Short answer: The Odyssey has a large cast, but it turns on about a dozen people: a hero who is a liar and a survivor, a wife who is his match, a son growing into a man, the gods who help and hunt him, and the suitors eating his house alive. Here is who they are, what they want, and why each one matters — useful whether you’re reading Homer or walking into Nolan’s film this July.
Odysseus — the hero of many ways
Odysseus is, as our edition’s essay argues, “the first literary character, in the Western tradition, whom we might call complex. He has an inner life. He has contradictions.” His defining epithet is polytropos — “of many ways,” “much-turned.” It names his wanderings, his quick intelligence, his gift for persuasive and deceptive speech, and something deeper: a self that shifts according to who is watching. Among the refined Phaeacians he is a courtly guest; to the Cyclops he is “Nobody”; in Ithaca he is a patient, invisible beggar. He is cunning and brave, ruthless and sentimental, a liar and a lover of truth. The poem does not ask you to admire him uncritically — it asks you to attend to him carefully and judge for yourself.
Penelope — cunning to match his own
If Odysseus is polytropos, Penelope is periphron — “circumspect,” the mind that thinks around a problem rather than through it. She cannot fight the suitors off, so she turns time into a weapon. Her famous trick is the shroud: she promises to choose a new husband when she finishes weaving a burial cloth for Odysseus’s father, then unravels by night what she weaves by day — a deception that holds for three years. Even after Odysseus has revealed himself and slaughtered the suitors, she does not simply accept him. She sets one last test, about their bed, and forces him to prove who he is. She is not a prize waiting at the end of the adventure; she is its co-author.
Telemachus — the son finding his nerve
The poem opens not with Odysseus but with his son. Telemachus has grown up fatherless in a house full of men who want his mother and his throne. The first four books follow him as he finds his courage, stands up in assembly, and sails off to Pylos and Sparta to seek news of his father. His coming-of-age is the poem’s quiet second story, and his reunion with Odysseus — before either can act, they must first weep — is one of its most moving scenes.
The gods: Athena and Poseidon
Athena, goddess of wisdom and craft, is Odysseus’s protector and, in a sense, his divine double — she loves him precisely because he is clever and a spinner of tales. She disguises him, advises Telemachus, and engineers the homecoming. Set against her is Poseidon, the sea-god, who hounds Odysseus across the water in revenge for the blinding of his son, the Cyclops Polyphemus. The whole voyage is, on the divine plane, a tug of war between the goddess of mind and the god of the sea.
The monsters and temptresses of the wanderings
These are the figures the film’s marketing will lean on, and they are worth knowing:
- Polyphemus the Cyclops — the one-eyed, man-eating giant Odysseus blinds after the “Nobody” trick. His curse is what sets Poseidon against the whole voyage.
- Circe — the witch-goddess who turns Odysseus’s men into pigs, then becomes his ally and lover for a year.
- Calypso — the nymph who holds Odysseus on her island for seven years, offering him immortality if he stays. He refuses it, choosing a mortal home over a deathless exile.
- The Sirens, Scylla, and Charybdis — the song that lures sailors to death, the six-headed cliff-monster, and the whirlpool. The strait between the last two is the original “rock and a hard place.”
- Tiresias — the blind prophet Odysseus summons from among the dead in Book 11, the strange, bloodless underworld where even great Achilles confesses he would rather be a landless serf among the living than king of all the dead.
The home front: suitors and servants
The villains of the second half are the suitors — over a hundred young aristocrats led by the arrogant Antinous and the smoother Eurymachus, who have moved into Odysseus’s hall, devour his livestock, and abuse his servants. They are not random thugs; they are a violation of xenia, the sacred law of hospitality, and their slaughter is framed as cosmic justice. On the other side stand the loyal few: Eumaeus the swineherd, Eurycleia the old nurse who recognizes Odysseus by a scar, and the aged dog Argos, who waits twenty years, recognizes his master, and dies — perhaps the most quietly devastating moment in all of Homer.
Ready for the story these characters move through? Our complete guide to the Odyssey walks you through the plot and the world, and our essay on why the poem still matters digs into what they mean.
Meet the whole cast in the Erato Press Odyssey →
Related reading: The Odyssey: A Complete Guide · Why the Odyssey Still Matters · Nolan’s Odyssey and the Casting Backlash
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