Like Odysseus, Penelope is trapped in a liminal place. She remains in Ithaca, but her position is tenuous. The Trojan War has been over for 10 years, but her husband has not yet returned. She does not want to declare herself a widow, but suitors have camped out in her palace, insisting that she marry one of them. If she does, she will be criticized for disloyalty to her husband, but if she does not, she will be criticized for stubbornly allowing the suitors to consume her son’s inheritance. Navigating the minefield of suitors, expectations, and gossip requires her to be patient, endure calmly, and devise tricks and schemes to prevent the suitors from openly revolting and attempting to take the palace by force. Like Odysseus, Penelope repeatedly demonstrates that she is up to the task.

In Homeric terms, Penelope is the ideal wife because she is her husband’s equal in cleverness and fortitude but does not compete with him for ultimate authority of the household. She protects his interests, believing that he in return will protect her. This is reflected, at the end of Book 23, in Odysseus’s order for her to “go with your slaves / upstairs, sit quietly, and do not talk / to anyone,” though he acknowledges that she is “smart enough / to not need orders” (506). Contrary to modern Western conceptions of marriage, the ideal Homeric union recognizes separate spheres for men and women, with the two ideally working together to create a harmonious whole.

Penelope’s acceptance of this role elevates her to heroic status, as expressed by Agamemnon in Book 24: “Her fame will live / forever, and the deathless gods will make / a poem to delight all those on earth / about intelligent Penelope” (513). The statement is self-referential, as the Odyssey is, at least in part, that poem.

Like both his parents, Telemachus is introduced in a transitional state. An infant when his father left, Telemachus is on the cusp of adulthood, but growing up without his father left him lacking male guidance. In a culture in which men and women’s roles are starkly divided, his father’s absence impacts his confidence and authority. The suitors recognize this and do not see him as a threat. The assembly he calls to publicly disgrace the suitors comes to nothing as the elders pity him but do not interfere in what is essentially a private matter.

Telemachus’s journeys to Pylos and Sparta are meant to spur his emotional growth by presenting him with two challenges: to successfully travel away from and return home, and to learn how to express himself publicly, both important skills for Homeric heroes. Under Athena’s guiding hand, Telemachus achieves both. When he returns to Ithaca, he discovers that his father has also returned, in disguise, and Telemachus’s growth process accelerates as his father steers and provokes him to assume stronger leadership.

A pivotal scene for Telemachus’s growth occurs in Book 21, during the contest of the axes. Still in his disguise, Odysseus picks up the bow, but the suitors are so outraged that he starts to put it back down. He is afraid. Telemachus steps in and insists that Odysseus take a turn, saying, “You will soon see / you have to choose which master to obey. / Though I am younger than you, I am stronger; / watch out” (473). His bold public statement amuses the suitors, and they back down, allowing Odysseus to make his attempt. In one sense, Telemachus is performing a role to allow his father to take control, but it is also a sign that he is prepared to carry his father’s legacy and to add to it, as sons should do in the Homeric world.

In Homeric epics, Athena is a frequent patron of heroes. In the Odyssey her protection extends not only to the traditionally male heroes—Odysseus, Telemachus, and Laertes—but also to Penelope. She engineers Telemachus’s trip to Pylos and Sparta to accelerate his emotional growth and ensures his successful return. She petitions Zeus on Odysseus’s behalf multiple times, intervenes surreptitiously during his wanderings to promote his cause, and confers directly with him after he arrives in Ithaca, planning the suitors’ slaughter and securing his success. She watches over Penelope, inspiring and promoting her plans. Laertes, who appears only in the final book, also benefits from Athena’s patronage, when she allows him a moment of glory battling the suitors’ families.

As the goddess of strategic warfare, crafts, and wisdom, Athena oversees domains important to men and women. She is often depicted in myth as Zeus’s favorite child and helper, testing heroes’ virtue, promoting prudence, and ensuring justice. Her mother was Metis, which means “cunning” in ancient Greek. According to a prophecy, if Metis gave birth to a son, he would be more powerful than his father. When Zeus discovered Metis was pregnant, he swallowed her, absorbing her cunning and essentially making it his own. The daughter she was pregnant with, Athena, subsequently emerged fully formed from Zeus’s head.

By preventing Metis from giving birth to a son who would unseat him, Zeus preserves the Olympian pantheon’s stability and his own power. Athena’s role as Zeus’s favorite child and helper can be interpreted, within the Homeric world, as demonstrating the proper application of women’s intelligence and wisdom. In the Odyssey Athena does not act without first consulting with her father and securing his approval. She is his equal in wisdom but does not compete with him for authority, using her skills and talents to further his aims.

Just as Athena is Odysseus’s patron deity, protecting him and advancing his interests, so conversely does Odysseus have a godly nemesis, Poseidon. After Odysseus blinds the Cyclops Polyphemus and can’t help bragging, Polyphemus prays to his father Poseidon to curse Odysseus to be surrounded by misery and death. Eschewing not to kill Odysseus in order to prolong his suffering, Poseidon instead wrecks his ships, kills his crew, and derails his travels for years.

Poseidon also plays a part in some tellings of the Trojan War, where as a supporter of the Greek side, he was crucial for the success of Odysseus’s Trojan horse scheme. When Trojan priest Laocoon objected to bringing the horse inside the city walls, Poseidon sent huge sea serpents to strangle the man and his two sons.

In mythology more generally, alongside his brothers Zeus and Hades, Poseidon is one of three patriarchs of the Greek pantheon, given dominion over the ocean—and horses, which were thought to resemble cresting waves in their movement. His rivalry with Athena does not solely revolve around Odysseus. In one myth about the founding of Athens, the two gods were competing to become the city’s patron deity by bestowing on its residents gifts and allowing them to decide the victor. Poseidon powerfully struck the ground with an earthquake, creating a spring of salty seawater that was deemed of little use. In contrast, Athena offered Athens the olive tree, which created food, fuel, and oil; delighted, the residents named the city after her.

One of the most famous episodes of the Odyssey features the Cyclops, Polyphemus, a giant with only one eye. Odysseus and his men have a hard time knowing what to make of this terrifying being. He is somewhat civilized in the ancient Greek sense, since he herds sheep and makes cheese. However, he also displays barbarism, not only because he eats Odysseus’s men, but because he drinks the wine they offer him undiluted. In this, he partly symbolizes the anxieties of Homer’s intended audience, as the expansion of the Greek Empire led to encounters with potentially dangerous peoples with foreign customs.

Being trapped in Polyphemus’s cave becomes a brutal puzzle for Odysseus, who comes up with a variety of schemes to escape and thus gets to show his ability to think fast on his feet. First, Odysseus introduces himself as Outis, or “nobody,” which means no other Cyclops comes to Polyphemus’s rescue. Then, he realizes that simply killing the Cyclops wouldn’t work, since no humans could move the boulder the giant uses as a door. Instead, he gets the huge creature drunk and blinds him. Finally, he figures out a way for the men to evade Polyphemus’s probing fingers: Tying themselves underneath the sheep leaving the cave means the Cyclops does not detect them until it is too late.

However, the encounter also highlights Odysseus’s hubris and will to glory, which is at odds with his deep desire to survive. After getting away from Polyphemus successfully, Odysseus cannot help but divulge his real name in order to claim the credit for what has taken place—a choice that brings down the wrath of Poseidon on him and all of his men.