The Odyssey of HOMER

[ Greatest of the NOSTOI ]

Odysseus: son of Laertes and Antikleia, King of Ithaca; participant in the Trojan War for 10 years; his return took an additional 10 years. Character in Sophocles' Philoctetes.
Penelope: faithful wife of Odysseus, daughter of Icarius (k. of Sparta) & the Naiad PERIBOEA. Her children were Telemachos and Acusilaus. After Odysseus' death at the hands of his son Telegonus (by the sorceress Circe), Penelope married Telegonus. They are said to have had a son called Italos.
Telemachos: son of Odysseus and Penelope; helped his father to destroy the suitors. On Odysseus' death he went with Penelope to the island of Aeaea, where he married Circe. Circe made Telemachus and Penelope immortal.

Eumaios: son of Ctesias, son of Ormenos (k. of the island of Syria), kidnaped by Phoenician pirates and sold to King Laertes of Ithaca; he was chief Swineherd to Odysseus (Books XIV & XVI)
Melanthios: son of Dolios, chief goatherd of Odysseus. He took the side of the suitors, and supplied them with weapons to use against Odysseus He was trapped, mutilated and left to die (XVII, XXII)
Antinoos: son of Eupaithes (whose life Odysseus had once saved); Antinoos was the most isolent of the suitors of Penelope, and was killed by Odysseus. Eupeithes raised a revolt against Odysseus, but was killed by Laertes.
Eurymachos: son of Polybos; a leading suitor for Penelope. The second to be killed.

Teiresias: the dead Theban soothsayer (son of one of the Spartoi); he tells Odysseus about his future in Book XI (the Nekyia)
Alcinoos: son of Nausithoos and king of the Phaeacians. He married his brother's daughter Arete. They had five sons and a daughter. In the previous generation he protected Jason and Medea against the Colchians (Book V-XIII)
Nausicaa: daughter of Alcinoos and Arete. Her help allowed Odysseus to win the favor of King Alcinoos, and her hand was offered to Odysseus.

Circe: daughter of Helios and of Perse (daughter of Oceanos). Her brother Aeetes ruled Colchis. She turned Picus into a woodpecker; gave Glaucus a potion that turned his beloved Scylla into a monster; and turned Odysseus' men into swine (Books X & XII)
Calypso: goddess (or nymph), daughter of Atlas the Titan, son of Iphitos and Clymene--thus, a niece of Prometheus and cousin of Maia, Hermes' mother. She lived alone on the island of Ogygia. She detained Odysseus for seven years, and offered to make him immortal; but at the command of Zeus sent by Hermes, he was allowed to leave (Book V and VII)
Polyphemus: son of Poseidon and the sea-nymph Thoosa, reputedly one of the Cyclopes; a barbarous Sicilian sheepherder (Book IX, and Ovid's Metamorphoses 13. 738-897), blinded by Odysseus. His prayers to Poseidon kept Odysseus from returning to Ithaca for ten years.