The Odyssey Deception and Disguise Quotes

And down she swept from Olympus’ craggy peaks
and lit on Ithaca, standing tall at Odysseus’ gates,
the threshold of his court. Gripping her bronze spear,
she looked for all the world like a stranger now,
like Mentes, lord of the Taphians.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 1, lines 119-123. Athena, disguised as Odysseus’ friend Mentes, flies to Ithaca to talk to Telemachus. Mentes is king of the Taphians and a friend of Odysseus. Athena shows herself to be a master of deceitful disguises throughout The Odyssey.

"Eurymachus," Telemachus answered shrewdly,
"clearly my father’s journey home is lost forever.
I no longer trust in rumors – rumors from the blue –
nor bother with any prophecy, when mother calls
some wizard into the house to ask him questions."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 1, lines 470-474. After Telemachus has been told by Athena that Odysseus is still alive, he decides to conceal this from the suitors. Instead he deceives them by announcing that his father is dead. To do otherwise would jeopardize the safety of the young prince and his mother. This is Telemachus showing his independence and taking matters into his own hands.

"As for the stranger, though,
the man’s an old family friend, from Taphos,
wise Anchialus’ son. He says his name is Mentes,
lord of the Taphian men who love their oars."
So he said
but deep in his mind he knew the immortal goddess.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 1, lines 475-479. When Eurymachus questions Telemachus on who his guest is, Telemachus answers that his name is Mentes. Telemachus, aware that Mentes is the disguised goddess Athena, shows cunning by hiding her real identity from the suitors.

"This was her latest masterpiece of guile:
she set up a great loom in the royal halls
and she began to weave, and the weaving finespun,
the yarns endless, and she would lead us on:"
‘Young men,
my suitors, now that King Odysseus is no more,
go slowly, keen as you are to marry me, until
I can finish off this web.’"

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 2, lines 104-107. We learn here from Antinous how Penelope uses a masterful trick to keep her suitors at bay. While they have been trying to seduce her into marriage, she remains faithful to her husband. Suitor Antinous reveals how Penelope promises them that she would choose a husband as soon as she finishes weaving a shroud for Laertes’ funeral. But Penelope has no intention of finishing it.
Penelope weaving

"So by day she’d weave at her great and growing web –
by night, by the light of torches set beside her,
she would unravel all she’d done. Three whole years
she deceived us blind, seduced us with this scheme."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 2, lines 115-118. Antinous tells Telemachus how Penelope tricks the suitors who are pressuring her to take a husband. She pretends to weave a shroud for Laertes for the day of his funeral, promising to remarry when it is finished. But each night she secretly unravels the work she does that day. For three years she manages to deceive the suitors, Antinous reveals.

"Then, when the wheeling seasons brought the fourth year on,
one of her women, in on the queen’s secret, told the truth
and we caught her in the act – unweaving her gorgeous web.
So she finished it off. Against her will. We forced her."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 2, lines 119-122. Antinous tells Telemachus how Penelope’s clever plan to fool the suitors is betrayed by one of her servants. The queen cleverly holds off remarriage by pretending to weave a shoud on her loom for the eventual funeral of her father-in-law. The deception goes on for three years, until the suitors learn from one of the disloyal women servants that Penelope is unweaving the shoud every night.

"Courage, old woman,"
thoughtful Telemachus tried to reassure her,
"there’s a god who made this plan.
But swear you won’t say anything to my mother.
Not till ten or a dozen days have passed
or she misses me herself and learns I’m gone.
She mustn’t mar her lovely face with tears."
The old one swore a solemn oath to the gods
and voring she would never breathe a word.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 2, lines 410-418. Telemachus makes Eurycleia swear an oath to conceal from his mother his plan to travel to Pylos for information about his missing father. He asks her not to tell Penelope until ten or twelve days after he has departed Ithaca. Eurycleia duly swears an oath not to breathe a word.

With that the bright-eyed goddess winged away
in an eagle’s form and flight.
Amazement fell on all the Achaeans there.
The old king, astonished by what he’d seen,
grasped Telemachus’ hand and cried out to the prince,
"Dear boy – never fear you’ll be a coward or defenseless,
not if at your young age the gods will guard you so.
Of all who dwell on Olympus, this was none but she,
Zeus’s daughter, the glorious one, his third born,
who prized your gallant father among the Argives."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 3, lines 415-424. Athena, disguised as Mentor, reveals herself when she turns into an eagle and flies away. Amazed at what he has seen, King Nestor tells Telemachus that this was none other than Athena who will protect him just as she prized his father Odysseus. So the young son of Odysseus gets the official stamp of approval from the gods.

"but what a feat that hero dared and carried off
in the land of Troy where you Achaeans suffered!
Scarring his own body with mortifying strokes,
throwing filthy rags on his back like any slave,
he slipped into the enemy’s city, roamed its streets –
all disguised, a totally different man, a beggar."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 4, lines 272-277. Helen tells the story of how Odysseus cunningly disguised himself as a begger to slip into Troy unrecognized during the Trojan war. This foreshadows the exact same tactics being used by Odysseus, with Athena’s help, to return unnoticed to Ithaca.

"what a heart that fearless Odysseus had inside him!
What a piece of work the hero dared and carried off
in the wooden horse where all our best encamped,
our champions armed with bloody death for Troy."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 4, lines 303-306. Menelaus tells the story of the Trojan Horse, which enabled the Greeks to trick the defenders of Troy and take the city after a fruitless ten-year siege. He sings the praises of the brave and cunning Odysseus, credited with the idea of using the horse to deceive the Trojans.

"There was a tale, my lady. So well told.
…Three times you sauntered round our hollow ambush,
feeling, stroking its flanks,
challenging all our fighters, calling each by name –
yours was the voice of all our long-lost wives!
And Diomedes and I, crouched tight in the midst
with great Odysseus, hearing you singing out,
were both keen to spring up and sally forth
or give you a sudden answer from inside,
but Odysseus damped our ardor, reined us back."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 4, lines 298, 310-315. Menelaus is speaking to Telemachus about the wooden horse and his wife Helen during the Trojan War. Helen called to the Achaian fighters hidden inside the horse in the voices of their wives.

"Eidothea, now,
had slipped beneath the sea’s engulfing folds
but back from the waves she came with four sealskins,
all freshly stripped, to deceive her father blind.
She scooped out lurking-places deep in the sand
and sat there waiting as we approached her post,
then couching us side-by-side she flung a sealskin
over each man’s back. Now there was an ambush
that would have overpowered us all – overpowering,
true, the awful reek of all those sea-fed brutes!"

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 4, lines 487-497. Menelaus tells Telemachus how he and his men were trapped in Egypt and were helped by sea goddess Eidothea, daughter of the sea god Proteus. Proteus had information on how they could get home and they were advised by Eidothea to disguise themselves as seals to ambush him.

"By god, what a fine piece of work he’s carried off!
Telemachus – what insolence – and we thought his little jaunt
would come to grief. But in spite of us all, look,
the young cub slips away, just like that –
picks the best crew in the land and off he sails.
And this is just the start of the trouble he can make."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 4, lines 746-751. Antinous, ablaze with anger, says this on learning that Telemachus has caught them unawares by going on a secret voyage to Pylos. Up to now the suitors were not fearful of Telemachus. But now they are nervous, on hearing that Telemachus sailed with a top crew to the land ruled by King Nestor, who fought with Odysseus in the Trojan War. It is rather ironic that one of the suitors should accuse Telemachus of insolence, when they have shown brazen disrespect and insolence towards Odysseus’ family.

"Hear me, dear ones! Zeus has given me torment –
me above all the others born and bred in my day.
My lionhearted husband, lost, long years ago,
who excelled the Argives all in every strength –
that great man whose fame resounds through Hellas
right to the depths of Argos!
But now my son,
my darling boy – the whirlwinds have ripped him
out of the halls without a trace! I never heard
he’d gone – not even from you, you hard, heartless…
not one of you even thought to rouse me from my bed,
though well you knew when he boarded that black ship.
Oh if only I had learned he was planning such a journey,
he would have stayed, by god, keen as he was to sail –
or left me dead right here within our palace."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 4, lines 814-827. A distraught Penelope has learned that her son Telemachus has secretly set sail to Pylos and Sparta, while the suitors plan to kill him on his way home. She rails at Eurycleia for hiding her son’s departure from her. She makes clear that had she known, she would only have let Telemachus leave over her dead body. Angered by the deception, Penelope calls Eurycleia hard and heartless. Penelope speaks of her torment of first losing her husband and now her son, blaming Zeus for this. She recalls how Odysseus was honored with fame as a great warrior. In a metaphor she compares his bravery to that of a lion.

"Nausicaa,
how could your mother bear a careless girl like you?
Look at your fine clothes, lying here neglected –
with your marriage not far off,
…let’s go wash these clothes at the break of day –
I’ll help you, lend a hand, and the work will fly!
You won’t stay unwed long."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 6, lines 27-30, 35-37. Athena makes a surprise visit in young Phaeacian princess Nausicaa’s dream disguised as one of her friends. She tells her to wash her clothes in the washing pools, so that she will find Odysseus who has washed up onto the island shore there. This is an example of Athena interfering in human affairs to help Odysseus.

Pallas Athena, harboring kindness for the hero,
drifted a heavy mist around him, shielding him
from any swaggering islander who’d cross his path
provoke him with taunts and search out who he was.
Instead, as he was about to enter the welcome city,
the bright-eyed goddess herself came up to greet him there,
for all the world like a young girl, holding a pitcher,
standing face-to-face with the visitor.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 7, lines 16-23. While Odysseus is on his way to the palace of Alcinous, Athena disguises him with a magical mist to keep him safe from the Phaeacians. As he is about to enter the city, the goddess appears before him in the form of a girl carrying a pitcher, to help him further.

"Your majesty," diplomatic Odysseus answered,
don’t find fault with a flawless daughter now,
not for my sake, please.
She urged me herself to follow with her maids.
I chose not to, fearing embarrassment in fact –
what if you took offense, seeing us both together?
Suspicious we are, we men who walk the earth."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 7, lines 346-350. When Alcinous criticizes his daughter for failing to escort her guest Odysseus to the palace and letting him walk in alone, Odysseus lies. But his deception is a commendable one. He doesn’t reveal that it was Nausicaa herself told him not to accompany her in case it would cause scandal. Instead he takes the blame by saying that he told her not to, for fear it would embarrass and offend the king.

"Sing of the wooden horse
Epeus built with Athena’s help, the cunning trap that
good Odysseus brought one day to the heights of Troy,
filled with fighting men who laid the city waste.
Sing that for me – true to life as it deserves –
and I will tell the world at once how freely
the Muse gave you the gods’ own gift of song."
Stirred now by the Muse, the bard launched out
in a fine blaze of song.

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 8, lines 552-560. The disguised Odysseus requests the bard Demodocus to entertain him with his own exploits in the Trojan War. He asks him to sing of the "cunning trap" of the wooden horse built by Epeus with Athena’s help and used by Odysseus to deceive the Trojans and take their city.

"I am Odysseus, son of Laertes, known to the world
for every kind of craft – my fame has reached the skies.
Sunny Ithaca is my home. Atop her stands our seamark,
Mount Neriton’s leafy ridges shimmering in the wind.
Around her a ring of islands circle side-by-side,
Dulichion, Same, wooded Zacynthus too, but mine
lies low and away, the farthest out to sea,
rearing into the western dusk
while the others face the east and breaking day.
Mine is a rugged land but good for raising sons –
and I myself, I know no sweeter sight on earth
than a man’s own native country."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 9, lines 21-32. Odysseus, who is in disguise, reveals his true identity to King Alcinous and the Phaeacians. While his guile and fame are known throughout the world, Odysseus is more interested in reaching home in Ithaca than achieving further fame and glory. This passage provides us with an insight into who Odysseus really is, and how after all his heroic adventures he now believes that there is simply no place like home. The heroes of The Iiad and The Odyssey lived by the ancient warrior code of kleos, meaning renown or glory, often attained in battle. But home now means more to Odysseus.

"But tell me, where did you moor your sturdy ship
when you arrived? Up the coast or close in?
I’d just like to know."
So he laid his trap
but he never caught me, no, wise to the world
I shot back in my crafty way, "My ship?
Poseidon god of the earthquake smashed my ship,
he drove it against the rocks at your island’s far cape,
he dashed it against a cliff as the winds rode us in.
I and the men you see escaped a sudden death."

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 9, lines 314-322. When Polyphemus attempts to be clever with Odysseus, trying to find out where he moored his ship, Olysseus is one step ahead. Instead of falling for the trap, Odysseus lies and says that his ship was smashed by Poseidon. The cunning Odysseus realizes that Polyphemus probably intends to destroy his ship.

"So, you ask me the name I’m known by, Cyclops?
I will tell you. But you must give me a guest-gift
as you’ve promised. Nobody – that’s my name. Nobody –
so my mother and father call me, all my friends."
But he boomed back at me from his ruthless heart,
"Nobody? I’ll eat Nobody last of all his friends –
I’ll eat the others first! That’s my gift to you!"

– Homer

The Odyssey, Book 9, lines 408-414. Odysseus tells Cyclops that his name is "Nobody." This is an example of Odysseus’ characteristic cunning and trickery, probably the most striking example in The Odyssey. The name forms part of a clever plan that Odysseus uses to escape from the Cyclops’ cave. It is also an example of verbal irony because Odysseus is King of Ithaca and not a nobody.
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