Introduction
Odysseus was the king of Ithaca, renowned above all Achaean leaders for his intelligence and resourcefulness. He fought at Troy for ten years and, according to most accounts, was the one who devised the decisive stratagem of the wooden horse.
Family
- Father: Laertes
- Spouse: Penelope (married)
- Children: Telemachus
The Wooden Horse and the Long Journey Home
Odysseus proposed the trick of the hollow wooden horse, filled with hidden warriors, that the Trojans themselves brought inside their own walls, finally ending the ten-year siege. His journey home afterward took a further ten years, filled with encounters with monsters, sorceresses, and the wrath of the sea god Poseidon (after Odysseus blinded his son, the Cyclops Polyphemus) — a cycle of adventure recounted in Homer's Odyssey, separate from but continuous with the Trojan War narrative.
As with all figures of Greek heroic legend, sources diverge on many particulars; the account above follows the most widely transmitted classical tradition.