Anticlea belonged to the family of Autolycus and Amphithea, whose home Homer places on Mount Parnassus. Autolycus was famous for theft and deceptive oaths, skills linked with the favour of Hermes; later mythographers made him the god's son. Hyginus describes his ability to alter the appearance of stolen animals, so that their owners could not recognise them. This was the family into which Odysseus was born, and the connection offered later storytellers a ready explanation for his cunning. Callimachus preserves a different glimpse of Anticlea's youth. In his Hymn to Artemis, she is among the women who accompanied the goddess in the hunt, carrying the swift arrows and quiver. Before the Odyssey remembers her as a waiting mother, another poem remembers her as a companion of the mountain chase.

Her marriage to Laertes, the king of Ithaca, placed her in the household that the Odyssey would make famous. Their children were Odysseus and Ctimene, whom the poem says was later married to a man from Same. Homer repeatedly identifies Odysseus as Laertes' son, but a competing genealogy gave Anticlea a connection with Sisyphus, the ruler associated with Corinth and with the endless stone of the Underworld. Hyginus links that version to a contest of trickery. Autolycus repeatedly stole cattle from Sisyphus and changed their appearance. Sisyphus marked his animals' hooves, recognised the stolen beasts when he visited Autolycus, and recovered them. During the visit he had intercourse with Anticlea, who was subsequently married to Laertes; in this account Odysseus was Sisyphus's child. The alternative parentage connects the hero with two famous tricksters, but it should not replace the family relationship given throughout Homer. Nor does a compressed mythographic notice establish Anticlea's feelings about the encounter. Her later life in the Ithacan household remains the centre of her surviving story.

When Odysseus sailed for Troy, Anticlea was still alive. The Odyssey states this directly when her shade appears, so her death cannot be placed before his departure. Years of war and wandering kept him away, and during that absence she died. Odysseus learned of her death when he travelled, following Circe's instructions, to consult the dead prophet Tiresias. At the ritual trench near Oceanus, the shades gathered around the sacrificial blood. Anticlea appeared before Tiresias, but Odysseus, despite his grief, kept her from drinking until he had questioned the prophet. Afterwards she approached the blood and recognised her son. She asked how he had reached the darkness while still alive and whether he had returned to Ithaca. He explained that necessity had brought him to seek prophecy. Then he asked what had killed her: a long illness, or the gentle arrows of Artemis, the goddess who could bring death to women? His next questions were about the father, wife and son he had left behind.

Her answer is devastating. No wasting disease and no divine arrow had ended her life; she attributed her death to longing for Odysseus, his thoughtfulness and his affection. She told him that Penelope remained in the household, grieving but unmarried, and that Telemachus retained his position and was received at the banquets appropriate to his standing. Laertes had withdrawn to the cultivated land. In winter he slept among the servants near the fire, wearing poor clothing; in summer and autumn he lay on beds of fallen leaves in his vineyard. His hardship gave visible form to his longing for his son. Then Odysseus tried to embrace his mother. Three times he reached towards her, and three times she escaped him like a shadow or a dream. She explained that this was not a deception sent by Persephone: the body no longer remained, and the departed spirit could not be held. Her final instruction was to return to the light and remember what she had told him, so that he could eventually share it with his wife.

A separate account in Hyginus gives Anticlea a different death. She heard a false report that Odysseus had died and took her own life. The brief notice does not name the person who brought the report, and it does not establish exactly when during her son's absence she died. This is a separate tradition, not an explanation supplied by Homer. In the Odyssey, Anticlea herself attributes her death to longing, not to news of a battlefield death. Both traditions place her among the dead before Odysseus reaches her. He receives the family news he needs, but the meeting cannot become the homecoming either of them had awaited. She remains in the realm of shades when he leaves it.