After Odysseus' disguised arrival, Penelope's loyalty to her husband is more evident, as is her sadness over his presumed death. There is no better "improviser" or "strategist" in Greek mythology, though the label attached is often "cunning" or "deceiver"; indeed, many Greeks saw Odysseus' habit of lying as a vice and a weakness. Odysseus' servants are split into two camps according to loyalty. One way that they are both similar is that they are both very well liked by Athena, who accompanies both on their journeys around Greece. Bravery was the trait for which Odysseus was best known. Before the battle can progress any further, Athena, on command from Zeus, orders peace between the two sides. However, her faithfulness to her husband does remain steadfast, and she even shares his proclivity for trickery, promising to remarry once she has finished weaving a shroud for Laertes, but unraveling it each night (the suitors catch on after a few years). Learn more about The Odyssey with Course Hero's FREE study guides and Yet she also tests Odysseus at times; when he is disguised as a beggar, she provokes the suitors to abuse him to see, ostensibly, if Odysseus will give in to temptation and fight back. He's bold enough to lay claim to … A callow 20-year-old afraid to challenge the suitors at the start of the poem, by the end, thanks in part to Athena's grooming, he is an assured, mature young man ready to take on the suitors. Circe-- Circe, like Calypso, is an immortal goddess who seeks to prevent Odysseus from returning home. All of these characters… 19. The Underworld in The Aeneid Versus The Odyssey, Modus Operandi - The Ways of Greek Literature. Servants of Odysseus. Daughter of Zeus and goddess of wisdom and battle (and of the womanly arts, though this is barely touched upon), Athena is Odysseus' most powerful ally. ... Because he despises Odysseus for lusting after Hera. Many consider Odysseus the paragon of exile because his story captures the experience of being away from his birthplace and loved ones, all coupled with the difficulty of returning. Laertes paid a small fortune for her when she was still a girl and honored her as he did his wife, thiugh he neve slept with her. Laistrygonians. While he is intent on returning home to his faithful wife, Penelope, and his adult son he has barely seen, Telemachus, Odysseus also willingly beds down with not one but two beautiful goddesses during his travels and expresses little remorse for his infidelities - though he rails against the suitors who are trying to capture his wife. His penchant for disguise complements his ability to make up plausible stories about his background. Princes commonly believed in miracles. The near-constant protection he enjoys from the goddess Athena seems justifiable for a man who has endured so many hardships, and cast away so many luxuries, to reunite with his beloved family. He makes mistakes, gets himself into tricky situations, and loses his temper. She recognizes a scar on his leg as one Odysseus received from a boar’s tusk. She tells her slave to move her bed into the hallway and waits for Odysseus’s reaction. Despite having an agonizingly fervent wish to bury her son herself, in the end, it was Hecuba, her mother-in-law, who prepared his body for proper burial. He sees Hector’s blood-stained sword. The first word of The Odyssey in the original Greek text is andra, which means “man.” (By contrast, the first word of The lliad is menin, meaning wrath.) The word comes from Homer's epic poem The Odyssey, written in the 8th century BC and it is a sequel to Homer's other epic poem, The Iliad, which describes the last days of the great Trojan War.The Odyssey speaks of Odysseus' adventures that delay by a decade the return to his beloved homeland, Ithaca.