When none of the wooers could bend the bow of Odysseus, the beggar strung it, shot through the twelve axes, and with Telemachus, Eumaeus, and Philoetius cut down the suitors in the hall — Antinous first, Amphinomus among the dead, until the floor ran with blood.1
The bow of Iphitus
Penelope brought down the great bow Odysseus had received from Iphitus son of Eurytus when the two met in Messene — a weapon only its owner could bend with ease. The suitors tried one by one and failed; the beggar asked for a turn and was mocked until Telemachus sent Penelope to her chamber and ordered the hall cleared for the trial.2
The arrow through the axes
Odysseus examined the bow, strung it as easily as a bard strings a lyre, and shot an arrow through all twelve axe-rings without touching the ground. He revealed himself to the suitors, took a second arrow, and struck Antinous in the throat as the chief wooer lifted a cup — the slaughter had begun.3
The mnesterophonia
Telemachus, Eumaeus, and Philoetius barred the doors; Athena in Mentor's shape stood by the rafters. Odysseus and his three allies cut down the suitors with bow and spears — Eurymachus, Amphimedon, Agelaus, and the rest — while the minstrel Phemius begged for mercy and Medon the herald was spared for warning Penelope. Leiodes the soothsayer clasped Odysseus' knees in vain.4
Melanthius and the maids
Melanthius the goatherd, son of Dolius, brought armour from the storeroom to arm the suitors until Odysseus and his men strung him up alive in the rafters. The faithless handmaids who had bedded with the wooers were made to carry out the corpses, then hanged in the courtyard. Eurycleia roused the loyal women with the cry that Odysseus had returned.5
· EXEUNT ·
How the centuries saw it
Ulysses' Revenge on Penelope's Suitors
Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, 1814
Neoclassical daylight on the poem's darkest hour: the beggar in the doorway has already become the archer, and the hall's feast turns to flight.
On screen
Ulysses
Mario Camerini
Kirk Douglas' homecoming climax restages the bow contest and the hall's blood — modern cinema's first major Odyssey massacre.
The Odyssey
Andrei Konchalovsky
The miniseries keeps the suitors' feast and slaughter as the poem's long-deferred justice.
In play
Suitors of Penelope
The hundred-odd wooers remain the Odyssey's emblem of violated hospitality — and of a home reclaimed by the bow.
Odyssey
Books XXI–XXII — the contest of the axes and the closing of the doors — still define how Western narrative stages a reckoning.