The goatherd of Ithaca who sided with Penelope's suitors, taunted the disguised Odysseus, brought them arms from the store-room, and was hanged alive with his limbs mutilated when the king reclaimed his house.1
Melanthius led the best she-goats of the herds to feast the wooers and mocked the stranger at the door, threatening to ship him far from Ithaca and sell him for a slave. He told the suitors he had seen the man before, brought by the swineherd Eumaeus.2
At Antinous' bidding he built a fire and brought fat to soften the bow; when Telemachus still failed, he urged fetching more goats for a trial on the morrow. In the crisis of the contest he ran to the store-room for armour, and Eumaeus and Philoetius ambushed him at the threshold.3
After the suitors fell, Odysseus' men bound Melanthius hand and foot, hoisted him to the rafters, and left him to die — punishment for feeding the enemies of the house and bringing them shields and spears in the hour of battle.4
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