Ulysses

Ulysses is the Latin name of Odysseus, the king of Ithaca. Modern scholars write the Latin form as Ulixes, and English translators of Latin poets keep Ulysses. The Roman epic that matters most for him is Virgil's Aeneid, the story of the Trojan Aeneas. Virgil does not tell Ulysses's own journey home. He shows him through the eyes of the Trojans he helped defeat.

In Book 2 Aeneas begins to tell Dido how Troy fell. He asks who could hold back tears at such a tale, even a Myrmidon or a follower of grim Ulysses (Aeneid 2.1-13). The Greek Sinon then tells the Trojans a false story. He says that Palamedes was condemned on false witness, and that Ulysses envied him and whispered slander against him (Aeneid 2.77-104). The tale is a trick, so the portrait of Ulysses in it serves the trick. The page on Sinon tells how it worked.

Aeneas names Ulysses twice more as an agent of the last night. He says that Diomed and Ulysses, whom he calls the author of all guile, tore the Palladium from its shrine (Aeneid 2.162-175). When the horse opens, Ulysses is among the Greeks who slide down the rope, with Thessander and Sthenelus (Aeneid 2.259-267).

In Book 3 a Greek suppliant comes to the Trojans. He is Achaemenides, who says he is from Ithaca and shared the fortunes of Ulysses (Aeneid 3.613-654). His comrades had left him behind in the cave of a Cyclops. What happened to him next is told below.

Ovid gives Ulysses a long speech in the thirteenth book of the Metamorphoses. The chiefs of the Greeks sit to decide who receives the arms of Achilles, and Ulysses answers Ajax (Metamorphoses 13.98-204). Ajax has already spoken. He says that Ulysses pretended to be mad to avoid the war and that Palamedes paid for Ulysses's fraud with exile or death (Metamorphoses 13.1-97). Ulysses recalls that the Nereid mother of Achilles hid her son by a change of dress (Metamorphoses 13.98-204). The chiefs are moved, and the fluent man receives the arms of the brave man. Ajax then draws his sword and kills himself (Metamorphoses 13.382-398).

Roman writers disagree on who carried off the Palladium. Virgil names Diomed and Ulysses together (Aeneid 2.162-175). In the sixth book of the Fasti, Ovid lists Diomedes, Ulysses and Aeneas as possible carriers and does not choose between them. Ulysses's own ten years of wandering belong to the Greek tradition, and the returns from Troy page sets them beside the other heroes' voyages. Modern writers kept the Latin name. James Joyce took it for the title of his novel Ulysses (1922), which follows the plan of the Odyssey.