Search Results: Odysseus

Odysseus (Roman name: Ulysses) was one of the great pan-Hellenic heroes of Greek mythology. He was famous for his courage, intelligence, and leadership. Odysseus' resourcefulness and oratory skills were instrumental in the Greek victory in...

Homer's Odyssey is an epic poem written in the 8th century BCE which describes the long voyage home of the Greek hero Odysseus. The mythical king sails back to Ithaca with his men after the Trojan War but is beset by all kinds of delays and...

A 2nd century CE Roman statuette of the Greek hero Odysseus. Here he holds a cup of wine in offering to the Cyclops Polyphemus. By getting him drunk the hero was able to blind Polyphemus and escape from the Cyclops' cave to continue his voyage...

The satyr-play The Cyclops was written by Euripides, one of the great Greek tragedians, in 412 or 408 BCE. Like many of his fellow tragedians, Euripides centers his play on a well-known story from Greek mythology. The Cyclops is based on...

Circe (also spelt Kirké) is a powerful sorceress and goddess in Greek mythology with an exceptional talent for mixing drugs. She was the daughter of the sun god Helios and the Oceanid Perseis. Circe's home was found on the wooded island of...

The play Philoctetes was written by one of the greatest of the Greek tragedy playwrights, Sophocles, in 409 BCE. Philoctetes is one of his surviving plays whose exact production date can be determined and is set in the final year of the Trojan...

Ajax is a play written by the 5th-century BCE Greek poet and dramatist Sophocles. Although Sophocles wrote at least 120 plays, only seven have survived. Of his surviving plays, the best-known is Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the King) - part of a...

Scylla and Charybdis were monsters from Greek mythology thought to inhabit the Straits of Messina, the narrow sea between Sicily and the Italian mainland. Preying on passing mariners, Scylla was a terrible creature with six heads and twelve...

A cyclops (meaning 'circle-eyed') is a one-eyed giant first appearing in the mythology of ancient Greece. The Greeks believed that there was an entire race of cyclopes who lived in a faraway land without law and order. Homer, in his Iliad...

Achilles The hero of the Trojan War, leader of the Myrmidons, slayer of Hector and Greece's greatest warrior, who sadly came unstuck when Paris sent a flying arrow guided by Apollo, which caught him in his only weak spot, his heel...