The poem's primary speaker is anonymous and genderless, and all Shelley tells us about them is that they "met a traveller from an antique land." The poem pointedly does not include details about what this speaker thinks about the traveller, about Ozymandias, or about the destruction of Ozymandias's works. In fact, the speaker seems to primarily serve a function of distancing the reader from what is being told, as the speaker is relating a story told to him or her by the traveller.

This traveller, the poem's second speaker, is likewise anonymous and genderless (although statistically, their extensive travels to the middle of isolated deserts would make it likely they were male, as women were strongly discouraged from being adventurers or making any sort of perilous journey when Shelley wrote the poem). Some readings of the poem speculate that the "traveller" is actually the ancient Greek writer Diodorus Siculus, whose description of a statue of Ozymandias inspired Shelley to write his poem. In this interpretation, the "meeting" of the speaker and the "traveller" occurs through the act of the speaker reading Siculus's words.

Regardless, the traveller seems interested in art and the way it functions, but spends even more time describing the personality of the poem's third speaker: Ozymandias himself, through his words on the pedestal. Of all three speakers, the poem provides the most details about Ozymandias: he announces himself as a king whose concerns focus on his own greatness, power, and legacy.