Summary
Irus, the local beggar, tries to drive Odysseus from the door. The suitors set them to box for a goat's-stomach sausage. Odysseus strips, revealing his thighs and shoulders; the suitors are startled. He restrains his blow so as not to kill and breaks Irus's jaw.
Odysseus warns Amphinomus — the one suitor he judges decent — that the master of the house is near, and advises him to go home. Amphinomus is troubled and stays; Athena has bound him to his death.
Penelope, prompted by Athena and beautified in sleep, comes down and reproaches Telemachus, then addresses the suitors, reminding them that proper suitors bring gifts rather than consume a household. They send for gifts; Odysseus is pleased.
Melantho the maid, who has been sleeping with Eurymachus, abuses the beggar. Eurymachus mocks him and throws a stool, which misses and hits a wine-server. Telemachus dismisses the company for the night.
Narrative function
Establishes that the beggar is physically formidable, gives the suitors a final warning, and shows Penelope managing them by the only means available.
Greek concepts in this book
- hybris
- Outrage: violence or humiliation inflicted to assert superiority. The word is used repeatedly of the suitors, and it is the specific charge on which they are killed.
- hedna
- Courtship gifts. Penelope's manoeuvre is to make them behave as suitors ought — which extracts wealth from them and delays a decision.
Connections to other books
Book 22
Amphinomus is killed by Telemachus in Book 22, having been warned and offered escape here.
Book 19
Melantho's abuse here is repeated in Book 19 and is her recorded offence.
Source notes
Whether Penelope's appearance before the suitors is a calculated manoeuvre or is imposed on her by Athena is genuinely undecidable from the text, and both readings have long scholarly histories.
Reading it responsibly
Amphinomus is the poem's insurance against a reading in which the suitors are simply wicked. He is decent, he is warned, and he is killed. The poem could have spared him, as it spares the herald and the bard. It does not, and it says explicitly that Athena would not let him go. The massacre is presented as just and as indiscriminate at the same time, and the poem does not pretend those sit comfortably together.