In The Trojan Women, Euripides paints Odysseus as a cold, intelligent and logical heartless monster. The story is told from the perspective of the captive Trojan women after the fall of Troy, and is very powerful. The scene where Odysseus kills Andromache's little boy Astyanax, so there will be no descendants of Hector to rally and resurrect Troy is palpably painful.
Ahh, okay, it was Odysseus that did that. I was trying to remember the other day which Achaean threw Hector's son off the walls of Troy.
Odysseus also stranded Philoctetes on an island after he was bit by a serpent and his wound festered and smelled. Odysseus had to eat that one because the Achaeans found out Philoctetes, the only one who could wield Heracles' bow, was needed to sack Troy.
He used his cunning to get the Achaeans to declare he should have Achilles' armor after Achilles died, snubbing Telamonian Ajax in the process and starting a deadly chain of events. It was only because of Athena that Odysseus didn't suffer for it.
Also, in the Odyssey, he kept his crew in the dark about the fact that Odysseus would be the only one to survive the voyage home. This one's more of a grey area, because Odysseus' own survival was at stake, but it still comes off as a jerk move.
There were others too, but none that appeared in any of the poems or plays I've read so far.
Hmm... maybe Odysseus deserved to be lost at sea for ten years? I don't know.
In The Trojan Women, Euripides paints Odysseus as a cold, intelligent and logical heartless monster. The story is told from the perspective of the captive Trojan women after the fall of Troy, and is very powerful. The scene where Odysseus kills Andromache's little boy Astyanax, so there will be no descendants of Hector to rally and resurrect Troy is palpably painful.
Ahh, okay, it was Odysseus that did that. I was trying to remember the other day which Achaean threw Hector's son off the walls of Troy.
Odysseus also stranded Philoctetes on an island after he was bit by a serpent and his wound festered and smelled. Odysseus had to eat that one because the Achaeans found out Philoctetes, the only one who could wield Heracles' bow, was needed to sack Troy.
He used his cunning to get the Achaeans to declare he should have Achilles' armor after Achilles died, snubbing Telamonian Ajax in the process and starting a deadly chain of events. It was only because of Athena that Odysseus didn't suffer for it.
Also, in the Odyssey, he kept his crew in the dark about the fact that Odysseus would be the only one to survive the voyage home. This one's more of a grey area, because Odysseus' own survival was at stake, but it still comes off as a jerk move.
There were others too, but none that appeared in any of the poems or plays I've read so far.
Hmm... maybe Odysseus deserved to be lost at sea for ten years? I don't know.