The Odyssey Flashcards
Names, Places, and Events
Penelope
Wife of Odysseus
Mother of Telemachus
Hit on by the Suitors
Aegisthus
Aegisthus was the lover of Clytemnestra, and son of Thyestes and Pelopia. Thyestes, having a long – time rivalry with his brother and king of Mycenae, Atreus, was advised by an oracle to have a son with his own daughter, Pelopia, who would then kill his brother.
Agamemnon
Agamemnon - Former king of Mycenae, brother of Menelaus, and commander of the Achaean forces at Troy. Odysseus encounters Agamemnon’s spirit in Hades. Agamemnon was murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus, upon his return from the war. He was later avenged by his son Orestes.
Aphrodite
Aphrodite plays a big role in The Iliad by Homer which is a prequel of The Odyssey. In The Odyssey, Aphrodite is only mentioned but never appears in the epic poem. In The Odyssey, Aphrodite is one goddess responsible for starting the Trojan War which is a war that Odysseus tries to come home from for 10 years.
Athena
Athena - Daughter of Zeus and goddess of wisdom, purposeful battle, and the womanly arts. Athena assists Odysseus and Telemachus with divine powers throughout the epic, and she speaks up for them in the councils of the gods on Mount Olympus. She often appears in disguise as Mentor, an old friend of Odysseus.
Helen
Wife of Menelaus and queen of Sparta
Hermes
Hermes is the messenger of the gods. Hermes helped Odysseus twice in the Odyssey. He gave him the magical herb Moly to protect him form Circe’s witchery, and he convinced Calypso to let him off of her island.
Judgment of Paris
This causes a big argument among Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite over who is the most beautiful goddess. The job of beauty contest judge falls on Paris of Troy, who decides that Aphrodite is the fairest after she promises him the hand of Helen of Sparta.
Menelaus
King of Sparta, brother of Agamemnon, and husband of Helen, he helped lead the Greeks in the Trojan War. He offers Telemachus assistance in his quest to find Odysseus when Telemachus visits him in Book 4. Helen - Wife of Menelaus and queen of Sparta.
Mentor
the son of Alcimus. In his old age Mentor was a friend of Odysseus who placed him and Odysseus’ foster-brother Eumaeus in charge of his son Telemachus, and of Odysseus’ palace, when Odysseus left for the Trojan War.
Nestor
Like Odysseus, Nestor is known as a clever speaker. Telemachus visits him in Book 3 to ask about his father, but Nestor knows little of Odysseus’s whereabouts. Menelaus - King of Sparta, brother of Agamemnon, and husband of Helen, he helped lead the Greeks in the Trojan War.
Odysseus
Odysseus, also known by the Latin variant Ulysses, is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer’s Iliad and other works in that same epic cycle
Orestes
Seven years later, Orestes returns from Athens and avenges his father’s death by slaying both Aegisthus and his own mother Clytemnestra. In the Odyssey, Orestes is held up as a favorable example to Telemachus, whose mother Penelope is plagued by suitors.
Penelope
On Odysseus’s return, disguised as an old beggar, he finds that Penelope has remained faithful. She has devised tricks to delay her suitors, one of which is to pretend to be weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus’s elderly father Laertes and claiming that she will choose a suitor when she has finished.
Poseidon
God of the sea. As the suitors are Odysseus’s mortal antagonists, Poseidon is his divine antagonist. He despises Odysseus for blinding his son, the Cyclops Polyphemus, and constantly hampers his journey home. … He sometimes helps Odysseus or permits Athena to do the same.
