maia is correct, an excellent post. The love between Odysseus and Penelope seems to form a kind of ideal that was uterly foreign to the Classical mindset, with Penelope as Odysseus’ equal, yet the Greeks of the Classical era were drawn to the concept. There is a paper that Myrrhine wrote a few years ago that also touches on this topic. It’s well worth a read.

Odysseus is a fascinating character and perhaps the one best loved by modern readers. Yet he has suffered quite a bit in the intervening years. To the Classical and Hellenistic Greeks, the “man of many turns” was a bit of an embarrassment. That followed him into the Renaissance and beyond. Part of it, I suppose, has to do with his use of the gods to deceive the Trojans. But somewhere along the way the “tricksy man” fell out of the European ideal, though a number of Old Testament characters fit the pattern (Jacob and Joseph, for example).