Antiphates

Antiphates is the king of the Laestrygonians, a race of giant cannibals who inhabit the rocky stronghold of Telepylus. His encounter with Odysseus's scouting party triggers the most devastating single episode of the hero's wanderings: of twelve ships, only Odysseus's own vessel escapes, and every man aboard the other eleven is speared like a fish and carried home to be eaten. The episode establishes the Laestrygonians as the most lethal non-supernatural adversaries Odysseus faces, a people whose sheer numbers and savagery outstrip even the Cyclops Polyphemus in the scale of destruction they inflict.

Identity and Background

Antiphates is the king of the Laestrygonians, a people who live in the city of Telepylus, a land-locked harbor with a narrow entrance between two steep cliffs. The Laestrygonians are described as ogres, not men, and their queen is a giantess as huge as a mountain. The land itself has an uncanny rhythm: shepherds driving flocks out to pasture in the morning salute those driving them in to be milked, and a man who could do without sleep might earn double wages, for night and day are nearly interchangeable. This detail marks the Laestrygonians as existing in a world where normal human cycles are suspended, a place outside the ordinary order of Greek civilization.

The Attack in the Harbor

When Odysseus's fleet reaches Telepylus, all captains except Odysseus himself bring their ships inside the land-locked harbor, where there is never so much as a breath of wind and the water is always dead calm. Odysseus, suspicious, moors his own ship outside the harbor to a rock at the end of the point. He climbs a high rock to reconnoiter but sees only smoke rising from the ground, no sign of men or cattle. He sends two men with an attendant to discover what people inhabit the country. The scouts follow a level road by which the Laestrygonians draw firewood from the mountains into the town and meet a young woman drawing water at the fountain Artacia. She is Antiphates's daughter, and when they ask who rules the land, she directs them to her father's house. There they find Antiphates's wife, a giantess as huge as a mountain, and are horrified at the sight of her. She immediately calls Antiphates from the place of assembly, and he snatches up one of the men and begins to make his dinner off him on the spot. The other two flee back to the ships, but Antiphates raises a hue-and-cry, and thousands of sturdy Laestrygonians spring up from every quarter. They hurl vast rocks from the cliffs, and the ships inside the harbor are crushed against one another. The Laestrygonians spear the men like fishes and take them home to eat. Odysseus alone cuts the cable of his own ship with his sword and orders his men to row for their lives; they escape into open water just beyond reach of the rocks. Not one of the other ships or their crews survives.

Narrative Role and Significance

Antiphates and the Laestrygonians function as a collective nightmare of hospitality inverted: instead of the xenia that a traveler expects, the stranger is immediately devoured. The episode mirrors the Cyclops encounter but escalates the scale of destruction from a single monster to an entire hostile population. Where Polyphemus kills six men one by one, Antiphates destroys eleven ships and their entire crews in a single coordinated assault. The Laestrygonian episode also serves as a structural turning point: after this catastrophe, Odysseus's company is reduced to a single ship, and the remaining adventures—Circe, the Underworld, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, the Cattle of the Sun—all unfold with this drastically diminished force. The name Antiphates itself, meaning "opposite" or "contrary," may reflect the role of this king as the antithesis of the hospitable ruler Odysseus seeks throughout his journey.