[3][4][5][6][7][8][9] Born in Ithaca,[10] the son of an Arvanite klepht and privateer from Roumeli and a Greek mother[11] from a family of notables from Preveza in the Ionian islands.

[12][13] He joined the court of his father's old friend,[14] the Ottoman Albanian ruler Ali Pasha of the increasingly independent Pashalik of Yanina, became one of his commanders and was appointed armatolos of Livadeia in 1816.

Androutos was twice accused by the Greek revolutionary government of treachery owing to his negotiating initiative with his Albanian enemies as a means of effective distraction when he could not repel them.

After falling out with the rebels in 1825, he asked for and received amnesty from the Imperial court, switching allegiances permanently and joining the army of the Ottoman Albanian ruler Omer Vrioni, pasha of Ioannina.

[11][12] His godparents were Maria Sofianou, Katsonis's wife, and Ioannis Zavos, a notable of Ithaca, who gave him a name that relates to the reappropriation of antiquity by Orthodox Christians in the context of the modern Greek Enlightenment.

[29] After his mother's family participated in the failed defense of Preveza against the attack of Ali Pasha in 1798, they sought refuge to Lefkada, where Odysseas was raised for two years along with future poet Ioannis Zambelios.

[30] As his family probably faced economic difficulties, influenced by his father's fame and, as per his biographers, due to his father's old acquaintance with Ali Pasha, at a certain point between 1805 and 1810 Odysseas opted to follow a career as a man of arms and decided to join Ali's army in Ioannina, signifying a shift of his family's orientation towards the only stable power of the area.

[39] While at Yanina, Odysseas, influenced by the religiously liberal environment of the city and probably in an effort to enter a support network, joined the Bektashi order, as Ali pasha is also said to have.

[42] In a short time Odysseas managed to restore security in his region, with minor klephts, like Yannis Gouras, joining his tayfa and stronger, like Dimitrios Panourgias, being forced to submit, and implemented Ali's policy and traditional armatole practice of raids in neighboring areas, namely Athens and Evia.

[51][52] In March 1821 Androutsos went to western Continental Greece, where he tried to organise local chieftains, notables and Albanian agas against the Sultan and made a failed attempt to force the region's armatoloi to revolt by attacking Ottomans in Tatarna of Evritania.

[53] With Diakos, his opponent, dead, the field was now auspicious for Androutsos to return to Livadeia and assume a leading position in eastern Central Greece.

In the consequent clash with his political opponent Ioannis Kolettis and the Areopagus of Eastern Continental Greece, he was accused of collaboration with the Ottomans and the government dismissed him from his commanding duties.

[58] In late 1822 Androutsos contacted the Ottomans and offered to sign a secret agreement under which he would recognize their authority if they gave him a hereditary title of armatoliki.

His energy was consumed by the exigencies of the internal strife among the faction of the Greek administration however he retained his high profile as a warrior and his strong influence among the peasants.

[60] In his letters to the Greek chieftains and to the kodjabashis of Hydra, however, Androutsos claimed that the agreements made with the Ottomans were a ruse so that the revolutionaries would have time to transfer their people to more secure areas.

[61] In a letter to Demetrios Ypsilantis, the president of the Greek Legislative Corps, Androutsos also reports that he attempted to lure the Ottomans under the command of Köse Mehmed Pasha into a trap, to no avail.

[63] In early 1825, as the Greek Government still wanted to take the command and replace him, Androutsos, in anger,[53] began a correspondence with Omer Pasha of Karystos, offering to hand over the Acropolis if aided by Ottoman troops and placed in control of the districts of Livadia, Thebes, and Atalanti.

[22][23] Among those who lived in the same period, Edward Trelawny who was married to his half-sister presents him as a noble figure, while Thomas Gordon calls him a "physically imposing man" who was "bloodthirsty, vindictive and as treacherous as an Arnaut" and "guilty of barbarious acts".

[71] Long-lasting negotiations with the Ottomans, that were conducted by Androutsos and many other chieftains during the revolution, had benefited the Greek cause multiple times and were often arranged for tactical reasons.

Such negotiations were providing the revolutionaries enough time to save Christian populations from plunder and murder by the Ottoman armies, rally troops and, later, fight and defeat their enemies in numerous engagements.

[73] According to William St Clair, Androutsos' higher ambition was only to be a local chieftain and he certainly did not care for any concept of Greece, or regeneration, or the typical Greek and Philhellenic myths.

[75] For them Androutsos had to be inserted into some philhellenic ideal because to them he was a "true Greek", who dwelled in the mountains and was a "colourful" and "powerful" figure with a prominent Greek-sounding name.

[73] In Nikos Engonopoulos Bolivar, a Greek poem (1944) Androutsos is the main protagonist together with southern-Central American revolutionary, Simón Bolívar.