A well-balanced individual such as Odysseus must be resourceful. Odysseus proves to be very resourceful when he hatches the brilliant idea to offer the citizens of Troy a large wooden horse, filled unknowingly to the Trojans, with Greek soldiers. Throughout his journeys, Odysseus' resourcefulness gets him out of some very tough situations, like when he escapes from the cave of the Cyclops in Book IX . Odysseus

knows that the Cyclops will surely devour him and his remaining men, so he has to find a way to outwit the great Cyclops Polyphemus, son of Poseidon. Odysseus makes an

To summarize, the Greeks believed that a well-balanced individual must possess a clever mind, a fit body, and he must also have the ability to speak well. In The Odyssey, Homer portrays Odysseus as such an individual. Throughout his journeys, Odysseus relies just as much on his wit and his ability to speak well as he does on his physical prowess. Odysseus embodies the three important characteristics of the Greek vision of the well-balanced individual.

only eye with a hot wooden spike and wait to make their escape, but Polyphemus decides to move the great door-stone away from the opening of his cave and just sit there waiting for any man silly enough to try to make an escape. Odysseus says, "But I kept thinking how to win the game: death sat there huge; how could we slip away? I drew on all my wits, and ran through tactics, reasoning as a man will for dear life, until a trick came - and it pleased me well" (IX 439). Odysseus decides to tie all of the Cyclops' fat rams together and he puts one of his men under each middle ram, so three sheep could hide every man. Odysseus cleverly hides himself under the belly of the fattest, best ram of the flock and they wait like this until morning. By dawn, the rams begin to stir and Polyphemus, still blind and full of pain, lets each ram pass by him to go out to pasture. Odysseus uses his wit to escape from the Cyclops' cave by hiding under the ram's belly, which is a ki

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Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)