Odysseus alludes to the
Trojan War when he sees his mother in the Underworld in Book X. He tells her that he's been
wandering and experiencing "endless hardship from that day [he] first set sail with King
Agamemnon bound for Troy, the stallion-land, to fight the Trojans there." The Trojan War
was, indeed, a terrible ordeal, discussed at length in The . Odysseus
fought in the Trojan War for ten years, prior to the start of his odyssey home, and the Achaeans
only, finally, breached the walls of Troy and defeated with Trojans with the deceptive Trojan
Horse (Odysseus's idea).
Odysseus sees many important figures from mythology
in the Underworld. He describes the wives and daughters and mothers of quite a few famous men.
He says, "And I saw Alcmena next, Amphitryons wife, who slept in the clasp of Zeus and
merged in love and brought forth Heracles, rugged will and lion heart." With this line, he
alludes to the story of Hercules. Zeus came to Hercules's mother in the form of her husband, so
she slept with him, and she got pregnant with Hercules, son of Zeus and a demigod.
Moreover, Odysseus continues, "And I saw Megara too, magnanimous Creons daughter
wed to the stalwart Heracles, the hero never daunted." Megara's story is terribly sad:
Hera, in her anger at Zeus for his affair with Alcmena, Hercules's mother, drove Hercules insane
so that he killed his wife, Megara, and their children. Hercules, when she returned him to his
senses, felt so terrible that he embarked on a mission to cleanse himself of his awful
actions.
Further, Odysseus sees "the mother of Oedipus, beautiful
Epicaste. What a monstrous thing she did, in all innocenceshe married her own son ... whod
killed his father, then he married her!" Another awful story: Epicaste receives a prophecy
that her son would grow up to kill his father and marry her, so when she gave birth to Oedipus,
she sent him away to be killed. However, the slave who took him away didn't kill him; he gave
the baby away to a shepherd who served another royal family. When Oedipus grows up, he leaves
home and an oracle tells him the same prophecy, so he vows never to go home again (not knowing
he was adopted). In trying to avoid the prophecy, he inadvertently makes choices that allow for
it to come true: he kills his real father and marries his mother, even siring children by her.
When Epicaste finds out, she kills herself.
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