The Odyssey ends in Ithaca, with Odysseus's vengeance already accomplished and a peace imposed by the gods. After he kills the suitors, three scenes remain: Penelope recognizing him, he meeting his father again, and the families of the dead trying to take revenge.
Penelope, warned by her nurse Eurycleia, does not believe the beggar is her husband: she thinks some god killed the suitors and that Odysseus died far away. To test him, she has the nurse move the marriage bed out of the room he built. Odysseus is irritated and describes how he made the bed around an olive tree in the courtyard, so that the bed cannot be moved. Only the two of them know this sign, and she weeps, runs to embrace him, and surrenders. They spend the night telling each other what they suffered, and Odysseus warns that there is still "a labor without measure" to complete.
In Hades, the souls of the dead suitors arrive guided by Hermes and tell Agamemnon and Achilles what happened. Agamemnon praises Penelope, whose fame, he says, will never perish. Odysseus goes to the countryside and finds his father, Laertes, old and in mourning. Without making himself known, he tests him with lies and, when the old man breaks down in tears, shows him the scar and lists the trees Laertes gave him in childhood; Laertes recognizes him.
The Ithacans, urged on by Eupeithes, father of Antinous, march armed against Laertes's house to avenge the dead. Odysseus, Telemachus, Laertes, and the servants face the group, and Laertes kills Eupeithes with a spear throw. The fighting stops only when Zeus hurls a thunderbolt before Athena, who, in the figure and voice of Mentor, seals the pact between the two sides. Zeus's decision, given to his daughter on Olympus, is to make the death of sons and brothers be forgotten and to give Ithaca wealth and peace. The poem ends thus, with order restored by the same goddess who accompanied Odysseus from the first book to the last.