Greece. The story of this hero, Ulysses, victor over the Trojans who seeks to return home after ten years spent on the battlefield, is one of the pillars of European culture. With the ten-year journey that Odysseus spends battling the gods, temptations and curses, and then, once on his island, against the pretenders to his succession, The Odyssey marks the transition from one world, that of the age of heroes, populated by gods and warriors, to another, that of men, freed from determinism and open to the future.