This essay addresses the many-sided figure of Odysseus: his significance in the Iliad as well as – centrally – in the Odyssey, but also his mixed reputation in the traditions known to the Epic Cycle, and later in Athenian tragedy. The essay notes his uncertain relation to the warrior-hero ethos and details the way the Odyssey shapes a song around him, valorizing his mêtis and his nostos, his ultimate return to Ithaka ‒ and the restoration of right rule and order in the household (oikos) ‒ redeeming the ambiguity of his most distinctive epithet, polutropos (“of many turns”). En route the essay contrasts the powerful shaping logic of the Odyssey with the episodic Telegony; considers the aristeia the hero receives in the Odyssey (and not the Iliad); highlights the significance of Penelope and their “like-mindedness” (homophrosunê); and notes the treatment of Odysseus in Athenian tragedy, whose dramatists (Sophocles, Euripides) take a far less sanguine view of the hero than does the Odyssey.