the action in the poem's fixed formula: "with fingers of rose," "the early-born," coming "on her fair throne" or "the golden throne." She marks time rather than acts in it, but her recurrence is the poem's clock, from the Telemachy through the wanderings to the final battle's dawn.
Epithets: "with fingers of rose" (ῥοδοδάκτυλος Ἠώς, 2.1); "the early-born" (ἠριγένεια, 2.1); "on her fair throne" (ἐύθρονος Ἠώς, 6.48); "Dawn of the golden throne" (χρυσόθρονος Ἠώς, 10.541).
Refs: 2.1, 5.1, 6.48, 8.1, 9.76, 10.144, 12.4, 13.18, 17.1, 19.428, 23.241, 23.244, 23.246 …and throughout. Books 2–6, 8–10, 12–20, 23.
See also: Helios.
Say: dee-IF-oh-bus
Trojan prince, Paris's brother; Helen recalls circling the wooden horse with him among the Trojans who tried to draw out the hidden Greeks, and Odysseus's shade-companions recall the fighting before his house on the night Troy fell.
See also: Helen.
Say: DEE-los
Apollo's sacred island; Odysseus tells Nausicaa that only there, beside the god's altar, has he seen a young palm to match her beauty.
Refs: 6.162.
Say: dih-MEE-tur
Grain-goddess; the poem recalls, in a list of goddesses who loved mortal men, that she lay with Iasion in a thrice-plowed field, for which Zeus struck him with the thunderbolt.
Refs: 5.125.
Say: dih-MOD-oh-kus
The blind bard of the Phaeacian court, "honored among the people," to whom a god gave song "beyond all others." He sings the quarrel of Achilles and Odysseus, the adultery of Ares and Aphrodite, and the fall of Troy by the wooden horse — the last song moving Odysseus to tears and forcing his identity into the open.
Epithets: "the trusted singer" (ἐρίηρος ἀοιδός, 8.62).
Refs: 8.44 (Alcinous calls for him), 8.106, 8.254–262, 8.472–487 (the Troy song), 8.537, 13.28. Books 8, 13.
See also: Alcinous, Phaeacians.
Say: dee-mop-TOL-uh-mus
A suitor; one of the hall's best fighters, he joins Agelaus's rallied volley against Odysseus in Book 22 and is killed by Odysseus's own spear in the return cast.
See also: Agelaus, the suitors.
Say: dyoo-KAY-lee-on
Son of Minos and father of Idomeneus, named in the elaborate false Cretan genealogy the disguised Odysseus gives Penelope.
See also: Idomeneus.
Say: DEE-uh
The sea-ringed island (later identified with Naxos) where Artemis kills Ariadne on Dionysus's testimony, in the underworld catalogue of women.
Refs: 11.325.
See also: Dionysus.
Say: DY-oh-kleez
Lord of Pherae, son of Ortilochus; he hosts Telemachus and Peisistratus overnight on both legs of their journey between Pylos and Sparta.
See also: Telemachus, Peisistratus.
Say: dy-oh-MEE-deez
Son of Tydeus, the Argive hero; Nestor names him among the few who reached home safe from Troy, a foil to the disasters the poem is otherwise cataloguing.
Also called: "son of Tydeus."
Refs: 3.181.
Say: dy-oh-NY-sus
The wine-god; in the underworld catalogue his testimony is cited as the cause of Artemis's killing of Ariadne on Dia, and in Book 24 Agamemnon recalls that Thetis's golden funeral urn for Achilles's bones was Dionysus's gift, made by Hephaestus.
Say: DMEE-tor or DEE-tor
"Son of Iasus," the invented king of Cyprus in one of the beggar-Odysseus's fictitious travel tales, who supposedly hosted him after a shipwreck.
Refs: 17.443.
See also: Cyprus.
Say: doh-DOH-nuh
Site of Zeus's oracular oak grove in Epirus; the disguised Odysseus twice claims (to Eumaeus and to Penelope) to have gone there to learn from the god's leaves whether to return openly or in secret.
See also: Zeus.
Say: DOH-lee-us
Laertes's old slave and gardener, father of Melanthius and Melantho; the poem never voices the connection between the loyal old man and his disloyal, executed children. He greets the returned Odysseus with tears and a kiss at the wrist — the same clasp Penelope remembered from his departure — and arms himself with his six sons and Laertes for the final skirmish.
Kin: father of Melanthius and Melantho.
Refs: 4.735, 17.212, 18.322, 22.159, 24.222, 24.387–411 (the reunion), 24.497–498 (arming for battle). Books 4, 17–18, 22, 24.
See also: Laertes, Melanthius, Melantho.
Say: DOR-ee-unz
One of the several peoples inhabiting Crete, named in the disguised Odysseus's account of the island's mixed population.
Refs: 19.177.
Say: dyoo-LIK-ee-um
An island near Ithaca, home to the largest single contingent of Penelope's suitors; named repeatedly alongside Same and Zacynthus as the suitors' home islands.
Refs: 1.246, 9.24, 14.335, 14.397, 16.123, 16.247, 16.396, 18.127, 19.131, 19.292.
See also: the suitors.
Say: DY-mus
A Phaeacian sea-captain "famed for ships"; Athena takes the shape of his daughter, a girl Nausicaa's own age, to visit Nausicaa in her sleep and set the laundry expedition in motion.
Refs: 6.22.
Personified Earth, invoked with Heaven and the waters of Styx in the gods' most solemn oath — the oath Calypso swears to Hermes and Poseidon swears at his own council.
Also called: Gaia.
Say: ek-uh-NEE-us
The eldest of the Phaeacian lords, "elder-born beyond the others," whose counsel the court heeds: he prompts Alcinous to raise the suppliant Odysseus from the hearth-ashes in Book 7, and later speaks up again in the assembly that hears Odysseus's tale.
See also: Alcinous, Phaeacians.
Say: eh-KEF-ron
A son of Nestor, present at the sacrifice and feast when Telemachus arrives in Pylos.
See also: Nestor.
Say: EK-uh-tus
The proverbial mainland ogre-king, "the maimer of all mankind," whom the suitors repeatedly threaten to ship the beggar-disguised Odysseus and Irus off to for mutilation — their favorite image of outsourced cruelty.
Epithets: "the maimer of all mankind" (βροτῶν δηλήμονα πάντων, 18.85).
See also: Irus.
The land — and, in the Greek, also the river, i.e. the Nile — of Menelaus's long detour home; he is becalmed there and must trap Proteus before the god will release him. Odysseus's fictitious tales to Eumaeus and the suitors likewise send his invented self raiding and stranded in Egypt.
Refs: 3.300, 4.127, 4.351, 4.355 (Menelaus's detour), 4.477, 4.483, 4.581, 14.247, 14.257, 14.275, 17.426, 17.448. Books 3–4, 14, 17.
The people of Egypt, encountered both in Menelaus's true account of his detour and in Odysseus's invented raiding tales.
Refs: 4.83, 4.229, 14.264, 14.286, 17.433.
See also: Egypt.
Say: eye-doh-THEE-uh
Sea-nymph, daughter of Proteus; pitying the stranded Menelaus, she tells him how to ambush and hold her shape-shifting father until he answers his questions.
Refs: 4.366.
Say: eye-lih-THY-uh or eye-LEE-thee-uh
Goddess of childbirth, invoked in the underworld catalogue as the power who eased Alcmene's and other heroines' labors.
Refs: 19.188.
Say: EL-uh-tus
A suitor; killed by the swineherd Eumaeus in the fighting of Book 22, in the same volley that fells Demoptolemus and Peisander.
Refs: 22.267.
See also: Eumaeus, the suitors.
Say: EE-lis
Region of the western Peloponnese, home of the Epeians; named as a place of horse-pasture Odysseus once visited and as a landmark in the suitors' geography.
Refs: 4.635, 13.275, 15.298, 21.347, 24.431.
See also: Epeians.
Say: el-PEE-nor
The youngest of Odysseus's crew, "no great fighter, no steady mind on him" — he sleeps off wine on Circe's roof, wakes at the crew's departure, and falls to his death. His unburied shade meets Odysseus first in the underworld, ahead even of Teiresias, and begs for burial and an oar planted over his grave; Odysseus keeps the promise to the letter on returning to Aeaea.
Refs: 10.552, 11.51, 11.57 (his shade, first to appear), 12.10 (the funeral). Books 10–12.
See also: Circe.
Say: ih-LIZ-ee-um or ih-LIZH-ee-um
The deathless plain at the world's edge that Proteus promises will be Menelaus's afterlife, in place of death, because he is Zeus's son-in-law through Helen.
Also called: the Elysian plain.
Refs: 4.563.
Say: ih-NY-pee-us
A river(-god) of Thessaly; Tyro loves him, haunting his beautiful streams, and Poseidon takes his likeness to lie with her at the river's mouth, fathering Pelias and Neleus.
See also: Poseidon.
Say: eh-PEE-unz
The people of Elis in the western Peloponnese, named among the lands Odysseus's herds and reputation reach.
See also: Elis.
Say: eh-PEE-us
Builder of the wooden horse, "with Athena's help," celebrated in Demodocus's song and recalled again by Odysseus's shade-companions in the underworld.
See also: Demodocus.
Say: eh-PEE-rih-tus
The false name Odysseus gives Laertes in their reunion, part of a last testing lie built from a genealogy of speaking names — "son of Apheidas, son of Polypemon," from an island city evoking wandering — before he abandons the disguise and reveals himself with the scar and the orchard trees.
Refs: 24.306.
Say: ef-ee-AL-teez
Giant brother of Otus, son of Poseidon and Iphimedeia; the two grew nine fathoms tall in nine years and piled Ossa on Olympus and Pelion on Ossa to storm heaven, before Apollo killed them short of manhood.
Refs: 11.308.
Say: EF-ih-ruh
A town on the Greek mainland; Odysseus is remembered (by Antinous, recalling Odysseus's own past, and again in Telemachus's cover story) as having gone there seeking deadly arrow-poison.
Say: ep-ih-KAS-tee
Homer's name for the mother of Oedipus (later tradition's Jocasta): she unknowingly marries her own son, and when the gods reveal it she hangs herself, while Oedipus goes on ruling Thebes in grief, "hounded by a mother's Furies." Odysseus sees her shade in the underworld catalogue of women.
Also called: Jocasta (later tradition's name).
Refs: 11.271.
See also: Oedipus.
Say: ER-uh-bus
The nether darkness of the dead; the shades Odysseus summons rise from it, and the phrase recurs as the underworld's name through the Nekyia and again in the second, ghost-led descent of the suitors' souls in Book 24.
Refs: 10.528, 11.37, 11.564, 12.81, 20.356.
See also: Hades.
Say: eh-REK-thee-us
Earthborn king of Athens, into whose rich temple Athena withdraws when she leaves Scheria after the games.
Refs: 7.81.
See also: Athena.
Say: eh-REM-by
A far-off people Menelaus names among those he visited on his long detour home, grouped with the Ethiopians, Sidonians, and Libyans as the outer edge of his wanderings.
Refs: 4.84.
See also: Menelaus.
Say: er-ih-FY-lee
A woman of the underworld catalogue, condemned in the poem's one open moral judgment there: she "took precious gold as the price of her own husband," betraying Amphiaraus to his death for a bribe.
Refs: 11.326.
Say: er-ih-MAN-thus
An Arcadian mountain; the simile comparing Nausicaa among her handmaids to Artemis hunting names it as one of the goddess's ranges.
Refs: 6.103.
See also: Nausicaa.
Say: et-ee-OH-nee-us
Son of Boethous, Menelaus's attendant at Sparta; he greets Telemachus and Peisistratus at the gate and later announces the disguised Odysseus's arrival on Ithaca's shore.
Also called: "son of Boethous."
See also: Menelaus.
Say: ee-thee-OH-pee-unz
"The remotest of men," split into two peoples at the world's eastern and western edges; Poseidon is feasting among them when the gods' council decides Odysseus's release, and Menelaus visits them on his detour.
Refs: 1.22, 1.23, 4.84, 5.282, 5.287.
See also: Poseidon.
Say: yoo-AN-theez
Father of Maron, the priest of Apollo whose potent wine Odysseus carries into the Cyclops's cave.
Refs: 9.197.
See also: Cyclopes.
Say: yoo-BEE-uh
The long island off the Greek mainland; Nestor recalls the fleet's fast crossing there on the way home from Troy, and the Phaeacians cite it as the farthest sail their ships have ever made, ferrying Rhadamanthys.
See also: Phaeacians.
Say: yoo-MEE-us
The loyal swineherd, "a leader of men," once a stolen prince of Syrie sold into slavery as a child and raised in Laertes's house. He shelters the disguised Odysseus, unknowingly hosts and feeds him at length, tells his own story of abduction, and stands with Philoetius at Odysseus's side in the slaughter of the suitors.
Also called: "the swineherd."
Epithets: "the noble swineherd" (δῖος ὑφορβός, 14.3); "the swineherd, a leader of men" (συβώτης, ὄρχαμος ἀνδρῶν, 14.22).
Kin: son of Ctesius, king of Syrie.
Refs: 14.55 (his hut, first), 14.360, 14.440, 15.325, 15.486, 16.7, 16.464, 17.199, 17.579, 21.80, 21.234, 22.157, 22.279 (the slaughter) …and throughout. Books 14–17, 20–22.
See also: Odysseus, Philoetius, Melanthius.
Say: yoo-MEE-lus
Husband of Iphthime, Penelope's sister, and lord of Pherae; Athena shapes a dream-phantom in Iphthime's likeness to comfort the weeping Penelope, naming Eumelus only to place her.
Kin: husband of Iphthime, Penelope's sister.
Refs: 4.798.
See also: Penelope.
Say: yoo-PY-theez
Antinous's father, an Ithacan noble. When word of the suitors' slaughter reaches the town he rouses the assembly to arms, weeping over his son's death, and leads the suitors' kinsmen out to avenge them — against Halitherses' and Medon's warnings. Laertes, with Athena guiding his throw, spears him through the helmet before Athena halts the fighting and imposes the peace that closes the poem.
Kin: father of Antinous.
Refs: 1.383, 4.660, 16.363, 18.42, 20.270, 21.140, 24.422 (rouses the assembly), 24.465, 24.469, 24.523 (killed by Laertes' spear). Books 1, 4, 16–18, 20–21, 24.
See also: Antinous, Halitherses, Laertes.
Say: yoo-RY-uh-deez
One of the suitors; Telemachus kills him with a spear-throw in the general volley of Book 22, alongside Odysseus's killing of Demoptolemus and Eumaeus's of Elatus.
Refs: 22.267. Book 22.
See also: the suitors, Telemachus.
Say: yoo-RY-uh-lus
A young Phaeacian noble, "the equal of man-destroying Ares," second only to Laodamas in looks. At the Book 8 games he goads the grieving Odysseus, calling him a profit-minded trader with no gift for contests; Odysseus answers with an angry speech and a record discus-throw. Shamed by Alcinous's rebuke, Euryalus makes amends with a fine sword and a gracious apology.
Kin: son of Naubolus.
Refs: 8.115 (rises for the games), 8.127 (wrestling), 8.140 (taunt), 8.158, 8.396–400 (apology and gift). Book 8.
See also: Alcinous, Laodamas, Phaeacians.
Say: yoo-RIB-uh-teez
Odysseus's herald at Troy, described in the disguised Odysseus's tale to Penelope as round-shouldered, dark-skinned, and curly-haired — a man Odysseus honored above his other companions for his good sense.
Refs: 19.247. Book 19.
See also: Odysseus.
Say: yoo-rih-KLEE-uh or yoo-rih-KLY-uh
Odysseus's old nurse, bought by Laertes in her youth and honored in his house like a wife, though he never touched her bed. She raised both Odysseus and Telemachus, manages the women's quarters, and — washing the disguised beggar's feet — recognizes Odysseus by the boar-scar on his thigh (19.401); he seizes her throat and swears her to silence. She later helps identify the executed slave-women and rouses Penelope after the slaughter.
Also called: "the Nurse" (μαῖα, the household's address for her); daughter of Ops, son of Peisenor.
Refs: 1.429, 2.361, 4.742, 17.31, 19.357, 19.401, 19.491 (the scar), 20.128–148, 22.391–492, 23.25–39, 23.69, 23.177. Books 1–2, 4, 17, 19–23.
See also: Odysseus, Telemachus, Penelope, Laertes.
Say: yoo-RID-uh-mus
A suitor; falls to Odysseus's spear in the fighting of Book 22.
Refs: 18.297, 22.283. Books 18, 22.
See also: the suitors.
Say: yoo-RID-ih-see
Nestor's wife, youngest daughter of Clymenus; she bathes Telemachus at Pylos.
Refs: 3.452. Book 3.
See also: Nestor.
Say: yoo-RIL-oh-kus
Odysseus's second-in-command and kinsman by marriage. He leads the party that finds Circe's house and alone escapes her drugging, then talks Odysseus into landing on Thrinacia against Tiresias's and Circe's warnings; when the crew starves, he persuades them to slaughter the cattle of Helios — the crime that dooms the whole company. He earlier balks openly, pleading with Odysseus not to go back for the trapped men (10.244–271).
Refs: 10.205–207 (chosen by lot), 10.232 (stays outside, suspecting a snare), 10.244–271 (confrontation), 12.278–297 (Thrinacia landing), 12.339–352 (urges the slaughter). Books 10–12.
Say: yoo-RIM-uh-kus
Son of Polybus and, with Antinous, a leader of the suitors — smoother-tongued than Antinous but no less rapacious, and secretly courting the maid Melantho. He answers first when Odysseus reveals himself, tries to shift the blame to the dead Antinous, then rallies the suitors to rush the archer; Odysseus's arrow takes him through the liver, the second suitor to die.
Kin: son of Polybus.
Refs: 1.399–413, 2.177–209, 15.17, 16.434, 18.244–396, 20.359–364, 21.186 (fails to string the bow), 21.245–331, 22.44–61 (answers Odysseus), 22.69 (death). Books 1–2, 4, 15–18, 20–22.
Say: yoo-RIM-uh-don
King of the overweening Giants in the Phaeacians' deep genealogy; his people destroyed themselves and him, but his daughter Periboea bore Nausithous to Poseidon — making him the Phaeacians' maternal great-grandfather.
Kin: father of Periboea (mother of Nausithous by Poseidon).
Refs: 7.58. Book 7.
See also: Giants, Nausithous, Alcinous, Poseidon.
Say: yoo-rih-muh-DOO-suh
An old woman brought from Apeire as a prize of honor for Alcinous; she nursed Nausicaa and serves now as her chamber-keeper.
Refs: 7.8. Book 7.
Say: YOO-rih-mus
Father of the seer Telemus, who foretold Polyphemus's blinding at Odysseus's hands.
Refs: 9.509. Book 9.
See also: Polyphemus.
Say: yoo-RIN-oh-mee
Penelope's housekeeper, trusted with news and errands in the household's last days — she comforts Penelope after Antinous strikes the beggar, helps bathe and dress her before she faces the suitors, and attends the recognition of Odysseus.
Refs: 17.495 (adds her word after Antinous's blow), 18.164–178, 19.96–97, 20.4, 23.154–293. Books 17–20, 23.
Say: yoo-RIN-oh-mus
A suitor, son of Aegyptius; he is among the ringleaders Agelaus rallies for the last stand in the hall.
Kin: son of Aegyptius.
Refs: 2.22, 22.242. Books 2, 22.
See also: Aegyptius, the suitors.
Say: yoo-RIP-ih-lus
Son of Telephus; a strikingly handsome Trojan ally, killed at Troy by Achilles's son Neoptolemus, whose exploit Odysseus recounts to the shade of Achilles.
Kin: son of Telephus.
Refs: 11.520. Book 11.
See also: Neoptolemus, Achilles.
Say: YOO-rih-tus
The archer of Oechalia who rivaled the gods themselves at the bow and died for it, killed by Apollo in his anger. His great bow, kept afterward by his son Iphitus, eventually reaches Odysseus as a guest-gift and becomes the weapon of the suitors' slaughter.
Refs: 8.224–226 (Odysseus declines to rival him), 21.14 (the bow's pedigree), 21.32, 21.37. Books 8, 21.
Say: eh-VEE-nor
Father of the suitor Leocritus.
Kin: father of Leocritus.
Refs: 2.242, 22.294. Books 2, 22.
See also: the suitors.
The avenging spirits who enforce the deepest taboos — oaths, the claims of parents, and the rights of suppliants and beggars. Telemachus fears his mother's curse would summon them if he expelled her against her will; Epicaste's death bequeaths Oedipus "a mother's Furies"; the poem invokes them elsewhere against those who wrong parents or mistreat beggars and suppliants.
Also called: the Erinyes.
Refs: 2.136, 11.280, 17.475, 20.78. Books 2, 11, 17, 20.
See also: Oedipus (Epicaste).
Say: juh-REE-stus
The Euboean headland where storm-driven Achaean ships find safe landfall on the voyage home from Troy, as Nestor tells it.
Refs: 3.177. Book 3.
See also: Nestor.
A lawless mythic race; their king Eurymedon fathered Periboea, the Phaeacians' ancestral mother by Poseidon, before destroying his own reckless people and himself. Alcinous also cites the Giants and the Cyclopes as beings who, like the Phaeacians, live close to the gods.
Refs: 7.59, 7.206, 10.120. Books 7, 10.
See also: Eurymedon, Phaeacians.
Say: GOR-gon
The monstrous severed head Odysseus fears Persephone might send up from Hades against him, driving him back to his ship at the end of the underworld visit.
Refs: 11.635. Book 11.
See also: Persephone.
Say: GOR-tin
A city in Crete, near the rocks off which a squadron of Menelaus's ships is wrecked on the way home from Troy.
Refs: 3.294. Book 3.
See also: Menelaus.
Attendant goddesses of beauty; they bathe and anoint Aphrodite at Paphos after her exposure with Ares, and their gift of grace is invoked elsewhere as what the gods lend to human charm.
Also called: the Charites.
Refs: 6.18, 8.364, 18.194. Books 6, 8, 18.
See also: Aphrodite.
Say: JY-ree
The rocks where Poseidon drowned the lesser Ajax, son of Oileus, as Proteus tells Menelaus.
Say: HAY-deez
Lord of the dead; by extension "the house of Hades" names the underworld itself, the destination the poem holds over every mortal peril and the setting of Odysseus's Book 11 consultation with Tiresias and the shades of the dead, including his mother and his old companions from Troy.
Refs: 3.410, 4.834, 6.11, 9.524, 10.502 (Circe's directions), 11.47–634 (Odysseus among the dead), 12.21, 14.208, 23.252, 24.204 …and throughout. Books 3–4, 6, 9–12, 14–15, 20, 23–24.
See also: Persephone, Tiresias.
Say: hal-ih-THUR-seez
The old Ithacan seer, unmatched at reading birds, who interprets the eagle-omen at the Book 2 assembly as doom for the suitors and repeats the same warning — unheeded — when Eupeithes musters the suitors' kin in Book 24.
Also called: son of Mastor.
Refs: 2.157 (reads the eagle-omen), 2.253, 17.68, 24.451 (repeats the warning). Books 2, 17, 24.
Say: HAL-ee-us
A son of Alcinous, one of the Phaeacian dancers who perform the ball-dance for Odysseus in Book 8.
Kin: son of Alcinous.
Say: HEE-bee
Goddess of youth, daughter of Zeus and Hera; wife of the deified Heracles, who feasts among the immortals while his phantom appears to Odysseus in the underworld.
Kin: daughter of Zeus and Hera; wife of Heracles.
Refs: 11.603. Book 11.
Say: HEL-un
Menelaus's wife, whose abduction caused the Trojan War; now restored to Sparta, sharing rule with her husband. In the Telemachy she is a gracious, knowing hostess — recognizing Telemachus by his likeness to his father, telling her own tale of Odysseus's spying mission into Troy, and dosing the wine with a drug against grief. Shades and mortals elsewhere invoke her name as the war's cause and, in the underworld, the standard against which Agamemnon's murder is measured.
Refs: 4.12, 4.121–130, 4.219 (the drugged wine), 4.296–305, 11.438, 15.58–171 (her parting gift to Telemachus), 17.118, 22.227, 23.218. Books 4, 11, 14–15, 17, 22–23.
Say: HEE-lee-os
The sun-god, who sees and hears all things. His sacred cattle graze untouched on Thrinacia until Odysseus's starving, storm-bound crew — over Eurylochus's oath and Odysseus's warning — slaughter them; Helios demands vengeance from Zeus, who wrecks the ship and drowns every man but Odysseus. Father of Circe.
Also called: Helios Hyperion; the Sun.
Refs: 1.8, 8.271, 10.138, 12.128–133, 12.263–274 (the warning), 12.343–398 (the slaughter and its portents), 19.275, 23.329. Books 1, 8, 10–12, 19, 22–24.
See also: Eurylochus, Circe, Zeus.
Say: HEL-us
Northern Greece; paired with "mid-Argos" as a stock phrase for the Greek mainland as a whole.
Refs: 1.344, 4.726, 4.816, 11.496, 15.80. Books 1, 4, 11, 15.
See also: Achaeans.
Say: HEL-uh-spont
The strait near the mound of the Achaean dead, cited in the underworld as the site of Achilles's tomb-monument, visible to sailors from far out at sea.
Refs: 24.82. Book 24.
See also: Achilles.
Say: hih-FES-tus or hih-FEE-stus
The lame smith-god. In Demodocus's Book 8 song he traps his wife Aphrodite and her lover Ares in an invisible net of his own forging and summons the gods to witness their shame — the poem's comic double of its own plot of craft catching strength. He also forged the golden handmaids and other wonders of his own house.
Epithets: "the famous god of the two strong arms" (περικλυτὸς ἀμφιγυήεις, 8.300); "Hephaestus of the many designs" (Ἥφαιστος πολύφρων, 8.297).
Kin: husband of Aphrodite.
Refs: 4.617, 6.233, 7.92, 8.268–359 (the snare of Ares and Aphrodite), 15.117, 23.160, 24.71–75. Books 4, 6–8, 15, 23–24.
Say: HEER-uh or HAIR-uh
Wife of Zeus, mother of Hebe; named chiefly in passing epithets and formulas rather than acting directly in the poem.
Kin: wife of Zeus; mother of Hebe.
Refs: 4.513, 8.465, 11.604, 12.72, 15.112–180, 20.70. Books 4, 8, 11–12, 15, 20.
Say: HER-uh-kleez
The great hero, son of Zeus; his phantom appears among the dead in Book 11 — Heracles himself feasts deified among the gods, married to Hebe — recalling his labor of fetching the Hound of Hades. Earlier in the poem he is remembered as the guest-killer who murdered Iphitus for his mares, and as an archer who, like Eurytus, "rivaled the immortals with the bow."
Refs: 8.224 (Odysseus declines to rival him), 11.267 (his mother Alcmene, among the shades), 11.601 (his phantom in the underworld), 21.26 (kills Iphitus). Books 8, 11, 21.
Say: HUR-meez
Messenger of the gods. Sent by Zeus, he carries the gods' decree to Calypso that frees Odysseus from her island (5.28–54); later he waylays Odysseus on the way to Circe's house and gives him the herb moly, which blunts her drugs (10.277–307). He also ferries the suitors' souls to the underworld in Book 24 and is named repeatedly, with Athena, as Odysseus's divine benefactor.
Epithets: "the slayer of Argus" / "the guide, the slayer of Argus" (Ἀργεϊφόντης).
Refs: 1.38–42, 1.84, 5.28–54 (sent to Calypso), 5.85–195, 8.323–335, 10.277–307 (gives the moly), 11.626, 14.435, 16.471, 24.1–9 (leads the suitors' ghosts). Books 1, 5, 8, 10–12, 14–16, 19, 24.
Say: hur-MY-oh-nee
Daughter of Menelaus and Helen, sent off in marriage to Achilles's son Neoptolemus in the same season Telemachus visits Sparta.
Kin: daughter of Menelaus and Helen.
Refs: 4.14. Book 4.
Say: hip-oh-duh-MY-uh
One of Penelope's household maids, named among the women at the feast in Book 18.
Refs: 18.182. Book 18.
See also: Penelope.
The monstrous hound of the underworld — Heracles's last and hardest labor was to drag it up out of Hades, with Hermes and Athena as his escorts, as his phantom recalls to Odysseus.
Also called: Cerberus.
Say: HY-laks
The grandfather Odysseus invents for himself in the false Cretan genealogy he spins for Eumaeus.
Refs: 14.203. Book 14.
See also: Eumaeus.
Say: hy-puh-RY-uh
The Phaeacians' former home, near the overbearing Cyclopes, before Nausithous led them to Scheria.
Refs: 6.4. Book 6.
See also: Phaeacians, Nausithous, Scheria.
Say: hy-puh-REE-see-uh
A town named in the pedigree of the seer Theoclymenus recites to Telemachus.
Refs: 15.254. Book 15.
See also: Theoclymenus.
Say: ee-AR-duh-nus
A river in Crete, near the Cydonians, named in Odysseus's tale of Menelaus's storm-driven ships.
Refs: 3.292. Book 3.
See also: Crete.
Say: eye-AY-see-on
A mortal loved by Demeter, who lay with him in a thrice-plowed field; Zeus struck him dead with a lightning-bolt on hearing of it — the example Calypso cites of the gods' jealousy toward goddesses who take mortal lovers.
Refs: 5.126. Book 5.
Say: EYE-uh-sus
Name of two different fathers in the poem: father of Amphion of Orchomenus (named among the underworld shades) and, separately, father of Dmetor, king of Cyprus, whom Odysseus invents as his master in a false tale.
Refs: 11.283, 17.443. Books 11, 17.
See also: Dmetor.
Say: ih-KAIR-ee-us
Penelope's father; she is repeatedly addressed as "daughter of Icarius." His household is the standing alternative the suitors keep threatening to send her back to, should Telemachus give up the fight for his mother's hand.
Kin: father of Penelope.
Refs: 1.329, 2.53, 2.133, 4.797, 11.446, 16.435, 18.159, 19.375, 20.388, 21.2, 24.195. Books 1–2, 4, 11, 16–21, 24.
See also: Penelope.
Say: ik-MAY-lee-us
The craftsman who made Penelope's inlaid, silver-and-ivory chair.
Refs: 19.57. Book 19.
See also: Penelope.
Say: eye-DOM-uh-nyoos or eye-DOM-ih-nee-us
The Cretan king who led his people to Troy; a stock figure in the disguised Odysseus's invented tales, in which Odysseus claims to have hosted him on Crete, or to be his kinsman.
Refs: 3.191, 13.259, 14.237, 14.382, 19.181–192. Books 3, 13–14, 19.
See also: Crete.
Say: EYE-lus
Lord of Ephyra whom the young Odysseus visited seeking a lethal poison for his arrows; Ilus refused it, fearing the gods' displeasure, though another host — Anchialus, father of Mentes, the guise in which Athena tells the story — gave it to him out of love. Athena recalls the episode wishing that such an Odysseus might fall upon the suitors.
Also called: son of Mermerus.
See also: Athena.
Say: EYE-noh
A sea-goddess, once mortal, daughter of Cadmus; she pities the shipwrecked Odysseus in Poseidon's storm, rises from the waves as a shearwater, and gives him her immortal veil to bind beneath his chest as a charm against drowning, telling him to abandon the raft and swim for the Phaeacians' shore.
Also called: Leucothea, the White Goddess.
Refs: 5.333–461 (gives Odysseus the veil, reclaims it). Book 5.
See also: Poseidon, Phaeacians.
Say: eye-OL-kus
The city of Pelias, from which the Argo sailed; named in the underworld catalogue of women in the story of Tyro and Pelias.
Refs: 11.256. Book 11.
See also: Hades.
Say: IF-ih-kleez
Owner of the prized cattle in the underworld tale of Pero and the seer Melampus: Neleus would give his daughter Pero only to the man who could drive off Iphicles' cattle from Phylace, a feat the seer's brother undertook and, after a year's imprisonment, achieved.
Refs: 11.290, 11.296. Book 11.
See also: Hades.
Say: if-ih-muh-DY-uh
Wife of Aloeus who claimed to have lain with Poseidon; she bore him two short-lived sons, the giant Aloadae, seen among the shades in the underworld catalogue of women.
Kin: wife of Aloeus; lover of Poseidon.
Refs: 11.305. Book 11.
See also: Poseidon.
Say: IF-ih-tus
Son of Eurytus; he meets the young Odysseus in Messene while searching for lost mares, and the two exchange guest-gifts — Iphitus giving Odysseus his father's great bow, Odysseus giving a sword and spear. Heracles later kills Iphitus in his own house for those same mares. The bow, kept at home as a memorial of the friendship, becomes the instrument of the suitors' deaths in Book 21.
Kin: son of Eurytus.
Refs: 21.14 (the gift of the bow), 21.22 (killed by Heracles), 21.31–37. Book 21.
Say: if-THY-mee
Penelope's sister, daughter of Icarius and wife of Eumelus of Pherae. Athena shapes a phantom in her likeness and sends it to Penelope's bedside to still her fear for Telemachus, a comfort she gives but does not stay to explain.
Kin: daughter of Icarius; sister of Penelope; wife of Eumelus.
Refs: 4.797.
Say: EYE-rus
The town beggar of Ithaca, born Arnaeus but nicknamed Irus by the young men for running their errands; big-bodied and gluttonous but without strength. He tries to drive the disguised Odysseus from his own porch and the suitors stage a boxing match between them for sport; Odysseus, holding back his full strength, breaks his neck-bone with one blow and drags him out by the hall door.
Also called: Arnaeus (his given name).
Refs: 18.6, 18.25, 18.38, 18.56, 18.73, 18.75, 18.88, 18.95, 18.233, 18.239, 18.333, 18.334, 18.393.
Say: IS-muh-rus
The city of the Cicones on the Thracian coast, the first landfall of Odysseus's homeward voyage. His men sack it, kill the men, and divide the plunder; lingering to feast against his orders costs them a counterattack and six men per ship.
Say: ITH-uh-kuh
Odysseus's rugged island kingdom west of the Greek mainland, the goal of the whole poem's homeward drive. It is the seat of his household, Penelope's twenty-year vigil, and the suitors' occupation of his hall, and the poem's structure alternates between the Telemachy and Apologoi abroad and the long return to it in Books 13–24.
Epithets: "sea-circled Ithaca" (ἀμφίαλος Ἰθάκη, 1.386); "rocky Ithaca" (Ἰθάκη κραναή, 1.247).
Refs: 1.18, 1.57, 1.88, 2.25, 4.555, 9.21, 9.531, 11.480, 13.97, 13.212, 14.98 …and throughout. Books 1–4, 9–24.
See also: Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachus, Laertes.
Say: ITH-uh-kus
Eponymous founder of Ithaca; with Neritus and Polyctor he is remembered as builder of the town's fountain, which the disguised Odysseus and Melanthius pass on the road.
Kin: named alongside Neritus and Polyctor.
Refs: 17.207.
See also: Ithaca.
Say: IT-ih-lus
The young son killed, by mishap, by his own mother Aedon, who mourns him forever as the nightingale; Penelope compares her own divided heart to Aedon's song as she debates whether to stay or leave Odysseus's house.
Kin: son of Aedon.
Refs: 19.522.
See also: Penelope.
Say: JAY-sun
Leader of the Argonauts; his ship Argo, "whom all minds know," is named as the one vessel ever to have passed safely between the Wandering Rocks, sailing home from Aeetes — the single precedent Circe cites when she steers Odysseus toward Scylla and Charybdis instead.
Refs: 12.72.
Say: las-uh-DEE-mun
The region of which Sparta is the city, Menelaus and Helen's home; Telemachus and Peisistratus drive there by chariot from Pylos, and it recurs as the byword for Menelaus's court throughout the Telemachy.
Say: lay-UR-seez
The goldsmith Nestor summons to gild the horns of the heifer sacrificed to Athena at Pylos.
Refs: 3.425.
Say: lay-UR-teez
Odysseus's aged father, who has withdrawn in grief to his farm in the hills, refusing to set foot in town while the suitors despoil his son's house. He appears throughout the poem as a measure of Odysseus's long absence, and in Book 24 Odysseus reveals himself to him in the orchard, naming the very trees his father once gave him as a boy — the poem's last and gentlest test of identity, restoring him briefly to youth and armor for the final skirmish.
Kin: son of Arceisius; father of Odysseus by Anticleia; grandfather of Telemachus.
Refs: 1.189, 1.430, 4.111, 9.19, 11.405, 16.118, 22.185, 22.336. Books 1–2, 4–5, 8–24.
See also: Odysseus, Anticleia, Telemachus.
Say: lees-trih-GOH-nee-unz
A race of cannibal giants ruled from the city of Lamus; when Odysseus's fleet puts in at their harbor, they hurl boulders down from the cliffs, sink the ships, and spear the crews like fish, destroying eleven of his twelve vessels at a stroke — the single worst loss of the wanderings.
Refs: 10.82, 10.106, 10.119, 10.199, 23.318.
See also: Antiphates, Lamus.
Say: lam-PEE-shee
Nymph, daughter of Helios and Neaera, who with her sister Phaethusa herds and guards the Sun's sacred cattle on Thrinacia; she carries word to her father when Odysseus's starving men slaughter the herd.
Kin: daughter of Helios; sister of Phaethusa.
Say: LAM-pus
One of the two colts — with Phaethon — that draw the chariot of Dawn as she rises on the day of the bow-contest.
Refs: 23.246.
See also: Dawn.
Say: LAY-mus
Founder-eponym of Telepylus, the Laestrygonian city, "where herdsman hails herdsman" at the meeting of night and day.
Refs: 10.81.
See also: Laestrygonians.
Say: lay-OD-uh-mus
Son of Alcinous and Arete, foremost of the young Phaeacian athletes; he urges the shipwrecked Odysseus to join the games at Book 8's contest and, when Odysseus balks, needles him toward the discus-throw that proves his strength.
Kin: son of Alcinous and Arete; brother of Nausicaa.
Refs: 7.170, 8.117, 8.119, 8.130, 8.153, 8.207, 8.370.
See also: Alcinous, Arete, Nausicaa, Phaeacians.
Say: LAP-iths
The people who, at Peirithous's wedding feast, fought and defeated the drunken Centaurs — the paradigm Odysseus (disguised) invokes when he predicts Antinous's ruin.
Refs: 21.297.
See also: Antinous.
Say: LEE-duh
Mother, by Tyndareus, of Castor and Polydeuces; Odysseus glimpses her shade among the heroines paraded before him in the underworld.
Kin: mother of Castor and Polydeuces.
Refs: 11.298.
See also: Odysseus.
Say: LEM-nos
The island home of Hephaestus, named in the song Demodocus sings of Ares and Aphrodite's adultery — Hephaestus departs for Lemnos, the affair he leaves to catch is exposed by the sun-god.
See also: Hephaestus, Aphrodite.
Say: lee-OK-rih-tus
Son of Evenor; a suitor who mocks Mentor and breaks up the Book 2 assembly, unwittingly prophesying his own side's ruin — a prophecy the poem fulfills when Telemachus's spear takes him through the flank in the slaughter.
Kin: son of Evenor.
See also: Mentor, Telemachus, the suitors.
Say: lee-OH-deez
Son of Oenops; the suitors' soothsayer and sacrificer, and — the poem insists — the one among them who genuinely hated their outrages and tried to stop them. He clasps Odysseus's knees and begs by that innocence, but Odysseus convicts him on his office, not his acts — as their diviner he must have prayed for the suitors' success — and beheads him mid-plea.
Kin: son of Oenops.
See also: Odysseus, the suitors.
Say: LEZ-bos
The island where a young Odysseus once wrestled and beat Philomeleides; Nestor, Menelaus, and the disguised Odysseus himself all cite the crossing at Lesbos as a landmark of sea-judgment.
See also: Odysseus.
Say: LEE-toh
Mother of Apollo and Artemis by Zeus; invoked as the mother of the archer-twins and, in the underworld catalogue, as the goddess whose assault by Tityus earns him eternal punishment.
Kin: mother of Apollo and Artemis (by Zeus).
The North African land Menelaus describes as endlessly rich in flocks, where lambs are born horned and ewes may lamb three times a year; Eumaeus's false Cretan tale also passes through it.
A gentle people whose flower-food erases all wish for home; three of Odysseus's scouts taste it and must be dragged weeping back to the ships and bound under the benches — the wanderings' first lesson in what threatens the return.
Refs: 9.84, 9.91, 9.92, 9.96, 23.311.
See also: Odysseus.
Say: MEE-ruh
A heroine Odysseus glimpses among the shades of famous women in the underworld.
Refs: 11.326.
See also: Odysseus.
Say: MY-uh or MAY-uh
Nymph, mother of Hermes by Zeus; named when Eumaeus's tale touches the god's lineage.
Kin: mother of Hermes (by Zeus).
Refs: 14.436.
See also: Hermes.
Say: muh-LEE-uh
The stormy cape at the southern tip of the Peloponnese where homeward-bound fleets are scattered; it drives Odysseus off course to the Cicones and Lotus-eaters and recurs in Nestor's, Menelaus's, and Amphimedon's accounts as the place where fair voyages turn to disaster.
Refs: 3.288, 4.515, 9.80, 19.187.
See also: Odysseus.
Say: MAN-tee-us
Son of the seer Melampus, father of Polypheides and Cleitus, in the genealogy Theoclymenus recites of his own line of seers.
Kin: son of Melampus; father of Polypheides and Cleitus.
See also: Melampus, Theoclymenus.
Say: MAR-uh-thon
Attic town Athena passes on her way to Athens, named in the brief itinerary of her flight from Scheria after guiding Odysseus's ship.
Refs: 7.80.
See also: Athena.
Say: MAY-ron
Son of Euanthes, priest of Apollo at Ismarus; Odysseus and his men spared him and his family out of reverence when they sacked the town, and in gratitude he gives Odysseus the potent, richly diluted wine that will later fell the Cyclops.
Kin: son of Euanthes.
Refs: 9.197.
See also: Ismarus, Polyphemus, Apollo.
Say: MAS-tor
Father of Halitherses, the Ithacan elder and seer.
Kin: father of Halitherses.
See also: Halitherses.
Say: MEE-don
The herald of Odysseus's house; he warns Penelope of the suitors' ambush plot against Telemachus, and in the slaughter he is spared, along with the singer Phemius, at Telemachus's plea — the herald "who always cared for me when I was a child," found cowering under a chair wrapped in an oxhide.
Refs: 4.677, 4.696, 4.711, 16.252, 16.412, 22.357, 22.361, 24.439, 24.442.
See also: Phemius, Telemachus, Penelope.
Say: meg-uh-PEN-theez
Menelaus's son by a slave-woman, born late to him since the gods gave Helen no more children after Hermione; he is married off in the same double wedding-feast that greets Telemachus's arrival at Sparta.
Kin: son of Menelaus (by a slave-woman).
Refs: 4.11, 15.100, 15.103, 15.121.
See also: Menelaus.
Say: MEG-uh-ruh
Daughter of Creon and wife of Heracles; Odysseus sees her shade among the famous women paraded before him in the underworld.
Kin: daughter of Creon; wife of Heracles.
Refs: 11.269.
See also: Odysseus.
Say: muh-LAM-pus
The seer-ancestor of Theoclymenus's line. To win his brother a bride — Neleus's daughter — he stole the cattle of Iphiclus and was caught and bound for a year in bitter chains at Phylacus's hall; he escaped with the cattle, drove them to Pylos, paid off Neleus, and won the woman for his brother before founding a new line in Argos.
See also: Mantius, Theoclymenus, Neleus.
Say: mel-uh-NEE-us
Father of Amphimedon, one of the suitors; named in Amphimedon's shade's account of the massacre in the underworld.
Kin: father of Amphimedon.
Refs: 24.103.
See also: Amphimedon.
Say: muh-LAN-thee-us
Dolius's son, the treacherous goatherd who insults the disguised Odysseus, arms the suitors from Odysseus's own storeroom during the final battle, and is caught in the act carrying Laertes' mildewed old shield. Odysseus and Eumaeus truss him and hang him alive from a roof-beam to suffer through the fighting; after the suitors fall he is dragged out and mutilated — nose, ears, hands, feet, and genitals torn away.
Kin: son of Dolius.
Refs: 17.212, 17.247, 17.369, 20.173, 21.176, 22.135, 22.159, 22.182, 22.474.
Say: muh-LAN-thoh
An insolent slave-woman in Odysseus's household and Eurymachus's mistress; she taunts the disguised Odysseus and is later hanged with the other disloyal slave-women.
See also: Eurymachus, Melanthius, Odysseus.
Say: MEM-non
Son of Dawn, a Trojan-war ally killed at Troy; Odysseus names him, alongside Achilles, as one of the great dead when he flatters Achilles's shade in the underworld.
Kin: son of Dawn (Eos).
Refs: 11.522.
See also: Achilles.
Say: men-uh-LAY-us
King of Sparta, Helen's husband, and younger brother of Agamemnon; Telemachus visits him in Book 4 to ask news of his father, and Menelaus recounts his own storm-tossed detour to Egypt and his wrestling-match with Proteus, who told him of Odysseus stranded on Calypso's island. He is the referent of "son of Atreus" / "Atreides" in the Telemachy, as opposed to Agamemnon elsewhere.
Epithets: "fair-haired Menelaus" (ξανθὸς Μενέλαος, 1.285); "Menelaus of the great war-cry" (βοὴν ἀγαθὸς Μενέλαος, 3.311).
Also called: "son of Atreus" / "Atreides" (context-dependent; Menelaus in the Telemachy, Books 3–4, 15).
Kin: son of Atreus; brother of Agamemnon; husband of Helen; father of Hermione and Megapenthes.
Refs: 1.285, 3.141, 4.2, 4.147, 4.235, 4.316, 4.561 (Proteus's news of Odysseus), 15.5, 15.87. Books 1, 3–4, 8, 11, 13–15, 17, 24.
See also: Helen, Agamemnon, Telemachus, Proteus.
Say: muh-NEE-tee-us
Father of Patroclus, Achilles's close companion; named when Agamemnon's shade describes the two men's bones mingled in a single golden urn after Achilles's funeral.
Kin: father of Patroclus.
Refs: 24.77.
See also: Achilles.
Say: MEN-teez
Chieftain of the Taphians and a guest-friend of Odysseus's line; Athena takes his shape to visit Telemachus at the poem's opening, urge him to call the assembly, and set him sailing for news of his father.
See also: Athena, Telemachus.
Say: MEN-tor
Odysseus's companion, entrusted with his whole household when he sailed for Troy. He alone speaks up for Telemachus at the Book 2 assembly, rebuking the people's silence — and Athena repeatedly borrows his exact shape and voice afterward (2.268, 22.206, 24.503), so that "Mentor" in later scenes is the goddess herself in his likeness rather than the man.
Kin: Odysseus's steward-companion.
Refs: 2.225 (the real Mentor, speaking for himself), 2.268 (Athena first as Mentor), 3.22, 4.654, 17.68, 22.206, 22.235, 24.446, 24.503, 24.548.
See also: Athena, Odysseus, Telemachus.
Say: MUR-muh-rus
Father of Ilus of Ephyra, the poison-dealer Odysseus once sought out; named only in that genealogical aside.
Kin: father of Ilus.
Refs: 1.259.
See also: Odysseus.
Say: muh-SAW-lee-us
A slave Eumaeus bought with his own means, from Taphian traders, while his master was away — his private property rather than part of the household stock.
See also: Eumaeus.
Say: muh-SEE-nee
The region where a young Odysseus, sent to collect a debt, first met and befriended Iphitus, who gave him the bow he keeps at home ever after.
Refs: 21.15.
Say: MY-mus
The headland opposite Chios that marks a turn on the sailing route Nestor recounts from the fall of Troy.
Refs: 3.172.
See also: Nestor.
Say: MY-nos
King of Crete in his lifetime, "shining son of Zeus"; in the underworld Odysseus sees him seated with a golden scepter, delivering judgment among the dead as they plead their cases before him.
Kin: son of Zeus.
Say: MOH-lee
The god-given herb, black-rooted with a milk-white flower, that Hermes gives Odysseus to make him proof against Circe's drug before he confronts her.
Refs: 10.305.
Say: MOO-lee-us
Herald of the suitor Amphinomus, briefly named in his master's service.
Refs: 18.423.
See also: Amphinomus.
The nine goddesses of song, invoked by the narrator in the poem's opening line ("Sing to me, Muse…") and, in Agamemnon's account of Achilles's funeral, appearing in the story itself: all nine sing the dirge over his body, "answering voice to lovely voice" — poetry's patronesses mourning poetry's own hero.
Say: my-SEE-nee
Agamemnon's city; Nestor recounts that Aegisthus ruled there seven years after murdering Agamemnon, before Orestes returned to kill him. Telemachus later invokes it, with Pylos and Argos, as a byword for a woman's fame in praising Penelope.
Say: my-SEE-nee
A heroine of the old days, "of the lovely crown," named beside Tyro and Alcmene in the catalogue of legendary women; the eponym of Agamemnon's city Mycenae.
Refs: 2.120.
See also: Mycenae.
Say: MUR-mih-donz
Achilles's Thessalian people, named when his kingdom and son Neoptolemus are discussed in the Telemachy and the underworld.
See also: Achilles.
Say: NY-adz or NAY-adz
The water-nymphs of the sea-cave sacred at the head of the harbor of Phorcys in Ithaca, where Odysseus once offered them hecatombs and where the Phaeacians lay him, still asleep, with his treasure on his return. Athena cites the cave's exact details to prove to Odysseus that he is truly home, and his first act on recognizing Ithaca is to pray to these "nymphs of the springs, daughters of Zeus."
Also called: "the nymphs" (generic).
Say: naw-SIK-ay-uh
Daughter of Alcinous and Arete, out washing linens with her handmaids when she finds the shipwrecked, naked Odysseus on the shore (Book 6). She guides him to her parents' hall with tact and self-possession, and is the last woman he meets before Penelope; Odysseus's parting blessing to her (6.180ff) is one of the poem's tenderest speeches. She reappears briefly at the Book 8 games.
Epithets: "white-armed Nausicaa" (Ναυσικάα λευκώλενος, 6.101).
Kin: daughter of Alcinous and Arete; sister of Laodamas.
Refs: 6.17 (first, "daughter of great-hearted Alcinous"), 6.25, 6.49, 6.101, 6.186, 6.213, 6.251, 6.276, 7.12, 8.457, 8.464.
See also: Alcinous, Arete, Phaeacians, Scheria.
Say: naw-SITH-oh-us
Former king of the Phaeacians, son of Poseidon and Periboea, who led his people away from the Cyclopes' neighborhood and settled them on Scheria. Father of Rhexenor and Alcinous; already dead by the time of Odysseus's visit, but Alcinous cites his father's old warning that Poseidon resents the Phaeacians' habit of ferrying every stranger home unharmed (8.564–566) — the warning that comes true against Odysseus's own ship.
Kin: son of Poseidon and Periboea; father of Rhexenor and Alcinous.
Say: nee-EE-ruh
A nymph named only once, by Helios as the mother of the herdswomen who tend his cattle and sheep on Thrinacia — Phaethusa and Lampetie.
Kin: consort of Helios.
Refs: 12.133.
See also: Helios.
Say: NEE-on
A height on Ithaca above the harbor, named in passing as Telemachus's ship sets out and again in the muster for the suitors' funeral ambush.
See also: Ithaca.
Say: NEE-lee-us
Former king of Pylos, father of Nestor; son of Poseidon and Tyro, who bore him and his twin Pelias in secret. He is already gone by the poem's present, but his house still stands: his daughter Pero was won by a suitor who first had to drive off the cattle of Iphicles, and several of his other sons are named among Nestor's dead brothers.
Kin: son of Poseidon and Tyro; father of Nestor, Chromius, Periclymenus, Pero, and others.
Refs: 3.4, 3.79, 3.202, 3.247, 3.409, 3.465, 11.254–257 (birth), 11.281–288 (Pero and the cattle-feat), 15.229–237.
Say: nee-op-TOL-uh-mus
Achilles's son, fetched from Scyros to fight at Troy; in the underworld Odysseus tells Achilles's ghost of his son's courage and success in the war — news meant to comfort a father who cannot know it himself.
Kin: son of Achilles.
Refs: 11.506.
Say: NER-ih-kus
A mainland town that Laertes once captured while he was still king in his strength, recalled in the poem's closing book as a measure of the old man's former vigor.
Refs: 24.377.
See also: Laertes.
Say: NER-ih-ton
The tall, wooded mountain that dominates Ithaca's skyline, named as a landmark visible from the sea and invoked in similes of visibility and height.
See also: Ithaca.
Say: NER-ih-tus
One of the legendary founders associated with Ithaca, named once and distinct from the mountain Neriton that bears a similar name.
Refs: 17.207.
Say: NES-tor
Aged king of Pylos, son of Neleus, and the sole surviving elder statesman of the generation that sailed to Troy. Telemachus visits him first in his search for news of his father (Book 3); Nestor cannot say what became of Odysseus but retells the Achaeans' quarrelsome breakup after Troy and Agamemnon's murder at length, then sends Telemachus on to Sparta with his son Peisistratus as escort. Telemachus recalls the visit again to Penelope in Book 17, and Agamemnon's shade recalls Nestor's steadying counsel at Achilles's funeral in Book 24's retelling of Troy.
Epithets: "Gerenian Nestor the horseman" (Γερήνιος ἱππότα Νέστωρ, 3.68).
Kin: son of Neleus; father of Peisistratus, Antilochus (dead at Troy), Thrasymedes, and others.
Refs: 1.284, 3.17–79 (the arrival and sacrifice), 3.102–474 (his long telling), 4.21, 11.286, 11.512, 15.4–202 (Telemachus's departure) …and throughout Books 3–4, 15, 17, 24.
See also: Neleus, Peisistratus, Telemachus, Pylos.
Say: NY-sus
Lord of Dulichium and father of the suitor Amphinomus, named only to identify his son.
Kin: father of Amphinomus.
See also: Amphinomus.
Say: noh-EE-mon
An Ithacan, son of Phronius, who lends Telemachus the ship for his secret voyage to Pylos and later unwittingly tips off the suitors that he has gone.
Also called: "son of Phronius."
See also: Telemachus, the suitors.
The great river that the poem imagines encircling the flat world; beyond its stream lie the sunless land of the dead and other far horizons. Odysseus crosses it to reach the underworld (Book 10–11), and it recurs as a boundary-marker in similes and geography throughout.
Refs: 4.567, 5.275, 10.139, 10.508–511, 11.13–21, 11.158, 11.639, 12.1, 19.434, 20.65, 22.197, 23.244–347, 24.11.
See also: the underworld, Persephone.
Say: oh-DIS-ee-us or oh-DISS-yoos
King of Ithaca, son of Laertes, husband of Penelope, father of Telemachus; the poem is his homecoming. Detained by Calypso, wrecked on Scheria, he tells the Phaeacians his ten years of wandering (Books 9–12) — the Cicones, the Lotus-eaters, Polyphemus (whom he blinds and tricks with the name "Nobody"), Circe, the underworld, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, and Thrinacia — then sails home alone, disguised by Athena as a beggar, to test his household, win the bow-contest, and slaughter the suitors before revealing himself to Penelope and Laertes.
Epithets: "much-enduring noble Odysseus" (πολύτλας δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς, 5.171); "Odysseus of the many designs" (πολύμητις/πολύφρων Ὀδυσσεύς, 1.83, 2.173); "noble Odysseus" (δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς, 1.196); "Odysseus, sacker of cities" (πτολίπορθος Ὀδυσσεύς, 8.3).
Also called: "Nobody" (Οὖτις), the trick-name given to Polyphemus in Book 9.
Kin: son of Laertes and Anticleia; husband of Penelope; father of Telemachus.
Refs: 1.21 (opening line), 1.48, 1.196, 2.173, 3.163 …and throughout every book, 1–24.
See also: Penelope, Telemachus, Laertes, Athena, Calypso, Polyphemus.
Say: ee-KAY-lee-uh
The city ruled by Eurytus, the great archer whose bow Odysseus later strings; named once in the catalogue of that bow's history.
Refs: 8.224.
See also: Eurytus.
Say: EE-dih-pus or ED-ih-pus
Named in the underworld as the son and unwitting husband of Epicaste (Jocasta), who hanged herself in horror once the truth of their marriage came out; Odysseus sees her ghost among the heroines.
Kin: son and husband of Epicaste.
Refs: 11.271.
See also: the underworld.
Say: EE-nops
Father of the suitor Leodes, named only to identify his son.
Kin: father of Leodes.
Refs: 21.144.
See also: Leodes, the suitors.
Say: oh-JIJ-ee-uh
Calypso's remote island, "the navel of the sea," where Odysseus spends seven years before the gods intervene to send him home.
Refs: 1.85, 6.172, 7.244–254, 12.448, 23.333.
See also: Calypso.
Say: OY-kleez
Father of the seer Amphiaraus, named in Theoclymenus's genealogy.
Kin: father of Amphiaraus.
Refs: 15.243–244.
See also: Theoclymenus, Amphiaraus.
Say: oh-LIM-pus
The gods' mountain seat, set above weather and mortal change; the site of the divine councils that open and close the poem's action (1.102, 24.351–488) and the standing address of the immortals throughout.
Refs: 1.102, 3.377, 6.42–240, 8.331, 10.308, 11.315, 12.337, 14.394, 15.43, 18.180, 19.43, 20.55–103, 23.167, 24.351–488.
Say: oh-NEE-tor
Father of Phrontis, the Sparta-bound helmsman Menelaus lost off Sunium, named only in that aside.
Kin: father of Phrontis.
Refs: 3.282.
See also: Menelaus.
Say: OPS
Father of Eurycleia, Odysseus's old nurse; the patronymic recurs every time she is formally introduced. He is himself "Peisenor's son" — a different Peisenor from the Ithacan herald of Book 2 (see Peisenor).
Kin: father of Eurycleia.
Say: or-KOM-uh-nus
The Minyan city of legendary wealth, twice invoked in the underworld book as a byword for riches — once by Tyro's line, once ranked alongside Egyptian Thebes.
See also: the underworld.
Say: oh-RES-teez
Agamemnon's son, who avenges his father's murder by killing Aegisthus; the gods and Athena repeatedly hold him up to Telemachus as the model of the heir who acts, the poem's counter-example to Telemachus's own hesitation.
Kin: son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.
Refs: 1.30, 1.40, 1.298, 3.306, 4.546, 11.461.
See also: Agamemnon, Aegisthus, Telemachus.
Say: oh-RY-un
The great hunter: Dawn once loved and carried him off, until the gods' envy brought Artemis's arrows down on him in Ortygia; in the underworld his ghost still strides the asphodel meadow driving the beasts he killed in life. Also named as the constellation Calypso tells Odysseus to watch by.
Say: OR-muh-nus
Father of Ctesius in Eumaeus's account of his own ancestry, named only there.
Kin: father of Ctesius.
Refs: 15.414.
See also: Eumaeus.
Say: or-SIL-oh-kus
Son of Idomeneus in the false tale Odysseus spins for Athena on the Ithacan shore, claiming to have killed him in an ambush over war-spoils.
Kin: (in the lying tale) son of Idomeneus.
Refs: 13.260.
Say: or-TIL-oh-kus
Son of the river-god Alpheus and father of Diocles of Pherae, the host who lodges Telemachus and Peisistratus on their road to and from Sparta.
Kin: son of Alpheus; father of Diocles.
See also: Diocles, Peisistratus.
Say: or-TIJ-ee-uh
The island where Artemis's gentle arrows struck down Orion; named again in Eumaeus's account of his distant homeland.
Say: OS-uh
One of the two mountains — with Pelion — that the giants Otus and Ephialtes piled on Olympus in their assault on heaven.
Refs: 11.315.
Say: OH-tus
Giant son of Iphimedeia and Poseidon, twin of Ephialtes; the pair grew to monstrous size and beauty and piled Ossa on Olympus and Pelion on Ossa to storm heaven, before Apollo destroyed them young.
Kin: son of Iphimedeia (by Poseidon); twin of Ephialtes.
Refs: 11.308.
Say: pee-EE-on
The physician of the gods, invoked by Helen in an aside about Egyptian medicine as the source of healing skill.
Refs: 4.232.
See also: Helen.
Say: pan-DAIR-ee-us
Father of the nightingale-woman Aedon, whose grief at accidentally killing her own son is the simile for Penelope's sleepless sorrow (19.518), and father too of the daughters swept off by the storm-winds after the gods orphaned them (20.66).
Kin: father of Aedon and of the storm-snatched daughters.
See also: Penelope.
Say: puh-NOP-ee-us
A Phocian town, named as a landmark near which the giant Tityus lies stretched out in torment in the underworld.
Refs: 11.581.
See also: the underworld, Tityus.
Say: PAF-os or PAY-fos
Aphrodite's sacred precinct on Cyprus, where she withdraws after her affair with Ares is exposed, to be bathed and anointed by the Graces.
Refs: 8.363.
See also: Aphrodite.
Say: par-NAS-us
The mountain where young Odysseus hunted with his uncles and took the boar-gash on his thigh that becomes his identifying scar, recognized first by Eurycleia and later by Laertes.
Say: puh-TROH-klus
Achilles's closest companion at Troy; his ghost appears beside Achilles's in the underworld, and the two share a single funeral mound, their ashes mixed as they had asked.
Kin: companion of Achilles.
Refs: 3.110, 11.468, 24.16, 24.77–79.
See also: Achilles, the underworld.
Say: py-RITH-oh-us
Lapith king and companion of Theseus, seen among the famous women's train of shades that Odysseus does not linger to describe; also the host in whose hall the drunken Centaur Eurytion committed his outrage, the paradigm of wine-fueled violence cited against the suitors.
Kin: companion of Theseus.
See also: Theseus, the underworld.
Say: py-SAN-der
Son of Polyctor, one of the suitors; struck dumb with fear at the first killings and cut down by Philoetius in the hall-fight.
Also called: "son of Polyctor."
Kin: son of Polyctor.
See also: the suitors.
Say: py-SEE-nor
Two different men share this name in the poem: an Ithacan herald of "clear-headed counsel" who attends the Book 2 assembly (2.38), and — a generation earlier — the father of Ops and so the grandfather of Eurycleia, invoked whenever she is introduced by her full patronymic (1.429, 2.347, 20.148).
Say: py-SIS-truh-tus
Nestor's youngest son, still unwed in his father's halls, who shares a bed with Telemachus at Pylos and drives him on by chariot to Sparta and back, a steady companion through the Telemachy's second half.
Kin: son of Nestor.
Refs: 3.36, 3.400–415, 3.454, 3.482, 4.155, 15.46–48, 15.131, 15.166.
See also: Nestor, Telemachus.
Say: puh-LAZ-jee-unz
One of the several peoples of Crete named in Odysseus's account of that island's mixed population to Penelope.
Refs: 19.177.
See also: Crete.
Say: PEE-lee-us
Father of Achilles; in the underworld Achilles's ghost anxiously asks Odysseus for news of him, and Odysseus can only say he has heard nothing — a father's fate left open, unlike his son's, whose death and glory Odysseus can report in full.
Kin: father of Achilles.
Refs: 5.310, 8.75, 11.467–494 (Achilles's ghost), 11.505 (Odysseus has no news of him), 11.551–558, 24.15–36.
See also: Achilles, Neoptolemus.
Say: PEE-lee-us or PEL-ee-us
Son of Tyro and Poseidon, twin of Neleus, who became king in Iolcus; named in Tyro's genealogy among the underworld shades.
Kin: son of Poseidon and Tyro; twin of Neleus.
Refs: 11.254–256.
Say: PEE-lee-on
The mountain of "shivering leaves" that the giants Otus and Ephialtes piled atop Ossa in their attempt to storm heaven.
Refs: 11.316.
Say: puh-NEL-uh-pee
Odysseus's wife, daughter of Icarius, who holds off 108 suitors for twenty years through grief, guile, and the unraveled weaving-trick, never certain her husband still lives. She tests the disguised beggar's knowledge of Odysseus, sets the axe-contest that only he can win, and — even after the suitors' deaths — makes Odysseus prove himself with the secret of their marriage-bed before she accepts him.
Epithets: "watchful-minded Penelope" (περίφρων Πηνελόπεια, 1.329); "steady-hearted Penelope" (ἐχέφρων Πηνελόπεια, 4.111).
Also called: "daughter of Icarius."
Kin: daughter of Icarius; wife of Odysseus; mother of Telemachus.
Refs: 1.223, 1.329, 4.111, 4.675–830 (learns of the ambush), 16.409–459, 18.159–285 (before the suitors) …and throughout Books 1–2, 4–5, 11, 13–24.
See also: Odysseus, Telemachus, Icarius, Eurycleia.
Say: per-ih-BEE-uh
Mother of Nausithous by Poseidon, named once in the Phaeacian royal genealogy Alcinous recites.
Kin: consort of Poseidon; mother of Nausithous.
Refs: 7.57.
See also: Nausithous, Poseidon.
Say: per-ih-KLIM-uh-nus
A son of Neleus, named among Nestor's brothers in Tyro's line of descendants seen in the underworld.
Kin: son of Neleus; brother of Nestor.
Refs: 11.286.
Say: per-ih-MEE-deez
One of Odysseus's crewmen, steady at his side holding the sacrificial sheep during the underworld rite in Book 11 and named again performing the same office in Circe's instructions recalled in Book 12.
See also: Odysseus.
Say: PEE-roh
Neleus's daughter, "a wonder of mortals," courted by every neighboring man; her father would give her only to whoever could drive off the cattle of mighty Iphicles, a feat her suitor Melampus's brother eventually undertakes.
Kin: daughter of Neleus.
Refs: 11.287.
See also: Neleus.
Say: PUR-see
An Oceanid, daughter of Ocean, who bears Circe and Aeetes to Helios — named once in Circe's own genealogy as Odysseus's crew land on her island.
Kin: daughter of Ocean; consort of Helios; mother of Circe and Aeetes.
Refs: 10.139.
Say: pur-SEF-oh-nee
Queen of the dead, invoked alongside Hades in the underworld rite (11.47) and the power who marshals the ghosts of the great heroines to come drink the blood and speak with Odysseus (11.213–226). She is the one who could, if she chose, send the Gorgon's head against him — the fear that finally drives him from the underworld.
Epithets: "dread Persephone" (11.47, 10.491–564).
Refs: 10.491–564, 11.47, 11.213–226, 11.385, 11.634.
See also: Hades, the underworld.
Say: PUR-see-us
A son of Nestor, named among his brothers greeting Telemachus at Pylos.
Kin: son of Nestor.
See also: Nestor.
The young Phaeacian noblemen — Acroneus, Ocyalus, Elatreus, Nauteus, Prymneus, Anchialus, Eretmeus, Ponteus, Proreus, Thoon, Anabesineus, Amphialus, Euryalus, and Alcinous's sons Laodamas, Halius, and Clytoneus among them — who rise together and compete in the running, wrestling, jumping, and discus at the Book 8 games.
Refs: 8.111–129.
See also: Alcinous, Laodamas, Phaeacians, Scheria.
Say: fee-AY-shunz
The seafaring people of Scheria, ruled by Alcinous and Arete, and Odysseus's last hosts before Ithaca. Renowned above all peoples for shipcraft, they receive the shipwrecked stranger, stage the games and feast at which he tells his wanderings, and finally carry him home asleep aboard one of their crewless ships — the passage for which Poseidon punishes them by turning the returning ship to stone within sight of their own harbor.
Epithets: "the Phaeacians of the long oars, men famed for ships" (Φαίηκες δολιχήρετμοι, ναυσίκλυτοι ἄνδρες, 8.191).
Refs: 5.35, 6.3, 6.195, 7.11, 7.39, 8.5, 8.191, 8.386 …and throughout. Books 5–8, 11, 13, 16, 19, 23.
Say: FEE-dih-mus
King of Sidon in Phoenicia and a host of Menelaus on his travels; he gives Menelaus the silver mixing-bowl, rimmed with gold and the work of Hephaestus, that Menelaus later presents to Telemachus as a parting gift.
Say: FEE-druh or FAY-druh
A heroine whose shade Odysseus glimpses in the underworld's catalogue of famous women, named in the same line as Procris and Ariadne.
Refs: 11.321.
See also: Procris.
Say: FEE-stus or FES-tus
A town on Crete, named as the place by whose reef Menelaus's fleet is wrecked on the voyage home from Troy.
Refs: 3.296.
Say: FAY-uh-thon
One of the two colts, "Shiner" and "Blazer," that draw the chariot of Dawn; Athena holds him and his yoke-mate short of the sky when she prolongs the night of Odysseus and Penelope's reunion.
Refs: 23.246.
Say: fay-uh-THOO-suh
One of the two nymphs, with her sister Lampetie, whom Helios sets to guard his cattle and sheep on Thrinacia.
Kin: daughter of Helios and Neaera.
Refs: 12.132.
See also: Helios.
Say: FAIR-os or FAR-os
The island just off the mouth of Egypt where Poseidon becalms Menelaus's fleet for twenty days; there, guided by Eidothea, Menelaus ambushes and questions Proteus.
Refs: 4.355.
Say: FEE-ee
A coastal town of the western Peloponnese, passed by Telemachus's ship on the night-sail back from Pylos.
Refs: 15.297.
Say: FY-don
King of the Thesprotians in the fictional wanderings Odysseus tells Eumaeus and, later, Penelope: he takes the castaway in without price, swears an oath over libation that the real Odysseus is alive and en route home with treasure, and has a ship readied for his passage.
Say: FEE-mee-us
Son of Terpes, the bard kept at the suitors' hall; the narrator twice stresses he sings for them "under compulsion." When Odysseus and Telemachus cut down the suitors, Phemius pleads for his life on that same ground and is spared.
Also called: "Terpes' son" (patronymic).
Refs: 1.154, 1.337, 17.262, 22.331.
See also: Telemachus.
Say: FEE-ree
A waypoint on the chariot road between Pylos and Sparta, where Telemachus and Peisistratus lodge with Diocles both going and returning; also the name of a separate Thessalian town, home of Eumelus.
Say: FEE-reez
Son of Tyro and Cretheus, named among Tyro's sons in the underworld catalogue of heroines.
Kin: son of Tyro and Cretheus.
Refs: 11.259.
Say: fil-ok-TEE-teez
The great archer of the Trojan War, son of Poias; Nestor confirms he came home safe, and Odysseus, boasting of his own skill with the bow, admits only Philoctetes surpassed him at Troy.
Kin: son of Poias.
See also: Poias.
Say: fil-EE-tee-us
The loyal cowherd, "a leader of men," who arrives on the household's last day driving cattle for the suitors' table. He reads through Odysseus's beggar-disguise to guess at a king in ruin, weeps over his master's bow, and once sworn to the cause bars the courtyard gates, arms himself, and kills the suitor Ctesippus with a spear-taunt answering Ctesippus's earlier ox-hoof insult.
Refs: 20.185, 20.227, 20.254, 21.193, 21.240, 21.388, 22.359.
Say: fil-oh-muh-LY-deez
King of Lesbos whom Odysseus once out-wrestled on a challenge, on the voyage back from Troy — a feat of strength Menelaus and, later, Odysseus's own disguise-tale each recall.
Say: fih-NISH-uh
The Levantine trading coast, home of the Sidonians; source of the fine goods that pass through the poem's gift-economy, and also of the traders who steal Eumaeus as a child.
See also: Phoenicians.
Say: fih-NISH-unz
The seafaring traders and slavers of Sidon. They bring fine goods to courts across the poem's world, and a treacherous Phoenician woman, nurse to Eumaeus's childhood household, sells him into slavery — the same people who deal honestly in luxury goods and dishonestly in people.
Say: FOR-sis
A sea-god, "lord of the barren salt sea"; his daughter Thoosa lies with Poseidon and bears Polyphemus. Ithaca's principal harbor, where the Phaeacians set the sleeping Odysseus ashore, is called by his name, and the text twice describes it as belonging to "the old man of the sea" — a description of Phorcys, distinct from Proteus's own fixed epithet.
Kin: father of Thoosa (by whom Poseidon fathers Polyphemus).
See also: Polyphemus, Poseidon.
Say: FROH-nee-us
Father of Noemon, the young Ithacan who lends Telemachus the ship for his voyage to Pylos.
Kin: father of Noemon.
Say: FRON-tis
Son of Onetor and Menelaus's helmsman, unmatched at steering a ship through storm-winds; Apollo kills him at the tiller off holy Sunium on the voyage from Troy, and Menelaus stops there to bury him.
Also called: "son of Onetor" (patronymic).
Kin: son of Onetor.
Refs: 3.282.
See also: Menelaus.
Say: FTHY-uh or THY-uh
Achilles's homeland in Thessaly; in the underworld Odysseus tells Achilles's shade that his son is honored fully "through Hellas and Phthia."
Refs: 11.496.
See also: Achilles.
Say: fih-LAY-see
The town of Phylacus in the tale of the seer Melampus, who is held captive there a year for attempting to steal Iphicles's cattle before he is released and drives the herd to Pylos.
See also: Phylacus.
Say: FIL-uh-kus
Lord of Phylace and owner of the cattle at the center of the Melampus tale; Melampus is imprisoned in his halls for a year before winning the herd.
Refs: 15.231.
See also: Phylace.
Say: FY-loh
Helen's handmaid in Sparta, who brings her silver workbasket and wool when she joins Menelaus and their guests.
See also: Helen.
Say: py-EER-ee-uh
The mountain over which Hermes swoops down from Olympus on his way to Calypso's island, Ogygia.
Refs: 5.50.
Say: py-REE-us
Son of Clytius and one of Telemachus's trusted companions on the voyage from Pylos; Telemachus entrusts him with Theoclymenus and his gifts, and Piraeus shelters and honors the seer through the poem's later books, receiving him again after Telemachus warns him off the perilous house.
Epithets: "famous for the spear" (δουρικλυτός, 15.544).
Kin: son of Clytius.
Refs: 15.539, 15.540, 15.544, 17.55, 17.71, 17.74, 17.78, 20.372.
See also: Theoclymenus, Telemachus.
Say: PLANK-tee
The Wandering (or Clashing) Rocks, the crashing hazard that only the Argo ever passed safely; Circe warns Odysseus off that route in favor of Scylla and Charybdis, and Odysseus later summarizes the choice for Penelope.
Also called: the Wandering Rocks; the Clashing Rocks.
Say: POH-yas
Father of the archer Philoctetes.
Kin: father of Philoctetes.
Refs: 3.190.
See also: Philoctetes.
Say: poh-LY-teez
A crewman of Odysseus, "closest and dearest" of all his companions, who first urges hailing the singer at the loom in the woods of Aeaea — the discovery that leads the men into Circe's house.
Refs: 10.224.
See also: Circe.
Say: POL-ih-bus
The name covers four distinct men: Eurymachus's father, invoked throughout as "Polybus' son" (1.399, 16.345); a skilled Phaeacian craftsman who made the ball used in Alcinous's games (8.373); an Egyptian of Thebes, husband of Alcandre, who gives Helen her silver basket (4.126); and a suitor killed by Eumaeus in the hall-fight (22.243, 22.284).
Refs: 1.399, 4.126, 8.373, 16.345, 22.243, 22.284.
See also: Eurymachus.
Say: pol-ih-KAS-tee
Nestor's youngest daughter; she bathes and dresses Telemachus at Pylos, the guest-honor after which he rises "with the body of an immortal."
Kin: daughter of Nestor.
Refs: 3.464.
See also: Nestor.
Say: poh-LIK-tor
The name covers two men: one of the legendary founders of Ithaca, commemorated with Ithacus and Neritus in the fountain by the town's edge; and, separately, father of the suitor Peisander, named among the suitors' four best fighters.
Say: pol-ih-DAM-nuh
An Egyptian woman, wife of Thon, who gives Helen the potent grief-erasing drug she mixes into the wine at Sparta.
Refs: 4.228.
See also: Helen.
Say: pol-ih-DYOO-seez
The immortal twin, brother of Castor; seen by Odysseus in the underworld among Leda's sons, the pair share life and death turn about, a day each, an honor equal to the gods'.
Kin: son of Leda and Tyndareus; brother of Castor.
Refs: 11.300.
Say: pol-ih-PEE-mon
"Much-Suffering" — the invented grandfather in the fictitious genealogy Odysseus gives Laertes before revealing himself: Eperitus, son of Apheidas, son of Polypemon. The invented names, read for their etymology, spell out Odysseus's real story.
Refs: 24.305.
See also: Laertes.
Say: pol-ih-FY-deez
Seer son of Mantius; Apollo makes him a great prophet, and he fathers Theoclymenus.
Kin: son of Mantius; father of Theoclymenus.
See also: Theoclymenus.
Say: pol-ih-FEE-mus
The one-eyed Cyclops, son of Poseidon and the nymph Thoosa. Odysseus and his men are trapped in his cave on the voyage home, and he devours several of them before Odysseus gets him drunk, blinds his single eye with a fire-hardened stake, and escapes lashed under the rams' bellies — tricking him first with the false name "Nobody." His dying curse, that Odysseus reach home late, ruined, and in another's ship, sets Poseidon's wrath in motion for the rest of the poem.
Also called: "the Cyclops"; deceived by "Nobody" (Οὖτις), Odysseus's alias.
Kin: son of Poseidon and Thoosa (daughter of Phorcys).
Refs: 1.69, 9.296, 9.319, 9.403, 9.407, 9.475, 9.502, 9.548. Books 1–2, 9–10, 12, 20, 23.
Say: pol-ih-THUR-seez
Father of the suitor Ctesippus; named only when Philoetius, having just killed his son, taunts the corpse as "son of Polytherses."
Kin: father of Ctesippus.
Refs: 22.287.
Say: pon-TON-oh-us
Alcinous's herald and wine-steward on Scheria, who mixes and serves the feast at the king's command and seats the disguised Odysseus among the guests.
Refs: 7.179, 7.182, 8.65, 13.50, 13.53.
See also: Alcinous.
Say: poh-SY-dun
God of the sea and Odysseus's chief divine antagonist, brother of Zeus. Enraged when Odysseus blinds his son Polyphemus, he curses him to a late, ruined homecoming and spends the poem harrying him — wrecking his raft off Scheria, and, after the Phaeacians finally see him home, turning their returning ship to stone in sight of harbor as punishment for defying him. He is absent from the gods' council that frees Odysseus, visiting the Ethiopians, and is reconciled only after that final blow lands.
Epithets: "the earth-shaker" / "shaker of earth" (ἐνοσίχθων/ἐννοσίγαιος, 1.74); "who holds the earth" (γαιήοχος, 1.68); "with the blue-black hair" (κυανοχαίτης, 3.6).
Kin: son of Cronos, brother of Zeus; father of Polyphemus (by Thoosa) and, through Nausithous, ancestor of the Phaeacian royal line.
Refs: 1.20, 1.68, 1.74, 5.366, 8.322, 9.526, 9.528, 13.159, 23.234. Books 1, 3–9, 11, 13, 23–24.
See also: Polyphemus, Zeus, Phaeacians, Nausithous.
Say: PRY-am
King of Troy against whom the Achaeans fought for nine years and whose city they finally sacked — the war and its sack recur throughout the poem as the shared backdrop of every veteran's story; one of his daughters is glimpsed among the pitiful voices Odysseus hears in the underworld, and Athena invokes his fallen city to shame Odysseus into battle-rage before the suitor-fight.
Refs: 3.107, 3.130, 5.106, 11.421, 11.533, 13.316, 14.241, 22.230.
See also: Troy.
Say: PROK-ris
A heroine seen by Odysseus among the famous women of the underworld, named beside Phaedra and Ariadne.
Refs: 11.321.
See also: Phaedra.
Say: PROH-tee-us
The shape-shifting sea-god of Egypt, Poseidon's seal-herding "under-servant." Menelaus, on Eidothea's advice, ambushes him disguised in sealskins and holds him fast through his transformations until he answers truly — the poem's one god forced bodily into telling the truth, who reveals the fates of the Achaean captains and Menelaus's own promised end in Elysium.
Epithets: "the unerring Old Man of the Sea" (γέρων ἅλιος νημερτής, 4.349).
Say: SY-ree-uh
An islet in the eastern Aegean, weighed as a routing option — keeping it to the left, past Chios — when the fleet debates the crossing home from Troy.
Refs: 3.171.
Say: PY-lee-unz
Nestor's people, the folk of sandy Pylos; they crowd the shore for Poseidon's festival when Telemachus arrives, and Telemachus meets them again on his return leg.
Say: PY-los
Nestor's kingdom on the western Peloponnese, "sandy Pylos." Athena, disguised as Mentor, guides Telemachus there on the first leg of his search for news of his father; Nestor receives him at a beachside festival for Poseidon, tells his own homecoming and recalls Agamemnon's death, and sends him on to Sparta with Peisistratus. Telemachus passes through Pylos again on his voyage home, evading the suitors' ambush.
Refs: 1.93, 2.214, 3.4, 3.182, 3.485, 4.599, 15.193, 15.541. Books 1–5, 11, 13–17, 21, 24.
See also: Nestor, Pylians, Telemachus.
Say: pir-ih-FLEJ-uh-thon
"Fire-blazing" — one of the underworld's rivers, a branch of the Styx that, with Cocytus, pours into Acheron at the rock where Circe directs Odysseus to make his offerings to the dead.
Refs: 10.513.
See also: Circe.
Say: PY-thoh
Delphi, seat of Apollo's oracle. Agamemnon consults it before Troy, in the prophecy Demodocus later sings, and it recurs as the site near which Apollo punishes Tityus for assaulting Leto on the road there.
See also: Apollo.
Say: rad-uh-MAN-thus
Fair-haired judge of the dead, dwelling at the world's edge in Elysium — the painless afterlife Proteus promises Menelaus for having married Helen. The Phaeacians once ferried him, in a single day, to visit the giant Tityus, proof of their ships' supernatural speed.
See also: Menelaus, Proteus, Phaeacians.
Say: REE-thron
The Ithacan harbor, under wooded Neion, where "Mentes" — Athena in disguise — says her ship lies at anchor.
Refs: 1.186.
See also: Athena.
Say: rek-SEE-nor
Son of Nausithous and brother of Alcinous; he dies young, "still without a son," leaving his daughter Arete, whom Alcinous then marries.
Kin: son of Nausithous; brother of Alcinous; father of Arete.
See also: Alcinous, Arete, Nausithous.
News personified, said to travel from Zeus and reach mortals with no visible source. Athena invokes her to Telemachus as one possible way to learn his father's fate; at the poem's close, Rumor herself runs through Ithaca's streets crying the suitors' slaughter.
Also called: Ossa.
See also: Zeus.
Say: sal-MOH-nee-us
Father of Tyro, named when her shade introduces herself to Odysseus in the underworld.
Kin: father of Tyro.
Refs: 11.236.
Say: SAY-mee or SAH-mee
An island of Odysseus's Ithacan realm, also called Samos; grouped with Dulichium and Zacynthus in the poem's roll-call of his kingdom, it supplies twenty-four of the suitors, including the wealthy, lawless Ctesippus.
Also called: Samos.
Say: SKEER-ee-uh
The Phaeacians' island, Odysseus's last stop before Ithaca. Athena calls it sea-ringed and set apart from other mortals at the world's edge — the setting of Books 6–13, where Nausicaa finds the shipwrecked stranger and Alcinous sends him home laden with gifts.
Also called: the land of the Phaeacians.
Refs: 5.34, 6.8, 7.79, 13.160.
See also: Alcinous, Nausicaa, Phaeacians.
Say: SIL-uh
A six-headed, twelve-footed monster lairing in a cliff-cave opposite Charybdis, daughter of Crataiis. Circe directs Odysseus to hug Scylla's crag rather than risk Charybdis's whirlpool; as the ship passes, Scylla snatches six companions from the deck — the poem's bitterest arithmetic, "far better to mourn six... than all together" (12.109–110).
Kin: daughter of Crataiis.
Refs: 12.85–101 (her lair and anatomy), 12.108–125 (Circe's counsel), 12.223–261 (the killing), 12.310, 12.430, 12.445, 23.328 (retold to Penelope).
Say: SKY-ros
The island where Achilles hid the young Neoptolemus; Odysseus recalls fetching the boy from there to fight at Troy, in his account to the shade of Achilles.
Refs: 11.509.
See also: Neoptolemus, Achilles.
Say: sih-KAY-nee-uh
Sicily, named as the edge of the known world in the last of Odysseus's false identities — the disguise he wears to test his father Laertes in Book 24.
Refs: 24.307.
Say: sih-SIL-yunz
The people of Sicania; the word also names a particular old servant of Laertes' household, a Sicilian slave-woman who tends him on his farm and helped raise Dolius's children.
Refs: 20.383 (suitors threaten to sell Theoclymenus and Piraeus to the Sicilians), 24.211, 24.366, 24.389.
Say: SY-don
The Phoenician city; source of the silver mixing-bowl King Phaedimus gives Menelaus (4.615–619, 15.117–119), and, by her own account, the birthplace of the Phoenician nurse who kidnaps the child Eumaeus.
Say: sy-DOH-nee-unz
The people of Sidon in Phoenicia, famed for craftwork; Menelaus names their king Phaedimus as the giver of his finest guest-gift, a silver mixing-bowl "the work of Hephaestus."
Say: SIN-tee-unz
The wild-tongued people of Lemnos to whom Ares withdraws after Hephaestus's snare exposes his affair with Aphrodite — named once, in passing, in Demodocus's song.
Refs: 8.294.
See also: Ares, Hephaestus, Aphrodite.
Say: SY-runz
Two singers whose song promises knowledge and fame but lures listeners to a meadow heaped with the bones of the dead. On Circe's instruction Odysseus has his men bind him to the mast and stop their own ears with wax, so he alone hears the song and lives to tell it.
Refs: 12.39–52 (Circe's warning), 12.158–200 (the passage), 23.326 (retold to Penelope).
Say: SIS-ih-fus
One of the great sinners Odysseus sees punished in the underworld, condemned to shove a boulder up a slope forever, only to watch it roll back down each time he nears the crest.
Refs: 11.593–598.
Say: SOL-ih-my
An eastern people whose hills give Poseidon, returning from the Ethiopians, his vantage point for spotting Odysseus's raft near Scheria — the sighting that triggers the storm of Book 5.
Refs: 5.283.
See also: Poseidon.
Menelaus's city in Lacedaemon; Telemachus's second stop on his journey, after Pylos, where Menelaus and Helen tell him of Proteus's report on Odysseus, and where Peisistratus escorts him there and back.
Refs: 1.93, 2.214, 4.10 (Menelaus's wedding-feast), 11.460, 13.412 (Athena's errand to fetch Telemachus).
See also: Menelaus, Helen, Telemachus.
"Destiny and the grave Spinners" — personified Fates who spin a man's thread at birth. Alcinous invokes them once, promising Odysseus safe passage only as far as the beach; what happens after is theirs, already spun.
Also called: the Fates.
Refs: 7.197.
See also: Zeus.
Say: STRAT-ee-us
One of Nestor's sons at Pylos, present at the sacrifice to Athena that opens Telemachus's visit; he and Echephron lead the sacrificial heifer by the horns.
Kin: son of Nestor, brother of Peisistratus and Thrasymedes.
See also: Nestor, Thrasymedes.
Say: STIKS
The river of the underworld by which the gods swear their most binding oath. Calypso swears by "the down-dripping water of Styx" that she means Odysseus no harm; Circe cites it among the gods' great oaths.
Say: SOO-nee-um
The Attic headland where Apollo's "gentle arrows" strike down Phrontis, Menelaus's helmsman, delaying the fleet's homeward voyage — from Nestor's telling of the Returns.
Refs: 3.278.
Say: SEE-ree
Eumaeus's home island, said to lie "above Ortygia, where the turnings of the sun are" — a near-paradise of no famine and no sickness, where he was born a prince before Phoenician traders and his own nurse sold him into slavery.
Refs: 15.403.
See also: Eumaeus.
Say: TAN-tuh-lus
Punished in the underworld by hunger and thirst that can never be satisfied: the water recedes when he stoops to drink, the fruit lifts out of reach when he grasps for it. Odysseus sees him among the great sinners.
Refs: 11.582–589.
Say: TAF-ee-unz
Seafarers and slave-raiders of the island Taphos; their chief Mentes is the shape Athena wears to visit Telemachus in Book 1, and Taphian pirates are blamed for an old raid on the Thesprotians that once brought Eupeithes to Ithaca as a fugitive.
Refs: 1.105 (Athena as Mentes), 1.181, 1.419, 14.452, 15.427, 16.426 (Eupeithes' history).
Say: TAF-os
The island home of the Taphian seafarers, and of Mentes, the guise Athena takes to visit Telemachus.
Refs: 1.417.
Say: tay-IJ-uh-tus
A mountain of Laconia, named in the simile that compares Nausicaa among her handmaids to Artemis hunting "down long Taygetus" among her nymphs.
Refs: 6.103.
Say: TEL-uh-mon
Father of the greater Ajax, named only by patronymic when Odysseus meets his son's unforgiving shade in the underworld.
Kin: father of Ajax.
See also: Ajax.
Say: tuh-LEM-uh-kus
Odysseus's son, an infant when his father sailed for Troy, and the poem's other protagonist, who comes of age across its length. Sore at heart among the suitors in Book 1, he is roused by Athena to call an assembly and sail to Pylos and Sparta for news of his father; he returns in time to help hide the hall's weapons, spring the trap on the suitors, and fight at Odysseus's side through the slaughter and the final peace.
Epithets: "clear-headed Telemachus" (Τηλέμαχος πεπνυμένος, 1.213); "godlike Telemachus" (Τηλέμαχος θεοειδής, 1.113).
Kin: son of Odysseus and Penelope.
Refs: 1.113 (first named), 1.345–359 ("mine is the power in this house"), 2.1–14 (calls the assembly), 3.14ff (Pylos), 4.1ff (Sparta), 16.155–234 (reunion with his father), 19.1–52 (hides the arms), 22.90ff (fights in the hall), 24.505–515 (armed beside his father) …and throughout. Books 1–24.
Say: TEL-uh-mus
Son of Eurymus, a seer among the Cyclopes who long ago foretold that Odysseus would blind Polyphemus — a prophecy Polyphemus recalls, too late, as Odysseus's ship pulls away.
Also called: son of Eurymus.
Refs: 9.509.
See also: Polyphemus.
Say: TEL-uh-fus
Father of Eurypylus, the Mysian hero Odysseus tells Achilles's shade about, killed at Troy fighting on the Trojan side.
Kin: father of Eurypylus.
Refs: 11.519.
Say: tuh-LEP-ih-lus
The Laestrygonian stronghold, city of King Lamus, where the giant cannibals destroy all of Odysseus's ships but one, spearing his men in the harbor like fish.
Refs: 10.82, 23.318 (retold to Penelope).
See also: Laestrygonians.
Say: TEM-uh-see
The copper-trading port Athena, disguised as Mentes, claims to be sailing toward with a cargo of iron — a rare glimpse of the poet's own Iron Age trade inside the poem's Bronze Age fiction.
Refs: 1.184.
Say: TEN-uh-dos
The island off Troy where the homeward-bound Greeks first put in and sacrifice, in Nestor's account of the fleet's disastrous, divided departure.
Refs: 3.159.
Say: TUR-peez
Father of Phemius, the Ithacan singer forced to perform for the suitors; named only by patronymic as Phemius pleads for his life before Odysseus in the slaughter.
Also called: Terpius.
Kin: father of Phemius.
Refs: 22.330.
See also: Phemius.
Two cities share the name in the poem: Boeotian Thebes of the seven gates, founded by Amphion and Zethus and later ruled by Oedipus, and the site of Amphiaraus's death; and Egyptian Thebes of the hundred gates, the fabulously wealthy city of Alcandre and Polybus, source of a silver basket given to Helen. Tiresias, whom Odysseus consults in the underworld, is repeatedly called "the Theban."
Refs: 4.126 (Egyptian Thebes), 11.165, 11.263–275 (Boeotian Thebes founded), 12.267, 15.247 (Amphiaraus), 23.323 (Tiresias "the Theban").
See also: Tiresias, Zethus, Amphiaraus.
Say: THEM-is
Goddess of order and assembly, who "seats and dissolves" the gatherings of men; Telemachus swears by her, alongside Zeus, when he begs the Ithacan assembly for a fair hearing.
Refs: 2.68.
See also: Zeus, Telemachus.
Say: thee-oh-KLIM-uh-nus or thee-oh-KLY-men-us
A fugitive seer, great-grandson of Melampus, who has killed a man in Argos and begs passage on Telemachus's ship at Pylos. He accompanies Telemachus home, reads a hawk-and-dove omen as proof that Odysseus's line will rule Ithaca, and later, at the height of the suitors' feasting, sees a vision of blood and death that the suitors laugh off.
Epithets: "godlike Theoclymenus" (Θεοκλύμενος θεοειδής, 15.271).
Refs: 15.256–286 (meets Telemachus), 15.508–534 (the hawk omen), 17.151 (prophecy to Penelope), 20.350–363 (the vision of doom).
See also: Telemachus, Melampus.
Say: THEE-see-us
The Athenian hero, named twice in the underworld's catalogue of the illustrious dead: once as the man who carried off Ariadne and lost her to Artemis, once among the "glorious children of the gods" Odysseus hoped, but failed, to see.
Say: thes-PROH-shunz
The mainland people, and land, that Odysseus repeatedly invents as the setting of his most recent adventures in the false tales he tells on Ithaca — claiming news there of a living, treasure-laden Odysseus about to sail home under King Pheidon's escort.
Refs: 14.315–316, 14.334, 16.65, 17.526, 19.271, 19.287–291 (the fullest telling, to Penelope).
Say: THEE-tis or THET-is
Sea-goddess, mother of Achilles; Agamemnon's shade recalls her rising from the sea with her sister Nereids to mourn her son and set out the funeral games' prizes.
Kin: mother of Achilles.
Refs: 24.92.
See also: Achilles.
Say: THOH-as
Son of Andraemon, a warrior Odysseus invents as a companion in the false night-ambush tale he tells Eumaeus.
Also called: son of Andraemon.
Refs: 14.499.
See also: Eumaeus.
Say: THON
The Egyptian husband of Polydamna, who gave Helen the drugs "that undo grief and anger" — the nepenthe she mixes into the wine at Sparta.
Kin: husband of Polydamna.
Refs: 4.228.
See also: Helen.
Say: thoh-OH-suh
A sea-nymph, daughter of Phorcys, who bore Polyphemus to Poseidon in her sea-caves — the reason Poseidon's grudge against Odysseus, for blinding his son, runs so deep.
Kin: daughter of Phorcys; mother of Polyphemus by Poseidon.
Refs: 1.71–73.
See also: Polyphemus, Poseidon.
The northern land Ares flees to after Hephaestus's snare exposes his affair with Aphrodite — named once, in Demodocus's song.
Refs: 8.361.
Say: thras-ih-MEE-deez
A son of Nestor at Pylos; he sits beside his father and brother Peisistratus when Telemachus arrives, and strikes the axe-blow at the sacrifice to Athena the next morning.
Kin: son of Nestor, brother of Peisistratus and Stratius.
Say: thrih-NAY-shuh
The island of Helios's sacred cattle, guarded by his daughters Phaethusa and Lampetie. Both Tiresias and Circe warn Odysseus to leave the herds untouched; his starving crew kill them anyway, and Zeus destroys the ship for it — the disaster that leaves Odysseus alone.
Refs: 11.107 (Tiresias's warning), 12.127–137 (Circe's warning), 19.275 (recounted to Penelope).
Say: thy-ES-teez
Brother of Atreus and father of Aegisthus; blown off course, Menelaus lands by chance at the border of the country that was once Thyestes' — now Aegisthus's — on the very day of Agamemnon's murder.
Kin: brother of Atreus; father of Aegisthus.
Refs: 4.517–518.
Say: ty-REE-see-us
The blind seer whose ghost, alone among the dead, keeps his understanding after drinking the sacrificial blood in the underworld. He gives Odysseus the poem's central prophecy: the danger from Poseidon, the warning about Thrinacia's cattle, the slaughter of the suitors to come, and a strange final journey inland with an oar, ending in a "gentle" death from the sea.
Also called: "the Theban."
Refs: 10.492, 10.524–540 (Circe sends him there), 11.90–151 (the prophecy), 12.267, 23.251–284, 23.323 (retold to Penelope).
Say: tih-THOH-nus
The mortal husband of Dawn, granted endless life but not endless youth; the book of Odysseus's shipwreck near Scheria opens with Dawn rising from his bed, a pointed frame for the immortality Calypso has just been ordered to give up.
Kin: husband of Dawn (Eos).
Refs: 5.1.
See also: Calypso.
Say: TIT-ee-us
A giant, son of Earth, punished in the underworld for assaulting Leto: he lies sprawled over nine acres while two vultures forever tear at his liver. Alcinous also cites him as proof of how far the Phaeacians' ships can sail in a day.
Kin: son of Earth (Gaia).
Refs: 7.324 (Alcinous's boast), 11.576–581 (his punishment).
See also: Leto.
The people of Troy, the Achaeans' enemy in the ten-year war underlying the whole poem; they recur throughout the recollections of Nestor, Menelaus, and Helen, and in Odysseus's own tales of the horse and the sack.
Refs: 1.237, 3.85–100, 4.243–275 (Helen's and Menelaus's dueling tales), 8.503–520 (the wooden horse), 11.383–547 (the underworld), 22.228, 24.27–38 (Agamemnon's shade).
The sacked city, also called Ilium, whose ten-year siege and fall stand behind the whole poem: the war Odysseus and the other Achaean leaders fought, and the wreck of homecomings it produced. The proem opens with its sack (1.2); the Apologoi, the underworld, the Telemachy, and Demodocus's songs all keep returning to it, and Penelope names it, in her own coinage, "Evil-Ilium, never to be named" (19.260, 597).
Also called: Ilium.
Refs: 1.2, 2.172, 3.130ff (Nestor's Returns), 4.99, 8.499–520 (Demodocus's horse-song), 9.39, 11.169 (Anticleia), 24.27ff …and throughout. Books 1–24 passim.
Say: TY-dee-us
Father of Diomedes, named only by the patronymic "son of Tydeus" as Nestor and Menelaus recall him among the Achaean leaders at Troy and inside the wooden horse.
Kin: father of Diomedes.
See also: Diomedes.
Say: tin-DAIR-ee-us
The mortal husband of Leda; in the underworld's catalogue of heroines she is named as his wife and, by him, the mother of Castor and Polydeuces. Agamemnon's shade later calls Clytemnestra "the daughter of Tyndareus" in bitter contrast to Penelope.
Kin: husband of Leda; father, in the poem, of Castor and Polydeuces.
See also: Leda, Clytemnestra.
Say: TY-roh
Daughter of Salmoneus, who fell in love with the river Enipeus; Poseidon took the river's shape to lie with her, and she bore him Pelias and Neleus — making her, through Neleus, ancestress of Nestor's whole line. Antinous cites her among the legendary women whose cunning still falls short of Penelope's.
Kin: daughter of Salmoneus; mother of Pelias and Neleus by Poseidon.
Refs: 2.120 (Antinous's comparison), 11.235–259 (her story in full).
The four winds appear both as ordinary weather and, at key moments, as personified agents: Aeolus's bagged winds, the storm Poseidon raises against Odysseus's raft, the squall that wrecks the crew off Thrinacia. Athena can still their courses or rouse a single fair one at will.
Also called: Boreas (North Wind), Notos (South Wind), Euros (East Wind), Zephyrus (West Wind).
Refs: 5.295–332 (Poseidon's storm, all four at once), 9.67, 10.25 (Aeolus's bag), 12.325–426 (Thrinacia), 14.253, 19.200 …and throughout. Books 2–5, 7, 9–10, 12–14, 19.
Say: zuh-SIN-thus
A wooded island of Odysseus's realm, named among Ithaca's neighbors and among the islands whose leading men count themselves Penelope's suitors.
Say: ZEE-thus
Son of Zeus and Antiope; with his brother Amphion he founded and walled seven-gated Thebes. He is also, in Penelope's nightingale simile, the father of Itylus, the son his wife killed by mistake — the myth Penelope reaches for to describe her own divided heart.
Kin: son of Zeus and Antiope; brother of Amphion.
Say: ZOOS
Father of gods and men, and the poem's guarantor of xenia, oaths, and the plot's overall justice. He opens the poem musing on Aegisthus as proof that mortals bring ruin on themselves "beyond their portion" (1.32–43), approves Athena's plan to bring Odysseus home, restrains Poseidon's grudge within limits, and at the end sanctions both the killing of the suitors and the amnesty that follows.
Epithets: "Zeus who gathers the clouds" (νεφεληγερέτα Ζεύς, 1.63); "Zeus of the wide voice" (εὐρύοπα Ζεύς, 2.146); "(Zeus) who thunders on high" (ὑψιβρεμέτης, 5.4); "aegis-bearing Zeus" (αἰγιόχοιο Διός, 3.42).
Also called: "son of Cronos" / "Cronion" — but "Cronos" alone names the Titan father, per canon.
Kin: son of Cronos; father of Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Aphrodite (here by Dione), Ares.
Refs: 1.28–43 (Aegisthus speech), 1.63–79 (council on Odysseus), 5.21–42 (dispatches Hermes), 12.415–419 (destroys the ship), 13.128–158 (Poseidon and the Phaeacian ship), 24.477–486 (sanctions the peace) …and throughout. Books 1–24.