Penelope tested Odysseus with the secret of their immovable bed before she knew him at last; husband and wife were reunited, Laertes stood in the orchard, and Athena stayed the feud of the suitors' kin — though Apollodorus preserves endings where exile, Thesprotian kingship, or slander await them both.1
The secret of the bed
Penelope came down from her chamber and sat opposite the stranger, still disbelieving. She ordered the bed moved outside for him to sleep on — but Odysseus protested: no man could move their bed, for he had built it around a living olive trunk, the root still in the ground. At that proof she knew her husband and wept in his arms.2
Reunion at last
Odysseus told her all his wanderings while Athena held back the dawn. Agamemnon's shade in the underworld had praised Penelope's prudent heart beside Clytemnestra's treachery — and Homer closes the reunion with husband and wife at last in the bed no other man could claim.3
Shades of the suitors
In the underworld the suitors' ghosts gathered gibbering, and Hermes the Helper led them down the dank ways — past the streams of Oceanus, past the rock Leucas, past the gates of the sun and the land of dreams, until they came quickly to the mead of asphodel where the spirits dwell. There Amphimedon told Agamemnon's shade how Odysseus had slain them all in the hall.4
Laertes in the orchard
Odysseus went to his aged father Laertes in the orchard, proved himself by the scar and by memories only they shared, and stood with Telemachus and the loyal servants when the kin of the slain suitors marched against the house armed with spears.5
Athena stays the feud
Battle was joined between the families of the wooers and Odysseus' party until Athena in Mentor's shape commanded peace. Zeus sent a thunderbolt; the combatants dropped their arms and swore oaths — the Homeric ending leaves Odysseus king on Ithaca, feud ended, house restored.6
Thesprotian years
Apollodorus records a continuation Homer does not tell: after the slaughter Odysseus sacrificed to Hades, Persephone, and Tiresias, journeyed through Epirus to the Thesprotians, married queen Callidice, reigned and begot Polypoetes, and on her death returned to Ithaca to find Poliporthes, whom Penelope had borne in his absence.7
Exile and old age⚖
Others say the kinsfolk of the slain suitors accused Odysseus; Neoptolemus, hoping to gain Cephallenia, condemned him to exile. Odysseus went to Aetolia, married a daughter of Thoas, left Leontophonus, and died in old age — an ending that leaves the Homeric reunion intact only if one rejects this branch entirely.8
Antinous and Mantinea⚖
Apollodorus preserves slanders Homer refuses: some say Penelope was seduced by Antinous and sent away by Odysseus to her father Icarius; at Mantinea she is said to have borne Pan to Hermes. Pausanias says the Mantineans themselves tell that Odysseus cast her out for paramours and that she died in Arcadia — the opposite of Agamemnon's praise for her prudent heart in the underworld.9
The harsher slander⚖
A still harsher variant names Amphinomus — the one courteous suitor Homer marks for death at the bow-feast while Penelope keeps faith — as Penelope's alleged lover, and says Odysseus killed his own wife on that account. The poem itself slays Amphinomus and reunites the royal pair; the slander belongs to the Epic Cycle's catalogue of opposed endings, not to the queen of the Odyssey.10
· EXEUNT ·
How the centuries saw it
The Return of Odysseus
Pinturicchio, 1508–1509
A Sienese chamber fresco turned gallery panel: suitors crowd the loom with gifts and music while, through the window, the ship is already in the harbour.
Penelope and the Suitors
John William Waterhouse, 1912
The queen bends to the loom with her back to the window full of pleading men — fidelity painted as concentration, the thread held taut.