Editing Odysseus (section)

===Middle Ages and Renaissance===
[[Dante Alighieri]], in the [[Canto]] XXVI of the ''[[Inferno (Dante)|Inferno]]'' segment of his ''[[Divine Comedy]]'' (1308–1320), encounters Odysseus ("Ulisse" in Italian) near the very bottom of Hell: with [[Diomedes]], he walks wrapped in flame in the eighth ring (''Counselors of Fraud'') of the [[Malebolge|Eighth Circle]] (''Sins of Malice''), as punishment for his schemes and conspiracies that won the Trojan War. In a famous passage, Dante has Odysseus relate a different version of his voyage and death from the one told by Homer. He tells how he set out with his men from Circe's island for a journey of exploration to sail beyond the [[Pillars of Hercules]] and into the Western sea to find what adventures awaited them. Men, says Ulisse, are not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.<ref>Dante, ''Divine Comedy'', canto 26: "fatti non-foste a viver come bruti / ma per seguir virtute e conoscenza".</ref>

After travelling west and south for five months, they see in the distance a great mountain rising from the sea (this is [[Purgatory]], in Dante's cosmology) before a storm sinks them. Dante did not have access to the original Greek texts of the Homeric epics, so his knowledge of their subject-matter was based only on information from later sources, chiefly [[Virgil]]'s ''[[Aeneid]]'' but also [[Ovid]]; hence the discrepancy between Dante and Homer.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Magnaghi-Delfino |first1=Paoloa |last2=Norando |first2=Tullia |date=2015 |title=The Size and Shape of Dante's Mount Purgatory |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281900574 |journal=Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=123–134|doi=10.3724/SP.J.1440-2807.2015.02.02 |hdl=11311/964116 |hdl-access=free }}</ref>

He appears in [[Shakespeare]]'s ''[[Troilus and Cressida]]'' (1602), set during the Trojan War.