Autolycus

Also Known As: Greek Autolykos; the grandfather of Odysseus, not to be confused with Autolycus son of Deimachus of Tricca, a different man who joins the Argonauts in Apollonius of Rhodes
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Greek Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: Hermes gave him a gift for theft and for the sworn oath, and later writers add that he could make whatever he stole invisible or change its colour and its horns so that no owner could know it.
Role in Mythos: He is the maternal grandfather of Odysseus, the man who named him, and the host on Mount Parnassus where the boy took the wound whose scar later betrayed him to his old nurse.
Relation to Humans: To his neighbours he was a cattle thief who could not be caught, until Sisyphus marked the hooves of his herd and came to collect them. To his own family he was a generous host who promised gifts to a newborn grandson and kept the promise when the young man came to claim them.

The basin rang like a struck bell. An old woman in Ithaca had been washing a beggar’s feet by firelight, her fingers found a long pale scar above his knee, and she let go of the leg so suddenly that the bronze tipped over and the water ran across the floor. Before she can speak, Homer stops the scene and tells the story of the scar, and that story belongs to Autolycus.

He lived on Mount Parnassus, and in the *Odyssey* he is introduced with one of the most backhanded compliments in Greek poetry: he surpassed all men in thieving and in the oath. The oath is the interesting half. This was not a man who simply took things; he was a man who could swear an oath that left him room to have taken them. Homer says the gift came from Hermes, and explains why. Autolycus used to burn the thigh bones of lambs and kids for the god, and Hermes, pleased with the company, made him what he was.

Homer leaves something out. In the *Odyssey* Hermes is his patron, not his father. The fatherhood arrives in later sources. The Hesiodic *Catalogue of Women* gives him a mother called Philonis, who bore Philammon the singer to Apollo and Autolycus to Hermes, the Kyllenian slayer of Argos. Ovid, writing in Rome around the turn of the era, tells the same twin birth with a darker texture: the maiden is Chione, daughter of Daedalion, and both gods saw her on the same day. Hermes put her to sleep with a touch of his wand and forced himself on her at once; Apollo came that night disguised as an old woman. She bore twins, Philammon famous for the lyre and Autolycus, ingenious at every kind of theft, who could make white out of black and black out of white. Pausanias, a century and more later still, reports the rumour and declines it: Autolycus, he says, was said to be a son of Hermes, though his real father was Daedalion. Even his wife changes from author to author. Homer calls her Amphithea. Pausanias calls her Neaera, daughter of Pereus. Ovid marries him to Mestra, the shape-changing daughter of Erysichthon, whose father sold her over and over again and watched her slip away each time in a new form. A thief with three possible wives and two possible fathers is, in his way, a thief who has covered his tracks.

What he could actually do grows in the telling. One line preserved from the Hesiodic poems says that whatever he took in his hands, he made unseen. The Latin mythographer Hyginus is more practical about it. Hermes, he writes, gave Autolycus the power to change whatever he stole into another shape, white to black or black to white, a horned beast to a hornless one or a hornless beast to a horned. Stolen cattle walked out of the pasture as one animal and stood in his fold as another.

It worked until it met a man as clever as he was. Sisyphus of Corinth noticed his own herds getting smaller while his neighbour’s grew, and he could not find a single beast of his among them. So he cut a mark into the hooves of his cattle, which colour and horns could not disguise. When the next animals vanished, Sisyphus walked over, read his mark in the hooves, and took them home. Hyginus adds that while Sisyphus lingered in the house he seduced Anticlea, the daughter of Autolycus, who was later given in marriage to Laertes and bore Odysseus. Some writers, Hyginus says, call Odysseus Sisyphean for that reason. The genealogy is a joke with teeth: the cleverest man in Greece descended, on one account, from both of the tricksters in that cattle fold at once.

Homer’s Anticlea is simply Laertes’ wife and Autolycus’ daughter, and her son is named by his grandfather. Autolycus had come to Ithaca just after the birth. When supper was over, the nurse Eurycleia set the baby on his knees and told him to find a name for the grandson he had wanted so much. His answer is the oddest naming speech in the poem. He has been angry with a great many people, men and women, all over the land, he says, so let the boy be called Odysseus, a name the Greek hears as a man of anger or of grudges. When the boy is grown and comes to his mother’s family on Parnassus, there will be presents.

The young Odysseus came to claim them. Amphithea kissed his head and his eyes, the sons of Autolycus killed and jointed a five year old bull, and the smell of roasting meat filled the house until the sun went down. At dawn they climbed the wooded slopes with their hounds. In a dell the dogs found the lair of a huge boar in brushwood so thick that neither wind nor rain nor sunlight could pass through it, the ground beneath deep in fallen leaves. The boar came out with its bristles up and fire in its eyes. Odysseus rushed in first with his spear raised, but the boar was quicker, and its tusk ripped across his leg above the knee, tearing deep through the flesh though not to the bone. His spear went through the boar’s right shoulder and it died groaning in the dust. The sons of Autolycus bound the wound and chanted a charm over it to stop the blood. They healed him, loaded him with gifts and sent him home, and the scar went with him for the rest of his life.

The *Iliad* keeps one more souvenir. On the night raid into the Trojan lines, Odysseus wears a leather cap stitched with rows of boar’s teeth, and Homer gives its history like a provenance: Autolycus stole it from Eleon when he broke into the house of Amyntor son of Ormenus, then gave it away, and it passed from hand to hand until it came to Odysseus. The grandson went to war in stolen goods.

Later writers kept finding work for him. Apollodorus makes him the wrestling master of the young Heracles, and also the cause of a disaster: cattle were stolen from Euboea by Autolycus, Eurytus blamed Heracles, and when Iphitus, the one man who believed Heracles innocent, came to ask his help in finding them, Heracles in a fresh fit of madness threw Iphitus from the walls of Tiryns. Apollodorus also lists an Autolycus son of Hermes among the Argonauts, and names Polymede, daughter of Autolycus, as the mother of Jason. Taken together the two lines would put a grandfather on the Argo beside his grandson; Apollodorus does not remark on it. Apollonius of Rhodes has a different Autolycus altogether, a son of Deimachus of Tricca, who had strayed from Heracles’ company and was taken aboard at Sinope.

His powers are a thief’s powers, and every one of them comes from Hermes or from his own hands: the theft no one sees, the oath that bends without breaking, the beast that changes colour between one field and the next. His limits are just as plain. Disguise works on what an owner looks at, and Sisyphus beat him by marking the one part of an animal nobody thought to look at. No surviving story tells how Autolycus died.

The name outlived the man. In Shakespeare’s *The Winter’s Tale*, written around 1611, a rogue pedlar introduces himself as Autolycus, littered under Mercury, a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. The Mercury in that line shows Shakespeare knew exactly where the name came from.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Autolycus in Greek mythology?

Autolycus is a legendary thief who lived on Mount Parnassus and was the maternal grandfather of Odysseus. In Homer’s *Odyssey* he surpasses all men in theft and in oaths, a gift given to him by Hermes. Later writers make Hermes his father.

Is Autolycus the son of Hermes?

In most later sources, yes. The Hesiodic *Catalogue of Women* names his mother as Philonis, Ovid and Hyginus name her as Chione, and both make Hermes the father. Homer only says Hermes favoured him, and Pausanias says his real father was Daedalion.

How did Sisyphus catch Autolycus?

Sisyphus marked the hooves of his cattle. Autolycus could change the colour and horns of stolen animals, but the marks on the hooves stayed, so Sisyphus identified his cattle in Autolycus’ herd and took them back. Hyginus adds that Sisyphus then seduced Anticlea, the daughter of Autolycus.

How did Autolycus name Odysseus?

Autolycus named his newborn grandson Odysseus during a visit to Ithaca, after the nurse Eurycleia set the baby on his knees. He said he had been angry with many people, so the boy should carry a name meaning anger. He promised the child gifts on Parnassus when he grew up.

How did Odysseus get his scar?

Odysseus got his scar from a boar’s tusk while hunting on Mount Parnassus with the sons of Autolycus. The boar ripped his leg above the knee before Odysseus killed it. Years later the nurse Eurycleia recognised Odysseus by that scar.