Autolycus

He shows up by inference, never on the page in the retelling, only in Odysseus’s own description when he meets Hermes in the woods of Aeaea. “My grandfather Autolycus was a thief and a liar, the best of both who ever lived.” The line is half boast, half confession. Autolycus is the source of the family talent, the cunning that built the wooden horse and tricked the Cyclops and stayed alive through twenty years of monsters. His father was Hermes himself, which makes Odysseus great-grandson of the messenger god, and explains why Hermes turns up at all. Autolycus named the boy. The name Odysseus carries the meaning of trouble, of being hated, of giving and receiving pain, depending on which Greek root you favor. He marked Odysseus with more than a name: it was on a hunting trip with Autolycus’s sons on Mount Parnassus that the white boar gave Odysseus the scar that would later betray him to Eurycleia. The grandfather built the man. The man’s grandson is still cleaning up after both of them.