ULYSSES, ULYXES, or ULIXES, the Roman name of the Greek hero Odysseus (Ὀδυσσεύς), the person celebrated in Homer's "Odyssey." According to the Homeric account, he was the son of Laertes and Anticleia, king of Ithaca, husband of Penelope, and father of Telemachus. While later poets and mythographers have represented Ulysses as sprung from quite a different stock, and as the incarnation of cowardice and base intrigue, he is always held up by Homer as a very prudent warrior, of extensive experience and skill, anxious to avoid or to escape difficulties, pre-eminent in eloquence and wisdom, brave in adversity, patient in suffering, and triumphant over all the accidents of life. The Greek name of this hero (Ὀδυσσεύς) is said to denote the angry (Hom. Od. xix. 406); but he was called Naus or Nannus by the Tyrrhenians.
Ulysses was prevailed upon, with great difficulty, to accompany Agamemnon and the rest of the Greeks to the Trojan war. He set out with twelve ships, and cast
anchor by the side of the Greek fleet in the port of Aulis. During the progress of the Trojan war he acted the part of a prudent, wily negotiator, often astounding his hearers by the fervour of his eloquence, and again casting them all into perplexity by the profound dissimulation which he practised. He was the inventor of the wooden-horse, and was one of those who were concealed in its belly when it was carried within the walls of Troy. On the burning of the city all his sufferings began. After being tossed about for ten dreary years in the Mediterranean, he at last found the shores of his own land. In his absence his father had gone into solitary retirement, his mother had died, his son had gone in search of his father, and his wife, Penelope, was pestered by swarms of suitors who claimed her hand, and who devoured her means. Ulysses, who was in the attire of a beggar, found a lodgment with Eumaeus the swineherd. Telemachus returned after a few days, when, with the assistance of Athena, Ulysses and his son, and a few faithful servants, set out for the town, where they slew all the suitors. The friends and relatives of the deceased rose in arms against Ulysses, but Athena, as Mentor, calmed their rage, and reconciled them to their doom. All we know of the death of Ulysses from the Homeric account is from the prophecy of Tiresias (Od. xi. 19), where a happy old age and a painless death are promised him. The later traditions respecting the death of Ulysses are as contradictory of Homer's account of him as the records of his life are by the same hands.