#Odysseus

Hero of the Odyssey; the archetypal trickster-wanderer.

The young Hermes, unbearded and long-haired, wearing the winged traveller's hat (petasos) with its pale feathers spread at either side. A coral-rose mantle is clasped at one shoulder with a gold brooch and falls across his bare torso; he stands against a dark ground, his head turned to gaze aside.

Hermes, the Messenger God

Born at dawn, he had invented the lyre and stolen a god's cattle before nightfall. The trickster who talks his way onto Olympus and walks the dead down to Hades.

6 minHomeric Hymn 4

A dim rock cave opening onto a sunlit autumn wood. Two nude, bearded men creep out beneath the bellies of Polyphemus's heavy-fleeced rams: one at left, half in shadow, clings low against a dark ram's underside with his legs drawn up, watching warily; a second, already at the bright mouth of the cave at right, twists his head back over his shoulder as he clears the entrance. The blinded giant is not shown — only his flock and the escaping men — so the whole picture is the ram-escape held at the knife-edge instant before the open air, tense and hushed in Eckersberg's cool Neoclassical light.

Greek

Odysseus and the Cyclops

He beat a giant with a lie and a sharpened stake, then threw it all away for the pleasure of hearing the monster learn his name.

7 minHomer