That essay I was talking about.

Why Odysseus is an Epic Hero

An Epic Hero is the embodiment of a culture’s ideals of honor and valor. The Epic Hero usally appears in epic poems such as The Odyssey and the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Odysseus is an epic hero because he embodies the highest ideals of the Greek culture at that time. With his fighting abilities and good looks he is obviously the epic man which every culture strives for in its men and seems to have been missing since the fall of Adam. Adam’s fall in the Garden of Eden resulted in a lss of perfectiion that will not be regained untill the end of time. The loss of perfection after fall of Adam has been felt throughout all generations in all cultures as shown by the wars, lies and grudges that have been from that time on.

One of the many reasons Odysseus is an epic hero is his great wisdom and craftiness. Wisdom was one of the most sought after traits in ancient Greece and something Odysseus had in excess as pointed out by somebody almost every chapter. Wisdom is one of the most sought after things ever in mankind as made tragically apparent by Eve in the Garden of Eden when she chose a fruit from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. But wisdom is also one of the greatest blessings to mankind.
When a king is considered great usually inxluded in his attributes great wisdom. Odysseus’ wisdom saves him from many scrapes and is one of his main weapons in getting revenge on the suitors who had been courting his wife Peneolpe and ravaging his wealth for seven years. This achieves for him a place of admiration by all Greeks-despite the fact he never existed.

Odysseus was also a very wealthy man. His flocks were second to none in size, his wine cellar over flowing and Odysseus had menservants and maidservants enough to take care of his palace and herds. The Greeks could not create a mythical character that would be an epic hero and not have him ridiculously wealthy. What self-respecting culture wants a beggar for a hero? A hero must be rich and Odysseus most undoubtedly was. He was able to sustain about one hundred and seventeen suitors at giant feasts twice a day for about seven years. Another thing that makes him such a rich man is his pure loving wife Penelope. Penelope was his greatest treasure because sshe was the driving force to return from Troy and the person who most awaited his return. The Greeks couldn’t give Odysseus a lazy ugly wife; he must have their ideal of womanhood to accompany their ideal of manliness. Odysseus’ vast wealth and good fortune at finding such a good wife make one suspect whether the events of the Odyssey really happend.

The final traits of Odysseus that will be touched on here are his strength and fighting capabilities which can be compared with no other man in the book who is alive. He, with three companions, destroyed the one hundred seventeen suitors; led the sack of Troy and broke the jaw of a much larger man after that man called him names and insulted his servants. Great strength was something far too important to the ancient Greeks to be left out of the makeup of their epic hero. The Greeks were aspiring for that great man that none of them were; that hero of times past that they could only dream of being. Through their epic hero they revealed the emptiness they had inside that could not be filled. Regardless of what they did or who they created it would always be there. The might they didn’t have they put into their mythology, but even the strongest of men could fall to a pair of lovely eyes. His encounters with Circe and Calypso show that he did not stay as true to his wife as Penelope did to him. Demonstrating that, like Samson in the Bible, even the strongest of men is susceptible to temptation.

In closing every culture has striven for a man like Odysseus of great power and might. Perhaps it is a longing of every human for the completeness lost after the garden of Eden. The Greeks were no different and they created a mythical character to do what they felt they could not do. Odysseus’ fighting abilities, his good looks and wisdom prove the Greeks were no different than any other civilization in their longing for something more.