Chapter summary
Cyllenian Hermes calls the souls of the slain suitors and leads them with the golden wand, which charms the eyes of men or wakes them when he wills. The souls follow him squeaking, like bats in a cave when one falls from the cluster. They pass the streams of Ocean, the Leucas rock, the gates of the Sun, and the people of dreams, and reach the meadow of asphodel, where the souls dwell, the images of the dead. There they find the soul of Achilles, with those of Patroclus, Antilochus, and Ajax. While they gather around Achilles, the soul of Agamemnon arrives, grieving, surrounded by the souls of those who died with him in the house of Aegisthus. Achilles speaks first: we thought, he says, that you were the dearest of all to Zeus, for ruling over so many warriors at Troy, and Fate reached you early; it would have been better for you to die there, with the honor you had, for the Achaeans would have built you a tomb and your son would have inherited great fame; instead you received the most pitiable death. Agamemnon answers by calling Achilles blessed: he died at Troy, far from Argos, while the best Trojans and Achaeans fell around his body, and he lay in the dust, forgotten by his horses, until Zeus ended the fight with a storm. He recounts the funeral: they washed and anointed the body, the Danaans cut their hair, the mother came from the sea with the sea nymphs, and the cry filled the Achaeans with terror, so that they would have fled to the ships had Nestor not held them back by reminding them who was coming. The nine Muses sang the dirge, and for seventeen days and nights gods and men wept for Achilles; on the eighteenth day they gave him to the fire, with sheep and oxen, and in the morning they gathered his bones into a golden urn given by Thetis, together with those of Patroclus and, apart, those of Antilochus. They raised a great tomb on a headland over the Hellespont, so that men of now and of the future would see it from afar, and Thetis set out splendid prizes for the games. Agamemnon concludes that Achilles did not lose his name with death, and asks what it profits him to have brought the war to its end, if on his return Zeus prepared his ruin by the hands of Aegisthus and of his own wife.
Hermes arrives with the souls of the suitors slain by Odysseus. Agamemnon recognizes among them Amphimedon, son of Melaneus, who had hosted him in Ithaca, and asks what led so many young men, chosen and of the same age, to the dark earth: was it Poseidon, with winds and waves against the ships, or enemies on land when they stole cattle and sheep, or a fight over a city and women? He recalls the visit he made to Ithaca with Menelaus to persuade Odysseus to go to Troy, and the whole month of crossing they spent to win him over. Amphimedon answers that he will tell everything without omitting or falsifying. They all courted the absent man's wife, and she neither refused the hateful marriage nor concluded it, while she plotted their death. She set up a great loom in the palace and announced that, once Odysseus was dead, they should wait until she finished the shroud destined for the hero Laertes (Laertes's shroud), so that no Achaean woman would reproach her for leaving him without a cloth. She wove by day and unravelled by night, by torchlight, for three years, until in the fourth one of the women revealed the trick and they caught her unravelling the cloth, so that Penelope was forced to finish it. Then an evil spirit brought Odysseus to the swineherd's hut, at the edge of the fields, where his son Telemachus also arrived from Pylos, and the two agreed on the death of the suitors. Telemachus went to the city first; the swineherd later took Odysseus, dressed in rags, looking like an old beggar with a staff, and not even the elders recognized him; they hurled insults and blows at him, and he endured them. When Zeus stirred his spirit, Odysseus carried the arms to the room with Telemachus and barred the door, and ordered the woman to propose the bow and the iron, the beginning of their death. None of them strung the bow; when it came to Odysseus's hands, all shouted that they should not give it to him, but Telemachus alone ordered it handed over. He strung it with ease, shot through the iron, stood on the threshold, poured out the arrows, and struck Antinous first; then he shot at the others, and it was clear that a god helped him, because through the palace they were killed without ceasing, furiously, from one side and the other. The bodies still lie in Odysseus's palace, unknown to their kin, who have not yet washed the blood from them or kept vigil over them, which is the honor owed to the dead.
Agamemnon, hearing this, calls Odysseus blessed for winning a wife of such virtue: Penelope, of sound judgment and faithful to her lawful husband, will have the fame of her virtue sung by the gods among men, unlike the daughter of Tyndareus, Clytemnestra, who plotted the crime against her husband and will have a hateful song and bad fame among all women, even the good ones. Thus the shades converse in the houses of Hades.
Odysseus, Telemachus, the swineherd, and the cowherd leave the city and reach the field of Laertes, which the old man won with much labor, with a house surrounded by quarters for the servants and an old Sicilian woman who looks after him in the field. Odysseus tells the others to go in and prepare supper with the best pig, because he wants to test his father, to see whether he recognizes him or not, after so long away. He hands the arms to the servants and goes into the orchard alone. He does not find Dolius, nor his sons, nor the servants, who had gone to gather brambles for the fence, with old Dolius at their head. He finds his father alone, digging around a plant, in a dirty, patched tunic, with leggings of oxhide against the thorns, gloves, and a goatskin cap on his head, nursing his grief.
He approaches as a stranger: he praises the care of the orchard, but says the old man does not take care of himself, goes about dirty and badly dressed, and has no look of a slave but of a king. He asks whose servant he is, whose orchard it is, and whether this really is Ithaca, as a man on the road told him, though that man did not listen to the end. He says he once hosted a man who called himself from Ithaca and son of Laertes, son of Arcesius, and gave him seven talents of gold, a silver mixing bowl, twelve cloaks, rugs, tunics, and four skilled women. Laertes answers, weeping, that he did indeed reach the land he seeks, but that insolent men rule it, and that the gifts were in vain, because his son, if alive, would have repaid them, as the law requires. He asks when that visit was, and says the guest would have been his son, if he ever existed, perhaps eaten by fish or beasts, without his mother, his father, or Penelope weeping for him; and he asks who the stranger is, where he comes from, and where his ship is. Odysseus answers with another lie: he calls himself Eperitus, of Alybas, son of Aphidas, driven off course from Sicania by a spirit, and says it has been five years since Odysseus left him, with good omens. A dark cloud of grief covers Laertes, who takes up dust and pours it on his gray head, groaning. Odysseus, moved, feels a sharp rush rise to his nose at seeing his father so, leaps to embrace and kiss him, and says he is the son, come back in the twentieth year; he tells his father to stop weeping, that haste is needed, and that the suitors lie dead in the house.
Laertes asks for a clear sign. Odysseus shows first Odysseus's scar, which a boar made on him on Parnassus when he went, sent by his parents, to fetch the gifts his grandfather Autolycus had promised him; then he names the trees his father gave him in the orchard, when as a child he followed him asking for each one: thirteen pear trees, ten apple trees, forty fig trees, and the promise of fifty rows of vines. Laertes's knees and heart give way, he embraces his son, who holds him up, as he nearly faints. Restored, he gives thanks to Zeus, if the suitors did indeed pay, but he fears the Ithacans will come soon and send messengers through the cities of the Cephallenians. Odysseus calms him and leads him to the house near the orchard, where Telemachus, the swineherd, and the cowherd are cutting meat and mixing wine. The old Sicilian woman bathes Laertes, anoints him, and dresses him, and Athena breathes vigor into him, making him taller and stronger. Odysseus marvels and says a god has made him more handsome; Laertes answers that if he had the strength he had when he took Neriton, he would have stood beside his son yesterday against the suitors, broken many of their knees, and his son would have rejoiced.
At the table come Dolius and his sons, tired from the field, called by the old Sicilian woman who raised them. On seeing Odysseus and recognizing him, they stand still in astonishment, but he invites them to sit, saying they were expected. Dolius runs with arms outstretched, kisses Odysseus's hand and greets him, and asks whether Penelope already knows of his return or whether they should send her a messenger; Odysseus answers that she already knows. Dolius sits down, and the sons greet Odysseus and sit beside their father.
Among the Ithacans, Rumor runs through the city with the news of the suitors' horrible death. They gather in groups in front of Odysseus's house, carry their own dead away for burial, send the dead of other cities by fishing boats, and go sorrowfully to the assembly. Eupeithes, father of Antinous, the first to fall under Odysseus, rises weeping and says the crime is great and touches everyone: Odysseus took the best men with him in his ships and lost ships and men, and now he has returned and killed the best of the Cephallenians. He proposes to go against him before he escapes to Pylos or to Elis, because it would be a shame for those to come if they did not punish the killers of their sons and brothers, and he declares he does not want to live if he does not avenge his son. The Achaeans are moved. Then Medon and the aoidos arrive, whom sleep had freed in Odysseus's house, and Medon says that Odysseus did not act without the will of the gods, because he saw an immortal god, like Mentor, now in front of Odysseus to encourage him, now stirring the suitors through the hall. Fear takes hold of all. The seer Halitherses, son of Mastor, who sees past and future, answers that the fault is theirs, for they did not heed him or Mentor when they asked them to restrain the insolence of their sons, who devoured the goods and outraged the wife of a hero whom they thought would never return, and he asks them not to go. More than half rise with great clamor, and the others remain gathered in the square. In the most accepted reading, it is those who rise, whom the seer's speech did not please, who, persuaded by Eupeithes, run for arms. Gathered outside the city, they follow Eupeithes, who believes he will avenge his son and will not return.
On Olympus, Athena asks Zeus what he keeps in his heart: whether he will carry on the painful war or set friendship between the two sides. Zeus answers that the plan of vengeance was hers and leaves her free to act as she wishes, but says what is fitting: once Odysseus has been avenged, let faithful oaths be sworn and let him reign forever, and let the gods make the death of sons and brothers be forgotten, so that men love one another again as before and there is wealth and peace in abundance. Athena, who was already eager, descends swiftly from the peaks of Olympus.
After the meal in Laertes's house, Odysseus sends someone to see whether they are already near. One of Dolius's sons goes out, sees them all at the threshold, and gives the warning. Four men arm on Odysseus's side, along with the six sons of Dolius, and Laertes and Dolius too, old but warriors by necessity, and Odysseus goes in front. Athena arrives in the figure and voice of Mentor, and Odysseus rejoices and tells Telemachus, who is about to enter the battle in which the best men are distinguished, not to shame the lineage of his fathers, famed throughout the land for strength and courage. Telemachus promises that, if his father wishes, he will see that he does not shame it, and Laertes exults: son and grandson vie with each other for excellence. Athena tells Laertes to pray to her and to Zeus and to throw his spear; she infuses him with strength, and he throws and strikes Eupeithes on the helmet, and the point pierces through. Eupeithes falls with a crash. Odysseus and Telemachus advance upon the front ranks, striking with spears and swords, and would have killed them all and taken away their return, had Athena not stopped them by shouting that they should cease the war and separate without bloodshed. Fear takes the Ithacans, the arms fall from their hands, and they flee to the city. Odysseus shouts terribly and pursues them like an eagle, and Zeus hurls a thunderbolt that falls before Athena; she tells Odysseus to halt, so as not to anger Zeus. He obeys, glad. Athena, still in the figure and voice of Mentor, sets the pact between the two sides, and the poem ends.
Analysis
The book carries the vengeance from the hall to three places where it must be told or measured. In Hades, the dead say with their own mouths what happened to them and compare it with other deaths, that of Achilles and that of Agamemnon, and with other wives, Penelope and Clytemnestra. In the orchard, the man who has just killed the suitors must be recognized by a grieving old man, and the proof that convinces him is not a weapon but a childhood memory. In the square, the families of the dead demand their price. Each scene asks what a well-lived life is worth, who Odysseus is to his own, and how a vengeance comes to an end.
The poem does not end with the hero's victory nor with the persuasion of the Ithacans. Medon and Halitherses speak and fear takes the others, but a part of the assembly, apparently the larger one, the one that rose with the clamor, follows Eupeithes and runs to arms, and the spiral of deaths stops only when Athena shouts and Zeus hurls the thunderbolt. The peace that closes the Odyssey is a peace decreed from above, with the forgetting of grief as its instrument, and the text does not say whether the families are convinced or merely disarmed.
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