Laertes- Greek HeroHero"King of Ithaca"

Youth and Grief

Laertes was among the heroes who sailed with Jason on the Argo to retrieve the Golden Fleece and joined the hunt for the Calydonian Boar alongside Meleager. He married Anticleia, daughter of the master thief Autolycus, and they had a son, Odysseus, and a daughter, Ctimene. Another tradition makes Anticleia already pregnant by Sisyphus when she married Laertes, so that Odysseus was the biological son of that notorious trickster rather than Laertes's own.

By the time Odysseus sailed for Troy, Laertes had already yielded the throne to his son. During the twenty years of Odysseus's absence — ten at war, ten wandering — Laertes withdrew from public life entirely. His wife Anticleia died of grief, and the old king retreated to his farm outside the city, tending his orchards in rags, consumed by sorrow for his lost son.

The Reunion

When Odysseus finally returned to Ithaca, disguised as a beggar, he found his aged father working alone in his vineyard, dressed in filthy clothes, his spirit broken by years of mourning. Odysseus tested Laertes with a false story before revealing himself. The old man, overcome with joy and disbelief, asked for proof — and Odysseus showed him the scar from a boar's tusk and named every tree in the orchard that Laertes had given him as a boy. The count was exact, each tree a gift from father to son, and the naming of them broke through the old man's disbelief.

Three Generations

When the families of the slain suitors came seeking vengeance, Athena rejuvenated the old king. Laertes donned armor and joined his son and grandson Telemachus in battle. His spear-cast killed Eupeithes, father of the suitor Antinous. Three generations of his house stood together in that final fight before Zeus and Athena imposed peace.