After the suitors were slain and Penelope knew her husband at last, one ending still waited — Telegonus son of Circe, sent to find his father, came to Ithaca and unknowingly killed Odysseus with a sting-ray spear; then he bore the corpse and Penelope to Aeaea, married the queen, and Circe sent them both to the Islands of the Blest.1
The son on Aeaea
When Odysseus had taken an oath from Circe that he should suffer no harm, he shared her bed on Aeaea and she bore him Telegonus. The boy grew on the witch's isle while his father wandered ten years more and won back rocky Ithaca.2
The sting-ray spear⚖
Learning from Circe that he was Odysseus' son, Telegonus sailed in search of his father. Hyginus adds that a storm drove him to Ithaca, where hunger made him lay waste the fields. Odysseus and Telemachus — not knowing who he was — took up arms against the stranger until Telegonus wounded the king with the spear in his hands, barbed with the spine of a sting-ray, and Odysseus died of the wound.3
Penelope and the Blest Isles⚖
When Telegonus recognized whom he had killed, he bitterly lamented, conveyed the corpse and Penelope to Circe, and there married Penelope. Circe sent them both away to the Islands of the Blest — an ending flatly opposed to Homer's faithful reunion, yet attested in the Epic Cycle's last book.4
· EXEUNT ·
How the centuries saw it
In play
Telegony
The lost cyclic sequel — Telegonus son of Circe kills Odysseus with a stingray spear, then brings Penelope and Telemachus to Aeaea.
Telegonus
The son who never knew his father until the spear struck — the Odyssey's darkest afterword in the Cycle.
Epic Cycle
The Telegony closes the Trojan sequence — after the returns, one last homecoming that ends a dynasty.