ABSTRACT
Ulysses is alone on the battlefield, far from his comrades, and finds himself facing an army that is moving towards him. Contrary to Ulysses, who seems to live in circular time synchronic to the epics of the gods, the Old Testament heroes are inhabited by doubt and by a task. The thymos in Ulysses is a physical figure, a source of what moves or compels someone, the origin of anger and, indirectly, of all the passions. Besides being skilful a Ulysses or an Achilles must also be virtuous. The doubt of Ulysses arises when he finds himself separated from his army and his comrades, that is, when a contingency leads him to see himself as an individual facing a hostile horde of foreigners who may not recognize him as the great Ulysses, King of Ithaca. The account of Ulysses lets the individual members recognize themselves in this figure and consider their particular conditions for renewing their pact with the community.
