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Odysseus Explained
Bronze Age Warlord
The Achaean World 1: Raiders, Pirates & Sea Wolves
Odysseus in Military Literature 1: The Secret World by Christopher Andrew
Odysseus in Military Literature 2: Strategy by Lawrence Freedman
The Achaean World 2: System Collapse
Bronze Age Warlord
“We have heard a lot about the shadow cast by the warrior Achillies over the imagination of the ancient Greeks, but the hero whose example really counted in the cut and thrust of their contemporary politics was Odysseus. Resourceful, nimble-witted, a trickster who could cheat a one-eyed giant out of his sight and leave him telling the world that ‘no Man has hurt me’, Odysseus was the model for all successful tyrants. - Ancient Worlds by Richard Miles
Homer’s Odyssey is intertwined with the character of Odysseus (though the epic is not limited to Odysseus’ adventures). The challenges he faces are part of epic fiction, like the labours of Hercules and the voyages of Sinbad. However unlike Sinbad or Hercules, Odysseus’ character and cunning has been the subject of deeper martial research.
Odysseus' foremost trait is his cunning, and how he uses it to get the better of larger, richer, more powerful adversaries, and even gods from the Greek pantheon. The Odyssey is a story of his agency over circumstances, the gods, his family's predicament back home and Ithaca's place in the Achaean world. Through the book we are told how capable he is as a warrior and thinker, yet his journey home is the longest and filled with peril.
We are told that Odysseus is the protagonist of the Odyssey, however he is not the hero. There is no hero. It’s a cruel world, the Homeriad is a grimdark epic, and Odysseus is a complicated and often cruel character. In a literal and unromanticised version of the Homeriad, Odysseus is a draft-dodger and turns vengeful over the issue at the earliest opportunity. He is intelligent enough to know better than to join another man’s megalomaniacal invasion, and yet he excels at the brutal practicalities of war, and obeys no moral code.
The Achaean World 1: Raiders, Pirates & Sea Wolves
Odysseus' world dates back to 1,200 BCE, and the epics take place toward the end of the Bronze Age and the onset of the Iron Age. It was a time of disasters, the scale of which could end civilizations. This age was defined by its ships, swords, kingdoms and heroes, but there were no books or writers. The Achaeans / Mycenaeans (predecessors to the Greeks) were sea faring people; they were traders, raiders and sea wolves. The Aegean Sea and civilization around it made sure of that. Their language is known as Linear B and it was a precursor to Greek. Most people did not know how to read or write, and had limited use for it; what little reading and writing was required was carried out by professional scribes.
Odysseus is known as cunning, much-enduring and resourceful, but he was also called ‘ptoliporthos’ - the sacker of cities - not a disgraceful profession at the time. Guest rights were sacred in the Achaean world but no guest was ever insulted by being asked if they were ‘roving the waves like pirates, sea-wolves raiding at will’. As Thucydides writes - the profession of piracy and raiding was almost held to be honourable. Compare the piratical Achaeans who raid cities and settlements along the coasts of the Mediterranean with the plundering Bedouin who tax the trading caravans traversing the Arabian desert. These are wide open and dangerous spaces, where nature itself can turn deadly or simply hide a natural or thieving predator behind a boring horizon.
Yet it is hard worlds like these that gives rise to a code of hospitality to strangers. This cultural trait features heavily in the Odyssey where some hosts like Calypso don’t want their guests to leave, and others like Penelope’s suitors simply won’t go. Other hosts are more complex - like Cyclops who is a hostile host and is bested by Odysseus, and Circe who is cruel at first but then turns into a perfect hostess.
Odysseus in Military Literature 1: The Secret World by Christopher Andrew
“Odysseus was not primarily concerned with secret missions and intelligence operations. He was, first and foremost, a heroic warrior in search of glory and revenge who also enjoyed what might now be called recreational violence.” - The Secret World - A History of Intelligence by Christopher Andrew
Christopher Andrew, in his book on intelligence and espionage, is comparing Odysseus to James Bond here and contrasting how to Bond the adventure was incidental to the cause of spying, but for Odysseus the secret missions were just some of the many things he had to do in the greater cause of adventuring.
The author also highlights how Odysseus practiced spycraft in a manner that was codified by Sun Zu 700 years after the events of the Trojan War.
“You must seek out enemy agents who have come to spy on you, bribe them and induce them to stay with you, so you can use them as reverse spies”. (Chapter 13, On The Use of Spies - Shambala Dragon Edition, Translated by Thomas Cleary).
While on a clandestine mission to the Trojan camp, Odysseus meets the Trojan spy Dolon and tricks him into revealing information about the Trojan army. Then he kills Dolon without mercy and uses the information to infiltrate a Trojan ally’s camp, murder a king and return to the Achaean forces with Thracian horses and spoils.
Deception in the form of a physical disguise was a major part of Odysseus’ arsenal. With an aptitude for trickery, Odysseus managed to infiltrate hostile territory without being identified. He does this once again in Troy in order to steal a sacred image of Athena from a Trojan temple - despite being recognized in enemy territory by none other than Helen. Again back home in Ithaca while scouting out the suitors who’ve laid siege to his castle; he lives in their midst sizing up the situation and the enemy - revealing himself only when he is in an unassailable position.
Odysseus’ most ambitious stratagem was the construction of the huge, hollow Trojan Horse. After a ten-year war the Greeks and Trojan were locked in a stalemate with neither side backing down, nor strong enough for a brute force attack to victory. The ruse of the Trojan Horse deceives the Trojans into thinking the Greeks have given up, leaving behind the wooden horse as a tribute to the gods. The horse is dragged into the gates of Troy, along with Odysseus and a crack team of Greek adventurer-kings who climb out from the belly of the horse in the dead of night. They open the gates to finally let the rest of the Greek army into Troy and the famous city is destroyed once more. Helen is reunited with Menelaus and the Trojan War winds down.
The Trojan Horse Deception (also known as the Odyssean Ruse) remains one of the most fabled deceptions in the world. Though Odysseus is widely credited with the idea, the origin is disputed and long-winded.
Robert Graves writes - “Athene now inspired Prylis, son of Hermes, to suggest that entry should be gained into Troy by means of a wooden horse; an Epeius, son of Panopeus from Parnassus, volunteered to build one under Athene’s supervision. Afterwards, of course, Odysseus claimed all credit for this stratagem”.
The Iliad as an introduction to Odysseus portrays a wily general-king, whose exploits would later be characterised as cruel in Virgil’s Aeneid, which is about the founding of Rome by Aeneas after he led the Trojan survivors of the war to safety.
Odysseus in Military Literature 2: Strategy by Lawrence Freedman
In Strategy: A History, Lawrence Freedman begins with Homer because Achilles and Odysseus embody two distinct but valid approaches to conflict. Achilles represents bie - force, strength and decisive action. Odysseus represents metis - cunning, adaptability and intelligence. The contrast is not absolute - both think and both fight. Rather, they illustrate that direct action, though necessary, is not always sufficient.
Achilles dominates the battlefield to the extent that his mere presence shapes the course of the Trojan War, threatening the Achaean cause by his absence. Yet, wars are fought not only with weapons but through alliances, incentives, persuasion and deception. Strategy emerges precisely where force alone ceases to be enough. These are Odysseus’ domain. This distinction explains Freedman’s interest in Homer; Achilles and Odysseus are archetypes of strategic behaviour - one direct when called on, and the other circuitous when required. Before strategy became a discipline, it existed in stories.
Freedman is careful not to diminish Achilles when describing Odysseus as a strategic thinker. His interest lies not in pitting them against each other but in demonstrating where they are most effective. In the arena Achilles is a force multiplier, but war is also a contest of coalitions and interests where power needs to be directed, coordinated and controlled. Odysseus steps in at this stage to manage uncertainty and conflicting interests. In fact, Odysseus often shapes the political and strategic context around Achilles at crucial events of The Iliad. Odysseus orchestrates his recruitment to the war - without which superstition led Agamemnon to believe the war couldn’t be won; and calculates how to best utilize Achilles’ rage in the aftermath of Patroclus’ death on the battlefield.
Odysseus’ life-strategy was self interest & survival over honour and glory; to paraphrase Don Domenico Clericuzio from Mario Puzo’s The Last Don - he hoped someday to be a saint, but never a martyr. When he proposed what is known as the Oath of Tyndareus to Helen’s father when suitors were invited to vie for her hand in marriage, Odysseus had his own self-interest in mind: Penelope’s hand in marriage. Instead of relying on wealth or brute force to win his prize, he appealed with cold logic to Tyndareus’s panic and the egos of the assembled warlords.
In Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles, this moment is brilliantly reimagined; seen as a noble intervention to all those present, but clearly viewed as calculated extortion by the reader. Seeing dozens of heavily armed, rival kings ready to slaughter each other over Helen, Odysseus offers Tyndareus the only viable solution to prevent a civil war: let Helen choose, and force every suitor to swear an oath to defend the winner. In exchange for diffusing the tension, Odysseus demands Penelope. He establishes himself as a statesman among suitors here, but one with an unwavering focus on his own goal, securing his prize while keeping competition at bay.
The Oath of Tyndareus reveals an Odysseus who prefers to avoid unnecessary conflict. The same instinct appears later when he attempts to evade military service altogether. When Helen has run away with Paris, and Odysseus' own brilliant treaty comes back to haunt him, his draft-dodging ploy is comical. Odysseus plays the madman to avoid going to war at Troy but is outplayed by Palamedes, who forces Odysseus to abandon the act. Odysseus yields to the situation but neither forgets nor forgives, and frames Palamedes as a spy years later in the middle of the Trojan War.
Odysseus more often than not, seems to have a wider goal in mind compared to those around him; though this contrasts with his incentive: wanting to be left alone to live a peaceful domestic existence with Penelope. From engineering his marriage to her at the time of the Oath of Tyndareus, through faking insanity and later down to the Ithacan massacre two decades later and everything in between, his strategic focus remains unbroken.
Though his adventures in Troy and on the voyage home became the stuff of epic poetry, they can also be read as a continuous exercise in strategic adaptation. For Odysseus, the goal was never glory for its own sake, but survival, restoration and homecoming. It is this quality, more than the Cyclops or the Trojan Horse, that explains why Freedman begins a history of strategy with Homer.
Achilles and Odysseus are remembered as the indispensable men of the Trojan War, yet both were ultimately recruited into someone else's project. Menelaus lost a wife, but Agamemnon gained a coalition. The most consequential strategist of the war may not have been the man who devised the Trojan Horse, but the king who first saw an opportunity in Helen's abduction.
The Achaean World 2: System Collapse
Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey mark the end of the Achaean / Mycenaean world. This is where the Bronze age ended - social, martial & natural changes resulted in the onset of a dark age where all records of history were lost. All memory of the Linear B language was lost with the destruction of the Mycenaean world. The Greek alphabet developed four centuries later around 800 BCE when they took over the 25 letters of the Phoenician alphabet; this system was more accessible and consequently more widely adopted. This gap of time and change in language has given rise to the Homeric debates about written versus oral traditions, and factual versus fictional elements of Homer’s work which originate around 800 BCE.
The time of Odysseus is when the Mycenaean empire (and many others in the vicinity) collapsed and led to a Dark Age. The feudal system of the Achaeans was breaking, and those on the receiving end of the hierarchy were desperate, making the most of the natural and man-made calamities around them. They also adopted the evolving technology - the onset of the Iron Age, more accurately the Steel Age. Some of the displaced became invaders Entire populations began to be displaced as is evidenced by invaders moving with their families and replacing the local populace. Many cities and states met the same fate as Troy - whether at the hands of natural disasters, social collapse, infighting, wars, invasions or by raids carried out by the mysterious Sea-Peoples. Only the most powerful empires like Assyria, Babylon and Egypt would survive in a weakened state.
“The catastrophe of the Sea Peoples is one of those dramatic break points in our story, as when the radio goes off air. In this first Dark Age, writing itself disappeared from large areas and, with it, history itself. Agricultural output collapsed, populations dwindled, cities were abandoned, towns became villages, the world shrank.” - Ancient Worlds by Richard Miles
