Here at O.22.001–007 is the moment when Odysseus finally strips off the rags of a beggar and stands tall at the threshold as he scatters at his feet the arrows from his quiver. He will now pick up the arrows, one by one, and shoot them at the suitors. And he starts by taking aim at Antinoos. In Plato’s Ion, this moment is treated as the greatest of all scenes pictured in Homeric poetry. In a conversation with the rhapsode Ion, who specializes in the performance of Homeric poetry, Plato’s Socrates is making a mental list of what he considers to be the greatest Homeric scenes. First place in the list goes to the moment that we see here at the beginning of Rhapsody 22, where Odysseus stands at the threshold and pours the arrows from his quiver. This moment in the Odyssey, as we see in the order of mention by Plato’s Socrates, outranks even the greatest moment in the Iliad, which gets only second place. The Iliadic moment is where Achilles lunges at Hector, evidently for the last time. And third place goes to any one of those moments in the Iliad where Andromache or Hecuba or Priam, in that order, are shown lamenting. In this mental list of Plato’s Socrates, we see two examples of fear or terror and one combined example of pity—two emotions that are considered to be primary in tragedy as analyzed by Aristotle in his Poetics. I quote here the relevant wording, where Plato’s Socrates is speaking directly to the Homeric rhapsode Ion (Plato Ion 535b–c):

ΣΩ. Ἔχε δή μοι τόδε εἰπέ, ὦ Ἴων, καὶ μὴ ἀποκρύψῃ ὅτι ἄν σε ἔρωμαι· ὅταν εὖ εἴπῃς ἔπη καὶ ἐκπλήξῃς μάλιστα τοὺς θεωμένους, ἢ τὸν Ὀδυσσέα ὅταν ἐπὶ τὸν οὐδὸν ἐφαλλόμενον ᾄδῃς, ἐκφανῆ γιγνόμενον τοῖς μνηστῆρσι καὶ ἐκχέοντα τοὺς ὀιστοὺς πρὸ τῶν ποδῶν, ἢ Ἀχιλλέα ἐπὶ τὸν Ἕκτορα ὁρμῶντα, ἢ καὶ τῶν περὶ Ἀνδρομάχην ἐλεινῶν τι ἢ περὶ Ἑκάβην ἢ περὶ Πρίαμον, τότε πότερον ἔμφρων εἶ ἢ ἔξω {c} σαυτοῦ γίγνῃ καὶ παρὰ τοῖς πράγμασιν οἴεταί σου εἶναι ἡ ψυχὴ οἷς λέγεις ἐνθουσιάζουσα, ἢ ἐν Ἰθάκῃ οὖσιν ἢ ἐν Τροίᾳ ἢ ὅπως ἂν καὶ τὰ ἔπη ἔχῃ;

SOCRATES: Hold it right there. Tell me this, Ion—respond to what I ask without concealment. When you recite well the epic verses [epos plural] and induce a feeling of bedazzlement [ekplēxis] for the spectators [theōmenoi]—when you sing [as the subject of your singing] Odysseus leaping onto the threshold and revealing himself to the suitors and pouring out the arrows at his feet, or [as another subject of your singing] Achilles rushing at Hector, or [as still another subject of your singing] something connected to the pitiful things about Andromache or Hecuba or Priam— are you then in your right mind, or outside yourself? Does your spirit [psukhē], possessed by the god [enthousiazein], suppose that you are in the midst of the actions you describe in Ithaca or Troy, or wherever the epic verses [epos plural] have it?

This description captures the high drama of Homeric performance, as here at the beginning of Rhapsody 22.

The rapid succession of actions at the end of Rhapsody 21, where the stringing of the bow had been followed immediately by the shooting of the first arrow, is now matched at the beginning of Rhapsody 22 by a similarly rapid succession of actions taken by Odysseus. The king shows no hesitation as he proceeds to kill Antinoos, O.22.008–021. And he will thereafter keep on killing the suitors, one after the other. Correspondingly, the transition from Rhapsody 21 to Rhapsody 22 shows no hesitation: the shooting of the first arrow, which wins the contest in archery at the end of one rhapsody, is followed immediately by the shooting of the next arrow that kills Antinoos here in the next rhapsody—to be followed in turn by the successive killings that will ultimately eliminate all the other would-be husbands of Penelope.

Now, at the beginning of Rhapsody 22, a third test awaits Odysseus: he must kill the suitors. The king shows no hesitation. Having just won the contest in archery with the very first arrow that he shoots after stringing his mighty bow, he now goes on to aim his next arrow at Antinoos, who has been by far the worst of those leftover Achaeans of Ithaca. Odysseus shoots the arrow, and it hits the mark: Antinoos is instantly killed, O.22.008–021. The successive arrows, each one of them, will also hit the mark, and he keeps on shooting until there are no arrows left, O.22.116–119. Then, after Odysseus has run out of arrows to shoot, he arms himself with his armor for hand-to-hand combat, O.22.120–125. The slaughter of the suitors will continue until in the end all are killed.

At the end of Rhapsody 21, Odysseus has already passed, in rapid succession, two of three successive tests that needed to be endured by the true king of Ithaca. That is, he has already performed a stringing of his mighty bow and has already won an ultimate contest in archery by executing a perfect shot with the very first arrow that he shoots from the bow. But now, at the beginning of Rhapsody 22, the third test awaits Odysseus. He must now kill the suitors, and the successive killings that follow will ultimately eliminate all the would-be husbands of Penelope. In the end, Odysseus will be the only Achaean left standing. And he has by now been revealed as the only true husband, the only true king. So, he has become the best of the Achaeans in the Homeric Odyssey. But a question remains. Now that all the suitors have been killed, what will happen to the other characters in the Odyssey who had turned against the king in the course of his lengthy absence? Here is where things get really ugly. The extreme cruelty of the retribution that awaits these characters, as we see it narrated here in Odyssey 22, presents the modern reader with moral problems that cannot be evaded.

Odysseus kiling Penelope’s suitors. Attic red-figure skyphos, ca. 440 BCE. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

As noted in the comment at O.22.001-125, Odysseus passes three tests in proving that he is the lawful husband of Penelope and the genuine king of Ithaca: (1) the stringing of the bow, (2) the contest in archery, and (3) the killing of the suitors. Here at O.22.005, we see that the Greek word referring to the second test, the contest in archery, is aethlos (āthlos) ‘ordeal’. Now that he has performed his winning shot, Odysseus is saying that the contest has ‘reached an outcome’, as expressed by the verb ek-teleîn, O.22.005. On the use of this word aethlos (āthlos) ‘ordeal’ with reference to the heroic Labors of Hēraklēs, see the comment at O.11.620–624. On the use of this same word with reference to the ‘ordeals’ of warfare, see the comments at I.03.125–128; also at O.03.262 and O.04.170. On its use with reference to contests in athletics, see the comment at O.08.096–103. The masculine noun aethlos (āthlos), in referring to the ritualized ‘ordeal’ of āthlētai ‘athletes’, is correlated with the neuter noun aethlon (āthlon), which refers to a ‘prize’ that is won in competition among athletes.

Seeing that Odysseus has just now shot an arrow that has killed the suitor Antinoos, the rest of the suitors are feeling outraged, assuming as they do that this killing was accidental, O.22.031–032. They revile Odysseus, whom they still fail to recognize, exclaiming that he has accidentally shot the very best of all the young men in Ithaca, O.22.029–030. In effect, they are delusionally assuming that Odysseus has killed the best of the Achaeans in Ithaca. They exclaim further that they will kill the would-be beggar and feed his corpse to vultures, O.22.030, adding derisively: so, don’t expect to win some prize for this shot of the arrow, O.22.027–028. And the word that is used here at O.22.027 for ‘prize’ is aethlon (āthlon), O.22.027. Whereas the masculine noun aethlos (āthlos) refers to the ritualized ‘ordeal’ of competition, as noted in the comment at O.22.005, the neuter noun aethlon (āthlon) ordinarily refers to a ‘prize’ that is won in the competition—as also noted in the comment at O.22.005.

Reacting to the death of Antinoos, the remaining suitors were now ‘making likenesses’, as expressed by the verb eïskein ‘make likenesses, liken’, O.22.031. That is, each one of them was ‘making likenesses’ in his own mind. They made things up in their own minds, and these things were not just illusions: they were delusions. They were still imagining that Odysseus was a mere beggar, since he had up to now looked like a beggar. The likeness of Odysseus to a beggar made the suitors imagine something different than what was really happening. They imagined that the shooting of Antinoos must have been a grotesque accident. After all, how would a mere beggar dare to shoot the best of the Achaeans in Ithaca? The suitors’ mistaken way of thinking shows a lack of the mental qualities it would take to recognize Odysseus as the true king, as the best of the Achaeans. By the time Odysseus reveals himself as his true self, it is too late for the suitors. Possession of the mental qualities that they would have needed to have—but did not have—for a timely recognition of Odysseus is expressed here by way of the verb noeîn ‘take note (of), notice’, O.22.032. This verb, derived from nóos, which means basically ‘mind, way of thinking’, signals the capacity to recognize what is true. Such a capacity is characteristic of Alkinoos, who ‘notices’ things about the disguised Odysseus, as expressed by way of the verb noeîn ‘take note (of), notice’ at O.08.094 and at O.08.533, where the power of this king to ‘notice’ is what leads ultimately to the self-revelation of Odysseus to the Phaeacians in Odyssey 8. See the comments at O.08.094 and at O.08.533; see also the anchor comment at I.05.669 on noeîn ‘take note (of), notice’. Relevant also is the note at I.13.726–735 about a generalizing statement that is made in those lines: it is said there that a person’s nóos ‘mind’, I.13.732, is what enables him or her to ‘recognize’, gignōskein, I.13.734; see also the comment at O.17.292. In the case of Alkinoos, his mental power to ‘notice’ is the motivation for his “speaking name” (nomen loquens), alkí-noos, ‘he who has the power [alk- as in alkē ‘power’] of mind [nóos]’. By contrast with Alkinoos, whose “speaking name” is positive, Antinoos as the worst of the suitors has a “speaking name” that is negative: antí-noos ‘he who has a mind [nóos] that is opposed [anti]’. The opposition between the meanings of these two names may also go deeper, involving the root *nes- in the older sense of ‘return to life and life’: Alkinoos had the mental power to promote such a return, whereas Antinoos was in the end powerless to prevent it (on this point, see also H24H 10§10).

On the infusion of strength as by way of divinely breathing it into the hero and thus reminding him of his own menos in the sense of his ‘power’, see the comments at I.10.482, I.11.508, I.15.059–060, I.15.262. Here at O.22.203, the menos ‘power’ that is breathed-out had been presumably breathed-in by divine agency.

analysis of the attestations of eukhesthai + aorist infinitive (and the series to which this verse belongs)

analysis of the meaning and uses of piphauskesthai, here in the sense of ‘reveal through speech’ (in the context of analyzing the semantic and formal confusion of piphaskein and piphauskesthai)

analysis of the differentiation of blame in the Odyssey (vs. in the Iliad) and the muting of the mēnis theme in it, here especially regarding the suitors, their relatives, and Odysseus and his family