Chapter summary
Odysseus is left alone in the hall, thinking with Athena about the death of the suitors, and he tells Telemachus to carry the weapons inside. If the suitors ask, he will say that he put them away from the fire because the smoke was soiling them and they no longer looked like the ones Odysseus left behind when he sailed for Troy, and that a god put into his mind a greater reason: wine can lead to quarrel and wounds and spoil the banquet and the court, because iron itself draws men on. Telemachus obeys and asks the nurse Eurycleia to keep the women in their quarters while he stores his father's arms, which the smoke darkens. She tells him she would wish that he might one day come to his senses to take care of the house and the property, and asks who will carry the light for her, since he does not let the maids go out. He replies that the stranger will help him, for he will not tolerate an idle man who touches his bread, from wherever he comes. She falls silent and bars the doors. Father and son carry helmets, shields and spears, with Athena in front, holding a golden lamp, and the light fills the hall. Telemachus sees walls, beams and columns gleaming like fire and says there is a god within; Odysseus orders him to be quiet and not to ask: it is the custom of the gods. He tells his son to go to sleep, because he will stay behind to provoke the maids and his mother, who will question him in tears.
Penelope comes down from her room, like Artemis or Aphrodite, and sits in the chair of ivory and silver made by Icmalius, with a footstool. The maids clear away the remains of the feast and pour out the embers of the braziers to lay fresh wood. Melantho scolds Odysseus a second time: she orders him out, or he will be struck by a firebrand. He answers that it is necessity that forces him to beg, that he was rich once and gave alms to wanderers until Zeus ruined him, and he warns her that she may lose the brilliance she takes pride in, that the mistress may grow angry, that Odysseus may return and that, if he is dead, Telemachus remains, to whom the bad conduct of the maids will not go unnoticed. Penelope hears and rebukes the servant: she knew the queen wanted to question the stranger about her husband. She orders Eurynome to bring a chair with a fleece, and Odysseus sits.
Penelope asks who he is, where he is from, and of what parents. Odysseus praises her: no mortal can blame her, for her fame reaches the heavens like that of a blameless king, under whom the earth and the sea yield fruit and the people prosper. He asks her to question him about the rest, but not about his origin, so that she does not renew his griefs, for it is not fitting to weep in another's house nor to be taken for a drunkard. Penelope replies that the gods destroyed her virtue and beauty when Odysseus departed; the nobles of the islands court her and consume the house, and for this reason she takes no care of guests, suppliants and heralds: she wastes away for Odysseus, while the suitors hurry the marriage and she weaves deceptions. She tells of the trick of the shroud for Laertes: she said they should wait until she finished it, and she wove by day and unwove by night with torches for three years; in the fourth year the maids, shameless bitches, caught her, and she was forced to finish. Now she cannot escape the marriage and has no other plan; her parents press her; her son is irritated by the consumption of the goods, now a man capable of caring for the house. She asks again for the stranger's origin: he was not born of an oak or of a rock.
Odysseus gives in and tells a story: he says he is from Crete, from Knossos, grandson of Minos, and is called Aethon, the younger brother of Idomeneus; he hosted Odysseus when the wind cast him there on his way to Troy, and the fleet was held for twelve days by the Boreas. The narrator says he told many lies resembling truths, and Penelope dissolves into tears, like snow on the mountains when the wind melts it. Odysseus pities his wife, who weeps for her husband beside him, but keeps his eyes fixed beneath his lids, like horn or iron, and hides his tears with cunning.
Penelope tests him: what clothes did Odysseus wear, and who accompanied him? He answers that it is hard, after twenty years, but he describes what is in his mind: a purple cloak of double wool, fastened with a golden brooch in which a dog holds a struggling fawn in its paws, and everyone marveled at how, being of gold, the dog choked it; a fine tunic, shining like the skin of a dried onion. He does not know whether Odysseus had already left the house wearing them or received them on board, and says that he himself gave him a bronze sword, a purple cloak and a fringed tunic. He also describes the herald Eurybates, round-shouldered, dark-skinned and curly-haired, whom Odysseus valued more than the others. Penelope weeps even more on recognizing the signs, and says that the guest, once to be pitied, will now be loved and honored in her house: it was she who folded those garments and fastened the brooch, and she will not receive them back, because Odysseus departed ill-starred for a Troy she does not even want to name. Odysseus asks her to stop weeping and swears that he heard of Odysseus among the Thesprotians, alive, bringing riches, after he lost his companions, who slaughtered the cattle of the Sun, and after he was received by the Phaeacians; King Phaedon showed him the treasures and said Odysseus had gone to Dodona to consult the oak of Zeus about how to return to his homeland, openly or in secret. He swears by Zeus and by the hearth of Odysseus that he will come this very year, between the end of one month and the beginning of the next. Penelope replies that she wishes it were so, but her heart tells her otherwise: Odysseus will not return and the guest will get no escort, for there are no lords in the house like Odysseus was, if ever there was one. She orders the maids to wash him and prepare a bed for him, and to bathe him the next day and let him dine beside Telemachus; the life of men is short, and whoever is harsh is cursed while alive and mocked after death, while whoever is blameless has wide fame.
Odysseus refuses cloaks and blankets, which have been hateful to him since he left Crete, and says he spends the nights awake; nor will he let any woman of the house touch his feet, unless she is an old woman who has suffered as much as he has. Penelope praises his prudence and calls Eurycleia, Odysseus's nurse, to wash him, saying that perhaps Odysseus now has the same feet and hands, for in misfortune mortals grow old quickly. Eurycleia covers her face and weeps: Zeus hated Odysseus more than all, he who burned the most thighs and hecatombs for him; perhaps the women of some distant palace are outraging him, as the maids outrage the stranger. She washes him at Penelope's order and because the stranger has moved her, and adds that she never saw a guest so like Odysseus in body, voice and feet. Odysseus replies that all who saw them together used to say so.
The nurse takes the basin and mixes cold and hot water. Odysseus sits near the hearth and soon turns toward the shadow, because he fears that she, touching him, will recognize the scar and everything will be revealed. She recognizes it, the one a boar gave him on Parnassus, when he went to visit Autolycus, his mother's father, a master of theft and of oaths by the gift of Hermes. The poem tells the origin of the mark: when the grandson was born, in Ithaca, Eurycleia placed him on Autolycus's knees and asked him to find a name; Autolycus replied that, since he had come there in enmity with many, the boy would be called Odysseus, and that when he grew up and visited Parnassus he would receive gifts. Odysseus went, and was received with joy by Autolycus, by his sons and by his grandmother Amphithea; the next day he hunted with his uncles on the mountain, and a boar wounded him above the knee, and he killed it with a thrust of his spear. Autolycus's sons treated him, stopped the blood with incantations, and sent him back with gifts; his parents heard how the scar came about. Back to the scene: as she felt the mark, Eurycleia recognized it and let go of the foot, which struck the basin; the water spilled. Pain and joy seized her at once, her eyes filled with tears, and her voice failed. She touched Odysseus's chin and said he was Odysseus, which she could only know by touching her master. She looked toward Penelope, wanting to warn her that the husband was there, but Athena turned Penelope's mind away, and she did not notice. Odysseus seized the nurse by the throat with his right hand, pulled her close and said: mother, do you want to destroy me? You reared me; I have returned in the twentieth year; since a god has made you know, be silent, and let no one else in the palace know; if a god gives me the suitors to overpower, I will not spare you when I kill the other maids. Eurycleia replied that her will was firm, like stone or iron, and offered to say which maids dishonor him and which are innocent; he refused, because he himself would examine them, and asked for silence and trust in the gods. She fetched more water, because the first had spilled. After the bath and the anointing, Odysseus drew his seat closer to the fire and covered the scar with his rags.
Penelope says she will ask few questions before rest: by day she weeps, watching the maids at their work, and at night, when everyone sleeps, she lies in bed beset with worries. She compares herself to the nightingale, daughter of Pandareus, who sings in spring and mourns her son Itylus, whom she killed out of folly. Her spirit is divided between staying with her son, keeping the goods, respecting her husband's bed and her reputation before the people, or following the best of the Achaeans who court her and bring the finest gifts. While the son was a child he did not let her marry; now that he is grown, he asks her to leave the house, irritated by the consumption of the goods. She tells her dream: twenty geese eat wheat in the palace and she watches them with pleasure; a great eagle comes down from the mountain, breaks their necks and kills them; she weeps, and the Achaean women surround her; the eagle returns, perches on the beam and says in a human voice that it is not a dream but a good reality: the geese are the suitors, and she, who was the eagle, is now the husband who has returned to bring them an unseemly fate. Penelope awoke and saw the geese eating as before. Odysseus says the dream admits no other interpretation, for Odysseus himself showed how it will come true, and ruin threatens all the suitors. Penelope replies that dreams are confused and not all come true: there are two gates, one of horn and one of ivory, and those that pass through the ivory deceive, while those that pass through the horn are fulfilled; she does not believe hers came that way. She announces that the hateful morning is coming, the one that will take her from Odysseus's house, and therefore proposes a contest: the twelve axes that Odysseus used to line up and pierce with an arrow from afar. Whoever strings the bow most easily and shoots through the twelve axes, to him she will go, leaving the house. Odysseus tells her not to delay the contest, for Odysseus will come back before the suitors string the bow and pierce the iron. Penelope says she cannot stay without sleep, and that the gods have given each mortal his portion; she goes up to the upper room, where she has wept since Odysseus left, and orders the guest to lie down in the house, on the floor or on a bed the maids will prepare for him. She goes up with the maids and weeps for her husband until Athena pours sleep over her eyes.
Analysis
The book builds an interrogation in which each knows what the other does not know or does not say. Odysseus knows who he is and lies with true details; Penelope knows what clothing her husband left in, and after the guest gets it right, she says the guest will be a friend, but insists that her husband will not return. The text does not say whether she suspects; it says what she does: she treats the beggar as an honored guest, has him washed and, at the end, announces the contest of the bow. Both readings, she without knowing or already suspicious, fit the lines.
The scar puts the body in the place of the word: what Odysseus sustains with the false name and the Cretan story, the nurse dismantles with her hand. The digression ties the mark to the name: Odysseus is, from the cradle, the name of one who arrives in a place having quarreled with many, and the scar comes from a hunt on Parnassus made to receive gifts. The recognition does not pass to Penelope because Athena diverts her attention; the poem leaves the nurse as the only one who knows, and Odysseus compels her to silence with the threat of death.
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