Hector
Hector gives Troy its most human face: duty, family and doomed courage.
Houses and camps
Characters
An index by mythological roles, families, alliances and political tensions.
Greeks
Achilles
Achilles belongs above all to The Iliad, but his shade in the Underworld corrects heroic glory.
Agamemnon
Agamemnon commands the Greeks, but his own return shows that coming home can be worse than fighting.
Menelaus
Menelaus is the man whose humiliation becomes a coalition.
Odysseus
The king of Ithaca wins Troy by cunning, then has to survive his own need to be recognized.
Penelope
Penelope waits, but her waiting is active: she governs, delays and tests.
Telemachus
Telemachus grows up in an occupied house and must learn how to become a king's son.
Deities
Athena
Athena helps Odysseus because she recognizes an intelligence close to her own.
Hermes
Hermes intervenes when Odysseus must cross a threshold: Circe, Calypso, divine decision.
Poseidon
Poseidon pursues Odysseus because Polyphemus, the blinded Cyclops, is his son.
Zeus
Zeus arbitrates, authorizes, punishes and maintains order between gods and mortals.
Mythic beings
Calypso
Calypso keeps Odysseus by offering an eternity that would cancel his return.
Circe
Circe is first a threat, then a host who gives Odysseus the means to continue.
Medusa
Medusa turns the gaze itself into a battlefield: to survive, the hero must learn to see through danger.
Polyphemus
Polyphemus violates hospitality, but his wound triggers Poseidon's revenge.