Name-dropping:
Odysseus (pronunciation: oh-DISS- ee-uss).
Figure in Greek mythology most famously immortalized by the blind (and possibly nonexistent) Greek poet Homer. Builder of horses, husband of hotties, and extraordinary traveler, Odysseus is the epic hero par excellence. Ulysses: Odysseus’s name in Latin.

When to Drop Your Knowledge:
The Ulyssesian hero has become so common that you’re sure to find a way to work him in somewhere. Whether it’s a discussion of Finding Nemo, Kerouac’s On the Road, or O Brother Where Art Thou?, parallels abound. Plus, when you, the designated driver, leave the party to get more beer, you won’t just be headed to the 7-Eleven anymore—you’ll be embarking upon an odyssey.

The Basics
Smart, resourceful, and courageous, Odysseus is the epic hero (sorry, Achilles, but you have a heel and Odysseus doesn’t). His story—and everything about Odysseus is mere story, since unlike other heroes of epic poems he never existed—begins during the Trojan War, when the wily Odysseus said (we are paraphrasing): “What if we built a Trojan horse and then when they look the gift horse in the mouth we attack?!” Which is what they did, and the Battle for Troy was won.

The Trojan horse would have made a fine end to a lesser story, but Odysseus’s battles, as told in the Odyssey, were only beginning. For the next two years, the sailor and his men hopped from island to island and challenge to challenge. They ate locusts with the Locust Eaters, looted the city of Ciconia, killed a Cyclops who happened to be kin to the sea god Neptune, briefly got turned into pigs, and ventured into the Underworld. Then Odysseus washed ashore on a magical island inhabited by a nymph named Calypso, whereupon he cheated on his wife (against his will, of course! She had a mysterious power, this Calypso) for seven years.

It was not until Zeus himself told Calypso to let Odysseus be that the great and cunning warrior finally returned home to Ithaca, where his gorgeous wife, Penelope, had been fending off suitors for nearly a decade. Odysseus then showed the kind of level-headed nature common to epic heroes and action movie protagonists by killing all of Penelope’s suitors in a fast-paced bow-and-arrow battle. For 2,500-year-old stuff, the story of Odysseus/Ulysses is an action-packed thrill ride.

And that, in part, explains Ulysses’s continuing significance. His character–clever, hardworking, dedicated, and just unlucky enough to find himself in fascinating scrapes–has proved as durable as the odyssey, a word we had to take from Homer because he captured it so perfectly.

The Multifaceted Ulysses
Ulysses has proven such a fascinating and versatile character that he has appeared countless times in art. A few of his best appearances during his 2,500-year career were in:
• Greek tragedies by Sophocles and Euripides
• Virgil’s Aeneid.
• Ovid’s poems
• Dante’s Inferno
• Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida
• Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem Ulysses
• and, perhaps most important, in the 1981 anime classic Ulysses 31, in which a 31st-century Ulysses must travel through space in search of the kingdom of Hades.

Seeking Homer
Did Homer exist? No one knows, but scholars still manage to fight about it. Some maintain that the same person wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey; others claim that it was two distinct poets from the same school of poetry. Either way, many academics believe that the epics were created by countless storytellers over centuries before finally being written down. And as the literary paper title “Homer–Who Was She?” proves, some scholars also argue that Homer was a woman.

Conversation Starters
◆ The full name of Ulysses in the original Greek is Odysseus Laertiades, which literally means “Odysseus, the Son of Laertes.” But in later Greek sources, Odysseus’s father was often identified as Sisyphus, the crafty murderer who got his comeuppance when he had to spend all eternity in Hades pushing a rock up a hill.

◆ One thing’s for sure: The Odyssey wasn’t written by noted American intellectual Homer Simpson, nor was he named for the poet. Despite rumors to the contrary, Homer was also not named for the character “Homer Simpson” in Nathanael West’s 1939 novel The Day of the Locust. The truth is Homer Simpson is named Homer because Homer was the name of Simpsons’s creator Matt Groening’s father. Poor Homer Groening. D’oh-ing from the grave, we’re sure.

◆ The Odyssey wasn’t originally a text—it was a memorized poem recited by bands of actors who spoke an amalgamated language. So, if Homer existed, he didn’t just create the two greatest epics of all time in the Iliad and the Odyssey. He also created an entire dialect. Homeric Greek, which is distinct from all other forms of ancient Greek, mixed together several dialects to produce the language Homer thought superior.