In light of recent discourse going about, I think it’s important to note that the modern concept of a hero is not what it was in Ancient Greece. A hero in that culture was just someone who did amazing deeds. Jason sailing the Black Sea to obtain the Golden Fleece was a heroic deed (yes he had help, but all heroes do, his deed just was middle management worthy). Theseus completed his 6 tasks and took down the Minotaur which saved Athenians’ lives (yes he abandoned Ariadne, but I’ll be honest she always seemed manipulative to me in the myth, and yes what he did to Phaedra was gross as what he did to his own son, and yes Asterios has a tragic story, but again if you’re looking at it from their perspective, the Minotaur was a monster who was killing their people so him killing him made sense to them as religions tend to favor its practitioners). Heracles completed his 12 tasks and had more tales associated with him, but he also murdered so many people of various innocence. Agamemnon sacrificed his family for the glory of a victory in Troy while also under the curse of his family line, and also sacrificed his family and took a war bride (also he’s just awful).
They are not moral characters to learn how to be better people. They are humans who did things others couldn’t do and might inspire people, but it was never meant to be a way to be a good person. All this to say, yes Odysseus is a neat hero, but he is not a good person. He always would choose himself over anyone else besides maybe Penelope, so yeah maybe stop arguing over the morality and ethics of his character since yeah, most Greek heroes were absolute pricks.
