Odysseus

Odysseus, according to Greek legend the son of Laertes and Anticleia and one of the most famous heroes of ancient Greece. After the capture of Troy, achieved by his stratagem of the wooden horse, he set sail for Ithaca but unfavourable winds carried him along the coast of North Africa and across the unknown seas to Italy, where he braved the dangers of Scylla and Charybdis, a voyage recorded by Homer as the Odyssey. After many adventures he was, again according to legend, slain unknowingly in his old age by his son Telemachus.

Odysseus has been identified with Poseidon, Hermes, and other legendary Greek gods by various subsequent writers and students of Greek mythology, but whoever he was he is generally accepted as the fount from which sprang the sailor race whose voyages and adventures so influenced and educated the Hellenic race. He was the archetype of the true Greek when their sea power was stretching out across the Mediterranean from the Black Sea to the western basin. The Latin equivalent of Odysseus is Ulixes, more often written Ulysses.