Eurylochus

He is good with rope. He drew the short straw at Aeaea and walked his men to Circe’s terrace and stayed in the trees when the others went forward into the smiling welcome. He came back alone, gasping, his face ashen. He never could explain why he hesitated. Later, he refused to set foot in her house even after she lifted the spell. He guarded the ship instead. He is the second who keeps score, the one who notices when the captain has been hiding inland too long, who comes to Odysseus on a warm dusk with a dozen men at his back and does not call him a coward but does not need to. He helps hold Anticleia at the blood pit. He stands beside Odysseus in the Underworld with sword drawn against the dead. [SPOILER: On Thrinacia he gathers the starving men in the dark and makes the argument that condemns them. They will die anyway. At least with meat in their bellies. He is the moral solvent of the hunger, the one who makes the oath-breaking sound reasonable. He drowns with the others when Zeus’s bolt splits the mast.]