But Odysseus did horrible things even in the "right" version. Didn't he frame the guy who invented the alphabet for a crime he didn't commit, in order to get him lynched to death by an angry mob, because Odysseus was jealous of the guy's superior intelligence? I'm not aware of any version of the story where Odysseus didn't do that.
Granted, the guy (sorry, I can't remember his name) also pissed Odysseus off by forcing him to admit he wasn't crazy, and thus making him go to war. But if Odysseus didn't want to go to war, he shouldn't have sworn to do so in the first place. You can't have somebody beaten to death as a criminal because they forced you to keep your end of the bargain.