The Benefit of Intelligence In Homer’s epic, The Odyssey, Odysseus is a great Greek warrior returning home from the Trojan War. The short trip home becomes an extensive voyage that lasts for ten years because the crew encounters many obstacles such as monsters, enchantresses, tricksters, and angry deities. Thanks to Odysseus’s intelligence and resourcefulness, he escapes grizzly situations such as his confrontation with the Cyclops, Polyphemus. In the following passage, Odysseus tricks Polyphemus:
My moment was at hand, and I went forward holding an ivy bowl of my dark drink looking up, saying: ‘Cyclops, try some wine. Here’s liquor to wash down your scraps of men. Taste it, and see the kind of drink we carried under our planks, I meant it for an offering If you would help us home. But you are …show more content…
Once the Cyclops passes out, he and his remaining men attack Polyphemus and stab him in the eye. When he shrieks out in pain, his brother Cyclopes call out “What ails you, Polyphemus? Why do you cry so sore in the starry night? You will not let us sleep” (353-355). Polyphemus attempts to tell his brothers someone has attacked him, and because Odysseus told Polyphemus his name was Nobody, Polyphemus shouts out, “Nobody, Nobody’s tricked me, Nobody’s ruined me!” (358). The other Cyclopes believe there is no issue and Polyphemus is crying out for no reason. Polyphemus pushes the heavy rock out of the cave’s entrance in his drunken, pain-filled stupor, and Odysseus and his men run out of the cave and make their escape. The Greeks valued people who were resourceful and intelligent. This is shown in the previous passages when Odysseus uses logic and his opponent’s weaknesses to create a plan to get himself out of the cave. Although the Greeks may not have admired how many men Odysseus fails to save from the Cyclops, they certainly admired Odysseus for saving himself in a resourceful and intelligent