​
Arguably the Greek hero with the worst sense of orientation ever, Ulysses took ten years to travel what Google Maps shows would take two weeks. In fact, the adventurer Ulysses is a mythological hero who’s deemed iconic due to this infinite journey, up to the point of being dubbed the ultimate traveller.
After the ten-year-long bloody war of Troy, Ulysses set to return home, victoriously heading twelve ships of men. He encountered all sorts of challenges and obstacles along the way, leading to an equally long and epochal homecoming. Throughout the journey, him and his men even fought with single-eyed giants, tricked a seductive witch, escaped the lures of killer sirens, battled six-headed marine monsters, all atop of having to endure endless punishments from Gods they had angered. And one by one Ulysses’ men fell.
The reason Ulysses was posed with an endless array of challenges is intrinsic to his personality; as the classical hero must, he is blessed with one glorified trait, his cunning intelligence, but he is much more
​
​
Meet Ulysses, the ultimate traveller
By Sofia Quaglia
complex than this standard archetype, and ultimately very flawed. True, he’s admired by the mortals and often favored by the goddess of wisdom Athena - but he’s a living contradiction.
​
He represents an incredibly human epic hero. “When Ulysses appears, the hero melts into the completely human: he’s the last of the heroes, the first of the humans. He wants to be nothing but human,” explains Giulio Guidorizzi, classicist at the University of Turin.
Ulysses is astute and ingenious, as demonstrated in several of his feats, for example the Trojan horse. He’s both the self-made and self-assured man, but his ego sometimes hinders his evolution because if he hadn’t been so self-interested and smug, he might have avoided more than half of the mess made. Ulysses is both self-disciplined and insidiously curious and unlike any other classic hero, he has the ability to “self-determine his identity”, as pointed out by Eva Cantarella, senior lecturer at the University of Milan. Plus, his oratory skills are of grandiose persuasiveness, and his dedication to the team is heartfelt, as he often risks his for his mariners.
​
Overall, he’s driven by the double-edged sword which is knowledge and motivated by the noble love of his family and home-country but nonetheless guided by greed and mischief; he often cheats, lies, deceives and commits several acts of brutality when he deems it necessary, betraying both family and friends.
But exactly because he is so imperfect, torn between his love for home and his love for adventure, he represents the true man and the true traveller, constantly on a quest for more. Ulysses is in fact often lingering in the collective imaginary, still in the twenty-first century, and year after year he’s undertaken multifarious forms according to who sprinkled his character into their stories.
​
Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson crafted a poem depicting how, an insatiable explorer, the aging Ulysses “cannot rest from travel” and wants to swallow every last drop of life. He, indeed, considers himself a symbol for everyone who wanders the earth, and that to remain stationary is to “rust rather than to shine”. Ulysses wishes “to follow knowledge like a sinking star” and forever grow in wisdom and in learning.
​
​
​
​
​
Ulysses is astute and ingenious, as demonstrated in several of his feats, for example the Trojan horse. He’s both the self-made and self-assured man, but his ego sometimes hinders his evolution because if he hadn’t been so self-interested and smug, he might have avoided more than half of the mess made. Ulysses is both self-disciplined and insidiously curious and unlike any other classic hero, he has the ability to “self-determine his identity”, as pointed out by Eva Cantarella, senior lecturer at the University of Milan. Plus, his oratory skills are of grandiose persuasiveness, and his dedication to the team is heartfelt, as he often risks his for his mariners.
​
Overall, he’s driven by the double-edged sword which is knowledge and motivated by the noble love of his family and home-country but nonetheless guided by greed and mischief; he often cheats, lies, deceives and commits several acts of brutality when he deems it necessary, betraying both family and friends.
But exactly because he is so imperfect, torn between his love for home and his love for adventure, he represents the true man and the true traveller, constantly on a quest for more. Ulysses is in fact often lingering in the collective imaginary, still in the twenty-first century, and year after year he’s undertaken multifarious forms according to who sprinkled his character into their stories.
​
Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson crafted a poem depicting how, an insatiable explorer, the aging Ulysses “cannot rest from travel” and wants to swallow every last drop of life. He, indeed, considers himself a symbol for everyone who wanders the earth, and that to remain stationary is to “rust rather than to shine”. Ulysses wishes “to follow knowledge like a sinking star” and forever grow in wisdom and in learning.
​
​
​
​
Head of Ulysses from the Roman period , found at the villa of Tiberius at Sperlonga
Odysseus and Penelope by the dutch painter Goethe-Tischbein. Penelope waited for Ulysses in complete loyalty for the time of his journey across seas
Hover for Ulysses' history
3 cups
Blueberries
3 cups
Flour
1 cup
Sugar
1½ cups
Butter
Ulysses first appears in the Iliad (8th century BC), the epic poem by Homer.
​
Ulysses is the legendary king of the Greek island Ithaca, son of Laertes and Anticlea, and a man vastly known for his mētis, aka his cunning intelligence.
​
He was already championing astuteness during the decade-long Trojan war, as a trusted advisor and creator of the storied Trojan horse sabotage. However, it’s his nostos, or homecoming, which constitutes the pith of the Iliad’s sequel, the Odyssey.
​
The Greek hero, driven by his insatiable lust for life, overcomes hurdles aplenty whilst sailing from Troy to Ithaca, where his wife Penelope awaits patiently, and his son Telemachus restlessly questions his disappearance.
Hover for more about how Ulysses treated women
Ulysses’ least admirable quality is his attitude towards women, but the whole of Greek mythology is littered with double-standards which any contemporary reader would find atrocious. Cyclops aside, all the threats to Ulysses come in the form of women; be it a witch, a nymph, a killer siren, a seductive princess, a six-headed marine monster or a man-eating whirl-pool. Plus, on his journey Ulysses demonstrates to be a serial adulterer, but is his abandoned wife remarried she’d be dead.