Odysseus: Ancient Man of Guile - Essay Example

To this day, the Trojan Horse is known as a tactic for gaining access. The concept is used, linguistically, to imply guile and disguise. Indeed, many computer viruses are denoted as a Trojan Horse. The modern relevance, and its enduring nature, can be traced back to Homer's colorful character, Odysseus. Camped out with his fellow Greeks, trying to determine a way in which to breech the defenses of Troy in order to retrieve Helen for Menelaus, Odysseus conceived of a plan based upon trickery and deception rather than brute strength or physical stamina.

The horse was constructed, offered as a gift, and the Greeks hid inside of the hollowed out horse. After the gift horse was granted access to the inner walls of Troy, the Greeks emerged from the horse and were successful in attaining their goals. This success, it has been argued, was a direct result of Odysseus' guile. Rather than losing more men unnecessarily in a frontal assault, he appealed to a weakness of mankind; more specifically, he used flattery and gift-making as dangerous as a sword.

Access was earned through thought. Another instance in which Odysseus, the King of Ithaca, demonstrated his guile was in the case of the Cyclops. A scouting party had been assembled and sent to explore the Cyclops territory. Hospitality was not a given, and Odysseus and the men knew that danger and death were always possible. The scouting party wandered into a large cave, inhabited by a giant one-eyed Cyclops named Polyphemus. The giant Cyclops refused the entreaties of the scouting party, treated them as trespassers, and blocked the entrance of the cave with a giant boulder.

The scouting party was trapped inside; interestingly enough, for purposes of this essay, there was no physical way in which the men comprising the scouting party could move the boulder. The only option was a plan; the need for the plan was rather pressing as the Cyclops was eating two members of the scouting party each day. In response to this challenge, Odysseus offered to share the wine previously received from the priest of Apollo. In effect, Odysseus got the giant drunk. While drunk, his men fashioned a giant spear and blinded Polyphemus.

When he later opened his cave, to tend to his sheep, the scouting party escaped by securing themselves to the undersides of the sheep. Where physical strength was an inadequate option, Odysseus resorted to cunning and stealth to escape. Finally, returning home after so many hardships and so many losses, Odysseus was compelled to overcome one additional obstacle. In this case, his wife, Penelope, was being pursued by a number of suitors. These were men of questionable ethics whom wanted to step into Odysseus' shoes.

They wanted to wed Penelope, they wanted his wealth, and they wanted his power and his dominions (Allen, 1939: 107). Rather than announce himself directly, Odysseus chose instead to cloak himself in a disguise. The disguise he chose would merit no attention, and aside from his old dog, no one recognized him. The disguise allowed him to observe his wife, the suitors, and the situation with which he would have to find a solution. When the suitors finally recognized that Penelope was delaying them with her shroud-making, they demanded that she choose a suitor.

Odysseus could have emerged from his disguise. He could have sought out old allies and fought the suitors sword for sword, but he did not. Instead, he relied once