Character
OdysseusUlysses in this translation
King of Ithaca, husband of Penelope, father of Telemachus — and the poem's hero, famed not for strength but for cunning. The wooden horse that took Troy was his idea. The Odyssey follows his ten-year struggle to get home from that war, losing every ship and every man along the way, and what he does when he finally arrives to find his house full of rivals. Butler's translation calls him by his Roman name, Ulysses.