by Homer
under the porch. He lashed the gates with it tightly.
Then he returned inside to the chair that he rose from.
Like a Lyre String
He watched Odysseus, already handling the great bow,
turning it every way and trying it out there.
Had worms gnawed the horn while its master was far off?
So a suitor might glance at his neighbor and tell him,
“Look at the bow fancier. This beggar is crafty;
no doubt a bow like that one lies in his own house.
Or now he’d like to make one, the way that he turns it
that way and this way. The wanderer knows about hurting.”
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Another younger suitor overbearingly answered,
“If only the beggar could gain wealth in the same way
now as he finds strength for stringing the great bow!”
Suitors blabbed as Odysseus, full of his own plans,
deftly raised the outsize bow and looked at it closely.
♦ At last as a man skilled with a lyre and with singing
easily stretches the newest string to its own peg
and ties the twisted sheep-gut tightly at both ends,
Odysseus strung the outsize bow with no struggle.
His right hand briskly pulled and tested the bowstring:
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it sang to his touch like the beautiful trill of a swallow.
Passing the Test of the Axes
What great pain for the suitors! All of their faces
were pale and Zeus made a sign, thundering loudly.
Long-suffering, godlike Odysseus felt glad:
crooked-counseling Kronos’s son sent him an omen.
Taking a bare and fast-flying arrow that lay on
the table—the rest were still in the hollow quiver,
all the weapons Akhaians soon would be tasting—
he nocked the shaft on the bridge, drew back on the bowstring
and took dead aim, all from the chair that he sat in,
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and shot it straight. He missed each one of the axes,
all those helves: he’d guided the bronze-weighted arrow
beyond them and out. He turned to Telemakhos saying,
“The stranger who sits in your hall, Telemakhos, brings no
shame to the test. I missed no mark, my labor was not long
stringing the bow and my strength has hardly been shaken,
not as the scoffing suitors claimed when they scorned me.
“But now it’s time for a dinner indeed for the Akhaians
while there’s light. Other enjoyments can follow—
the lyre and dancing—they always go with a good feast.”
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Father and Son Well Armed
He nodded a sign with his brows. Telemakhos belted
a sharp sword on. The dear son of godlike Odysseus,
having a spear in hand, went close to his father’s
chair and stood there, bronze weaponry shining.
BOOK 22 Revenge in the Great Hall
Antinoos First
Now shedding his rags Odysseus, full of his own plans,
jumped on the wide threshold clutching the bow and its quiver
packed with arrows. He emptied the fast-flying weapons
there at his feet and called aloud to the suitors.
“So indeed our harmful contest is ending:
but now for another target no one has struck yet—
if only I hit it! Apollo, give me a great name.”
♦ He aimed at Antinoos first, a pitiless arrow.
The man was about to raise a beautiful goblet
of gold with a pair of grips, he held it with both hands
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to drink his wine and death was far from his thoughts there:
who would guess, among his friends at a good meal,
one man in the crowd, however forceful he might be,
would cause him harm or death, the workings of black doom?
Odysseus aimed and struck his throat with an arrow,
the point went straight through the soft neck and the young man
slumped to one side. The goblet fell from his stricken
hand and mortal blood came fast from his nostrils
in thick dark spurts. He kicked at the table and moved it
away from him swiftly, dumping food on the floor there,
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griming cutlets and bread.
The Stranger Will Surely Die
Shouts from the suitors
rose throughout the hall. Spotting Antinoos fallen
they jumped from their chairs, dashed through the room in a frenzy
and searched the well-built walls this way and that way.
No shield was about, no rugged spear to be hefted.
They blasted Odysseus, one man telling him fiercely,
“Stranger, shooting at men is cursed and you’ll never
take part in a contest. Your headlong doom is a sure thing.
You’ve killed the best young man by far on the island
of Ithaka now and vultures will feed on you right here.”
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All the Suitors Will Die First
Everyone spoke that way supposing Odysseus
killed the man unwillingly. Blind, they could not know
the lines of death for every man had been tightened.
Odysseus, full of his plans, glared darkly and told them,
“You dogs, you never thought I’d return to my own house
from Trojan country. So you wasted my household,
forced my female workers to lie alongside you
and lawlessly craved my wife while I was alive still,
dreading no God who rules broadly in heaven
and thinking no man in times to come would be outraged.
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Now for you all the lines of death have been tightened.”
A Plea for Making Amends
Soon as he’d spoken they all were taken by greenish
fear and each one looked to escape from a steep
doom. Only Eurumakhos answered swiftly by saying,
“If you’re the Ithakan truly, Odysseus back home,
you said that right. All the Akhaians have acted
recklessly often, both in the field and the great hall.
But now the man to blame for everything lies here.
All this harm was plainly Antinoos’s doing.
Not so much that he wanted or needed to marry:
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he planned otherwise—the son of Kronos would not end
things that way—to be lord of Ithaka’s well-tilled
land himself. He’d even ambush and murder your own son.
So now his death is right. But pity your own good
people in time making amends in the country
ourselves for all the food and wine in your great hall.
Every suitor will bring you the value of twenty
oxen tallied in bronze and gold. In time we will soften
your heart. Before then, no one blames you for anger.”
Odysseus, full of designs, glared darkly and told him,
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“Eurumakhos, not if you gave me all of your father’s
wealth—what’s yours right now then added from elsewhere—
I’d still not keep these hands from killing you suitors,
not till everyone paid for all of his crimes here.
Now your choice is whether to face me and fight me
or try to avoid death, to run from your own doom.
But no one escapes, I think. Your deaths will be headlong.”
Fight, Then
He stopped as the knees and hearts loosened in each man.
Still Eurumakhos called out again to the suitors:
“Friends! Because this man won’t stop his relentless
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hands from
gripping that shining bow and its quiver—
he’ll shoot from the planed threshold till all of us die here—
let’s remind ourselves of our war-lust and quickly.
Unsheath your swords, hold up tables before you
to guard against fast-killing arrows, all of us charge him
together and drive him back from the door and the threshold!
Then hurry and go through the city, raising an outcry.
Shortly this man will have shot with a bow for the last time.”
He spoke that way, drew out a brazen and two-edged
sword sharpened on both sides and, frightfully shrieking,
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bounded straight at the man. But godlike Odysseus
shot at the same time, hitting his chest at the nipple:
the fast point lodged in his liver. Eurumakhos’s weapon
dropped from his hand to the floor, he doubled and fell down
over a table, dumping a two-handled goblet
and sprawling food. He beat on the ground with his forehead,
heart in agony, both feet kicking and jarring
♦ a chair. Death-mist promptly flowed on his eyeballs.
Telemakhos’s First Killing
Amphinomos too had made for far-famed Odysseus.
Drawing a sharp sword he had lunged at him head-on
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to drive him away from the door. But Telemakhos struck him
first with a bronze-tipped spear from behind that impaled him
between the shoulders, driving straight through the breastbone.
He fell with a thud, rapping the floor with his head hard.
Telemakhos then leaped back, letting the long spear
stay in Amphinomos, worried some other Akhaian
would rush him there as he pulled out the long-shafted weapon
or stab with a sword as he leaned over the body.
He ran and came to the father he loved in a hurry.
Weapons and Armor Needed
He stood up close and his words had a feathery swiftness,
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“Father, I’ll get you a pair of spears and a shield now,
an all-bronze helmet—a tight fit on your temples.
I’ll arm myself as I go and I’ll offer the swineherd
and cowherd weapons. For now it’s best to be armored.”
Odysseus, full of designs, answered by saying,
“Hurry and get them. I still have arrows to guard me
but I could be forced from the door, being alone here.”
After he’d spoken Telemakhos, minding his father,
went to the storeroom. Finding the well-known war-tools
he took four shields, eight spears and the brazen
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helmets, four in all, crested with horsehair.
He carried them back as fast as he could to his father.
First he armored himself: bronze circled his body.
Both slaves donned the beautiful arms in the same way.
They stood close to their knowing and crafty Odysseus.
The Battle Builds
Long as the arrows held out to guard him their master
aimed at suitors again and again in the great hall.
He struck each time and they fell, close to each other.
After no more arrows remained for the master,
he stood the bow against a post of the well-built
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hall—it leaned on a shining wall by the doorway—
and took a four-plied shield to cover his shoulders.
He clapped a well-made helmet next on his strong head,
a frightening horsehair crest nodding above it,
and grasped two hard spears pointed with sharp bronze.
Another Way Out
Another door in the well-built wall of the great room
was raised in back by its threshold. It led to a passage
out of the well-based hall and its doors were a tight fit.
Odysseus told the godlike swineherd to stand there
and watch for only a man at a time could approach it.
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But now Agelaos called to the rest of the suitors,
“My friends, won’t someone go right now through the back door
and tell the people to raise an alarm in a hurry?
Then this man will have used that bow for the last time.”
But now Melanthios told him, the driver of goat-flocks,
“By no means, Agelaos, nourished by Zeus. That beautiful courtyard
door is fearfully close and it’s hard, the mouth of that passage.
One man could hold off plenty—if the man were a brave one.
Come on then, I could bring you arms from the storeroom
to guard yourselves. I think the arms are inside there,
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nowhere else, laid down by his bright son and Odysseus.”
Weapons for the Suitors
Having spoken the goatherd Melanthios climbed up
through venting holes in the wall to Odysseus’s arms-room.
From there he took out twelve big shields and as many
spears and helmets of bronze, crested with horsehair.
