Suitors of Penelope- Greek GroupCollective

The Siege of Odysseus's Hall

During the twenty years Odysseus was absent from Ithaca, first fighting at Troy and then wandering the seas, a host of suitors gathered in his palace to court his wife Penelope. Homer numbers them at one hundred and eight, drawn from Dulichium, Same, Zacynthus, and Ithaca itself. Led by Antinous and Eurymachus, they installed themselves as permanent guests, feasting daily on Odysseus's cattle and stores, drinking his wine, and demanding Penelope choose a new husband.

Penelope delayed them for three years with the stratagem of the web. She announced she would choose a suitor once she finished weaving a funeral shroud for Odysseus's father Laertes, but each night she unraveled the day's work. When her serving women betrayed the deception, the suitors grew more aggressive and plotted to ambush Telemachus on his voyage home.

The Slaughter in the Hall

When Odysseus returned to Ithaca disguised as a beggar, he observed the suitors' behavior firsthand. Antinous struck him with a footstool, and the suitors mocked the stranger in their midst. Penelope proposed the contest of the bow: whoever could string Odysseus's great bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axe-heads would win her hand.

The suitors tried and failed one after another. Odysseus, still in rags, took the bow, strung it with ease, and shot through the axes. Then he turned the bow on the suitors. Antinous was the first to fall, an arrow through his throat as he raised a cup of wine. With Telemachus, the swineherd Eumaeus, and the cowherd Philoetius at his side, Odysseus killed every suitor in the hall. The serving women who had slept with the suitors were hanged. The disloyal goatherd Melanthius was dragged into the courtyard and mutilated.