Former hero of the Trojan War, Odysseus returns to Ithaca and his family in Homer's Odyssey fighting against the forces that slow his progress from the immortals, his enemies and from his own bad choices. Once home, he finds his house invaded by mouse-like suitors scurrying around his wife and gnawing at her food supplies and he reacts violently. Throughout the Odyssey, Homer characterizes Odysseus as needlessly aggressive, lacking in empathy, and dependent on divinity to a degree that denies any heroic independence, thus making him a villain. While one of the defining characteristics of a hero is his ability to act with force, the stipulation for it to be a heroic trait is that it must be benevolent at best and inescapable at worst. Odysseus fails in this and is shown to act out of jealousy and revenge rather than to preserve lives whenever possible. The interaction between a rational Eurymachus and an enraged, unreasonable Odysseus after the death of Alcinous, in which Eurymachus proposes to "make/ return the wine and meat consumed,/ and, each, a tithe of twenty oxen/ with gifts...