Ὀδυσῆα Διὶ μῆτιν ἀτάλαντον
This is not the first time that Odysseus’ name is mentioned in Iliad 10 (see 10.109), but it is the first place that he appears in the narrative, and the first place in our text that he is given a description of any kind. Here and twice in Iliad 2, Odysseus is called “the equivalent of Zeus in craft [mētis].” Odysseus rivals the gods in this kind of intelligence, by which he engineers alternative warfare and the daring escapes that are his specialty in the Odyssey. One of Odysseus’ most common epithets in the Iliad and Odyssey, πολύμητις (as at 10.148), likewise highlights this central aspect of Odysseus’ character. Odysseus is the hero who takes down the Cyclops by a carefully orchestrated ambush, and the attack on the suitors is structured like an ambush in many ways. We have noted as well that the sack of Troy is an ambush, of which Odysseus is the mastermind. (For more on mētis in the Doloneia, see on 10.19 and “The Poetics of Ambush” above. On Odysseus as the hero of mētis, see above on 10.5–9, Haft 1990, and Holmberg 1997:14–15. For Odysseus’ epithets in the Odyssey, see Austin 1975:25–53.