Character maps · Homer
The Odyssey Character Map
Every named figure in Homer’s poem, charted from the public-domain Butcher & Lang translation — with a line from the text behind each one.
This is not a hand-drawn chart of the dozen characters everyone remembers. It is the whole poem, read end to end and mapped: 180 named figures and 229 relationships, each one carrying a short quote from the text so you can check it rather than take our word for it. Click any name to see who they are and the line that puts them there.
The Odyssey is unusually good at losing readers, and the reasons are structural rather than literary. The hero is absent until Book 5. There are 108 suitors, and Homer counts them. Half the cast is identified by patronymic, so “son of Atreus” is two different men depending on the scene. Everyone carries several epithets, and the poem’s central figure is deliberately hard to pin down — 29 separate names and disguises fold into Odysseus alone, from “the stranger” to the famous alias he gives the Cyclops. Losing the thread is not a failure of attention; it is what the poem does.
The map is built to answer the question you actually have at midnight, which is usually some version of “wait, who is this again.” Search a name to jump to it. Solid lines are kinship, dashed lines are unions and allegiances, dotted lines are social ties. Selecting a figure dims everyone they are not connected to, so a cast of 180 becomes the six people who matter in the scene you are reading.
One honest note about the names. Because this parse uses an 1879 translation, the spellings are that translation’s: Athene rather than Athena, Circé with the accent. And because the map was made by software reading the text, it can be wrong — which is exactly why every figure and relationship carries its evidence quote. Corrections are part of the product, not an embarrassment about it.
Who’s who in The Odyssey
The short version, for the reader who just needs the thread back. Every name here is on the map, with the passage that puts them there.
- Odysseus
- King of Ithaca, twenty years from home. The most-mentioned figure in the poem, and the one hiding under the most names.
- Penelope
- His wife, holding an occupied household together by delay. The bed test at the end is hers, not his.
- Telemachus
- Their son, who opens the poem searching for a father he cannot remember.
- Athene
- Odysseus’s patron goddess, on the page mostly in disguise — including as Mentor, which is where the word comes from.
- Poseidon
- The god whose grudge keeps the journey going, and the reason the sea is never neutral.
- Polyphemus
- The Cyclops of Book 9, blinded by a man who called himself Noman — a pun that only fully works in Greek.
- Circé
- The enchantress of Aeaea, who turns the crew to swine and then becomes the guide to the underworld.
- Eumaeus
- The swineherd — the first loyal person Odysseus meets on Ithaca, and the one he tests longest.
- Eurymachus
- One of the two leading suitors, and the smoothest talker in the hall.
- Nausicaa, Alcinous & Arete
- The Phaeacian princess, king and queen who host the shipwrecked stranger while he tells the poem’s most famous stories.
- Menelaus & Agamemnon
- The Trojan War kings whose two homecomings — one survived, one murdered — frame what Odysseus is walking into.
- Elpenor & Eurylochus
- Crew members, and a reminder that the whole crew dies. The map makes that visible in a way the movie versions never do.
Questions people ask about The Odyssey
How many characters are in the Odyssey?
This map carries 180 named figures and 229 relationships, drawn from the full Butcher & Lang text. Counts differ between editions and between what people count as a “character” — gods, ghosts, and the crew members who die in a single line all appear here, each with the passage that names them.
Who are the main characters in the Odyssey?
Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachus, and Athene carry the plot; Poseidon supplies the opposition. After that the poem splits into the wandering cast (Polyphemus, Circé, the Phaeacians) and the Ithaca cast (Eumaeus, Eurycleia, the suitors led by Antinous and Eurymachus). The map sizes each figure by how often Homer actually mentions them, which reorders that list more than most readers expect.
How many suitors are in the Odyssey?
108, and Homer itemizes them by island. Only a handful get real speaking parts, which is why the hall can feel simultaneously crowded and empty on a first read.
What are Odysseus’s other names?
Twenty-nine names and epithets fold into him on this map — “goodly Odysseus,” “of many counsels,” the stranger, the beggar, Aethon, Eperitus, and Noman, the false name he gives the Cyclops. Selecting his node lists every one with the line it came from.
Which translation is this map built from?
Butcher & Lang (1879), which is public domain — so the text behind every quote is free to read tonight. If you are buying a copy to read for pleasure, Emily Wilson’s modern translation is the better first read; we map the public-domain text because we can show it to you.
Is the map free to use?
Yes. This map opens for anyone with no account and no signup. Making your own map of a text you upload is what the free plan and the paid plans are for.
Longer read: The Odyssey Is Not a War Story — an essay on the same text, using the same map.
The Odyssey, trans. S. H. Butcher & A. Lang (1879), public domain, via Project Gutenberg. Evidence quotes are capped at 50 words — the discipline we build with, not a licensing workaround.
Open the full interactive map → Or map a text of your own — upload a PDF, EPUB, or Word doc and get the same thing back for whatever you’re reading next.