He has no name in the retelling. He’s the one act of mercy in a chapter that is mostly slaughter. After the storm scattered Odysseus’s twelve ships south to the Thracian coast, they hit the Cicone city of Ismarus at dawn, men with plunder in their eyes and years of war still fresh in their hearts. The city fell before the sun was high. The priest of Apollo and his family were spared, presumably because Odysseus knew better than to anger that god, or because some thread of restraint still held in him at the start of the journey home. The priest gave him jars of undiluted wine in thanks. So strong you would cut it twenty to one with water and still lose your balance. Odysseus stowed the jars and forgot them. Two chapters later, in the Cyclops’s cave, that wine drops Polyphemus into a stupor deep enough for the stake to go in. The priest never knew he was paying that debt forward. He’s the small kindness that funds the largest piece of cunning in the whole journey.
The Priest of Apollo at Ismarus
The priest Odysseus spared in the sack of Ismarus. Gave him jars of undiluted wine in thanks. Wine that would later blind a Cyclops.