An ordinary soldier in the Iliad who mocks Agamemnon in front of the whole army. Odysseus hits him with a staff and the soldiers laugh.
Strength 3/10 · Wisdom 4/10 · Courage 3/10 · Divinity 1/10 · Fame 4/10
The story
Homer calls him the ugliest man who came to Troy: bow-legged, lame and nearly bald. In book 2 of the Iliad he stands up in the assembly and abuses Agamemnon as greedy, telling the soldiers to sail home. He is almost the only ordinary soldier who speaks in the poem.
How it ends
Later he mocked Achilles over Penthesilea, and Achilles killed him with a single blow.
Still with us today
Shakespeare made him the sneering, foul-mouthed jester of Troilus and Cressida.
Family
The sources do not agree on, or do not name, Thersites’s family.
Appears in
Read about them in the Library
Ancient sources
- Homer, Iliad
Thersites is a playable card in MythoTroy, the Trojan War card game.