Summary: Book 19
When the suitors retire for the night, Telemachus and
Odysseus remove the arms as planned. Athena lights the room for
them so that they can see as they work. Telemachus tells Eurycleia
that they are storing the arms to keep them from being damaged.
After they have safely disposed of the arms,
Telemachus retires and Odysseus is joined by Penelope. She has come
from the women’s quarters to question her curious visitor. She knows that
he has claimed to have met Odysseus, and she tests his honesty by
asking him to describe her husband. Odysseus describes the Greek
hero—himself, capturing each detail so perfectly that it reduces
Penelope to tears. He then tells the story of how he met Odysseus
and eventually came to Ithaca. In many respects, this story parallels
those that he told to Athena and Eumaeus in Books 13 and 14,
respectively, though it is identical to neither. He tells Penelope
that, essentially, Odysseus had a long ordeal but is alive and freely
traveling the seas, and predicts that Odysseus will be back within
the month.
Penelope offers the beggar a bed to sleep in, but he is
used to the floor, he says, and declines. Only reluctantly does
he allow Eurycleia to wash his feet. As she is putting them in a
basin of water, she notices a scar on one of his feet. She immediately
recognizes it as the scar that Odysseus received when he went boar
hunting with his grandfather Autolycus. She throws her arms around
Odysseus, but he silences her while Athena keeps Penelope distracted
so that Odysseus’s secret will not be carried any further. The faithful
Eurycleia recovers herself and promises to keep his secret.
Before she retires, Penelope describes to Odysseus a dream
that she has had in which an eagle swoops down upon her twenty pet geese
and kills them all; it then perches on her roof and, in a human voice,
says that he is her husband who has just put her lovers to death.
Penelope declares that she has no idea what this dream means. Rising
to the challenge, Odysseus explains it to her. But Penelope decides
that she is going to choose a new husband nevertheless: she will
marry the first man who can shoot an arrow through the holes of
twelve axes set in a line.
Summary: Book 20
Penelope and Odysseus both have trouble sleeping that
night. Odysseus worries that he and Telemachus will never be able
to conquer so many suitors, but Athena reassures him that through
the gods all things are possible. Tormented by the loss of her husband
and her commitment to remarry, Penelope wakes and prays for Artemis
to kill her. Her distress wakes Odysseus, who asks Zeus for a good omen.
Zeus responds with a clap of thunder, and, at once, a maid in an
adjacent room is heard cursing the suitors.
As the palace springs to life the next day,
Odysseus and Telemachus meet, in succession, the swineherd Eumaeus,
the foul Melanthius, and Philoetius, a kindly and loyal herdsman
who says that he has not yet given up hope of Odysseus’s return.
The suitors enter, once again plotting Telemachus’s murder. Amphinomus
convinces them to call it off, however, when a portent of doom appears
in the form of an eagle carrying a dove in its talons. But Athena
keeps the suitors antagonistic all through dinner to prevent Odysseus’s
anger from losing its edge. Ctesippus, a wealthy and arrogant suitor,
throws a cow’s hoof at Odysseus, in response to which Telemachus
threatens to run him through with his sword. The suitors laugh and
laugh, failing to notice that they and the walls of the room are
covered in blood and that their faces have assumed a foreign, ghostly
look—all of which Theoclymenus interprets as portents of inescapable
doom.
