In old Greek stories, Odysseus is the king of Ithaca, a small island, and the husband of Penelope. He is the main person in Homer's long poem The Odyssey. He spent ten years fighting at Troy, then another ten years trying to get home, meeting monsters, storms, and people who wanted to stop him. People remember him as brave, but even more as clever: he thinks of tricks (the wooden horse is the famous one) and he tells many lies to stay alive and to win. In Roman tellings of the same stories his name is Ulysses. When English speakers later say a trip was “an odyssey,” they mean a long, hard journey with many problems — that everyday use grew from this man's story, not from a second meaning of the name itself.