(Day 37 of the poem's main action, continuing; the great hall of the palace at Ithaca)

A second beggar walks into the hall. He is Arnaeus, whom the local lads called Irus because he ran their errands like the goddess Iris of the gods, a great gluttonous swaggerer of a man, broad in the belly. He sees the old stranger sitting in the doorway and orders him out: Be off, old man, before I drag you out by the heels; this is my place at the master's gate. Ulysses, calm: there is room enough in this doorway for two; I am as poor as you and we will not quarrel — but if you push me, old as I am I will cover your mouth and chest with your own blood. Irus answers in coarser language: I will knock your teeth out of your head like a boar's tusks.

Antinous overhears, jumps up delighted, calls the company. Here is the finest sport — a stranger and Irus quarrelling — let them box it out. Whichever wins gets the great goat's-paunch on the fire there, stuffed with blood and fat — the first cut — and the freedom of this house to beg here without rival. The suitors crowd round laughing. Ulysses says: swear that none of you will strike me a foul blow on Irus's side, for I am an old man and weak. They swear. Telemachus says: whoever lays a hand on the stranger will have me to deal with first.

Ulysses takes off the outer rag and girds the under-tunic high — and the broad chest, the great shoulders, the thighs and arms still strong with the marrow of a fighting man stand out for all to see; Athena thickens his limbs as he stands. The suitors stare and mutter: Irus will soon be no Irus at all. Look at the thigh the old man has under his rags. Irus's knees go from under him; he hangs his head; he wants to slip away. Antinous takes him by the shoulder roughly: if this old man beats you, I will put you on a ship to King Echetus on the mainland — he cuts off ears and nose with the cruel bronze, and tears out a man's privates for the dogs.

They square off. Irus swings clumsily for the right shoulder. Ulysses considers in a heartbeat — if I hit him with all my strength, he will die at once on the floor, and these men may suspect who I am. He pulls the punch; he hits Irus below the ear, on the neck, breaking in the bone. Blood gushes from the mouth; Irus drops gnashing his teeth, kicking the floor. The suitors fall back roaring with laughter. Ulysses grips Irus by the foot and drags him out through the doorway, across the porch, to the outer courtyard, props him sitting against the wall, puts his staff in his hand, and says: sit here, beggar, and keep the dogs and pigs off; that is your office now. He walks back inside.

The suitors crowd around him with congratulations as if he were a winning athlete. Stranger, may Jove and the other gods give you whatever you most wish, since you have stopped that beggar from hanging about the gate; he was getting on our nerves; we will ship him to Echetus tomorrow. Antinous lays before him on the table the great goat's-paunch stuffed with blood and fat, the prize. Amphinomus — the decent one, the son of Nisus of Dulichium — takes from the cupboard two fine loaves and a golden cup of wine, brings them across with a courteous salute: good fortune to you, father stranger; you have had hard times; may you find better days.

Ulysses takes the wine, looks Amphinomus in the eye, and says quietly the warning of this book. Amphinomus, you have understanding. I will tell you the truth of one thing. Man is the lightest of all creatures the earth feeds — while the gods give him strength and prosperity he thinks no evil will touch him, when they turn the day against him he bears it as best he may, for the heart of men changes with the day God sends him. I myself was once a strong young man with great property; I trusted my brothers and my own arm, I did much that was reckless and stupid, and the gods turned me out of all of it — that is the lesson, and that is why no man should ever say in his heart "I will do such-and-such," for the next hour may turn him out of doors. Look around you. Look at what these suitors are doing — wasting another man's wealth, dishonouring his wife. He will not be away for ever; he may be very near at hand even now; when he comes, the parting between him and them will not be without blood. So, friend, leave this house. Go home. Do not be here when he comes. The gods may yet send you home in time. He pours a libation, drinks, returns the cup. Amphinomus walks slowly back to his place, his head bowed, foreseeing evil — but it was already fated, by Athena's will, that he should die by Telemachus's spear.

Athena puts it in Penelope's mind to come down to the hall to make the suitors's hearts hotter and to make her dearer to her husband and her son. Penelope tells Eurynome: the heart in me, which has hated coming down to them, draws me down now. I will say a word to my son who is in there alone among them. Eurynome: yes — but first wash and anoint your face; do not come down with the print of tears on you. Penelope: the gods took away my beauty the day my husband sailed; I will not anoint. She asks for two maids to accompany her. While she sits, Athena pours sleep upon her eyelids; in that sleep the goddess enhances her with the immortal beauty Aphrodite wears when she goes to the dance, makes her taller, makes her form fuller, makes her complexion brighter than ivory new-sawn. Penelope wakes refreshed and goes down with Autonoe and Hippodamia on either side. She stands by the central pillar of the hall, the veil across her face, the maids on either side. The suitors go weak in the knees with desire — every one of them prays to lie that night beside her.

She turns to Telemachus before she speaks to the suitors. Telemachus, your judgement is not what it was. You let a stranger be beaten in this house — a man you took in. What is the use of being a man if your guests are mistreated under your hand? Telemachus answers as a young man being publicly corrected: Mother, I cannot deny it. I have grown, but the suitors who fill this house go beyond what I can prevent. As for the beggar, you should know — he won. He gave Irus a blow that put him in the courtyard against the wall; Irus is sitting there now like a drunkard who cannot get up.

Then Eurymachus, the smoothest of the suitors, addresses the queen openly: daughter of Icarius, queen Penelope — if all the men of Greece could see you standing here, you would have suitors to fill the hall twice over; for you surpass every woman of our age in beauty, in stature, in mind. Penelope answers with a long beautiful speech that is the second of her great public statements (after book 16). Eurymachus, the gods took away my beauty the day the Greeks sailed for Troy and my husband with them. If he should come back the world would set me higher; without him I dwindle. The day he left this house he took me by the hand and said: "wife, not every Greek will come safely home from Troy; the Trojans are no mean fighters. If I do not come back, when our son is grown to a man, marry whom you will and leave the house". My son is grown to a man. The day is approaching. — But it is a strange wooing this, in which suitors devour the property of the woman they court. The custom was always for suitors to bring oxen and sheep to feast her friends, to bring her gifts, not to eat down her house. Ulysses, hearing this, is delighted: she means to flatter gifts out of them; her heart is set on other things.

Antinous answers the prompt: queen, you must accept the gifts; we will not stir from this house until you marry the best man among us — but the gifts are right and good. Each suitor sends his servant for his offering. Antinous's man brings a long embroidered robe with twelve gold pin-brooches. Eurymachus's man brings a great gold chain with amber beads that catches the firelight like the sun. Eurydamas's man brings drop-earrings three-pearled, full of charm. Peisander son of Polyctor brings a fine necklace. Each of the others sends his gift in turn. Penelope receives them gravely and returns to her upper chamber with the maids carrying the spoil.

The suitors turn to evening drinking and dancing. Three braziers are set up in the hall with logs of dry pine to give light; the maids come in to tend the fires. Ulysses steps forward to the braziers: go up to the queen, women, and sit with her at her spinning; I will hold the torches here all night for the suitors — I am used to such labour, I would not be tired. Some of the maids laugh, but Melantho, whom Penelope had reared from a child like her own daughter, who slept now with Eurymachus, turns on him: poor fool, you have lost what little wits you had — go and sleep in the smithy, or some public guest-house, and stop standing here in front of all these men talking, the wine has muddled you. You are puffed up because you knocked down Irus; some better man than Irus will come along to break your head. Ulysses scowls: you slattern — I will go up and tell Telemachus what you have said, and he will have you torn limb from limb. The maids scatter, white in the cheek.

Ulysses takes his stand by the braziers, brooding on what is to come. Eurymachus, having drunk freely, points at the beggar to make the company laugh: I think it is no chance this man has come into the house of Ulysses; I think the light shines off his bald head as if he were a torch himself. Stranger, will you work for hire? Will you build a fence for me on the high pasture, plant my saplings, mow my hay? I will feed you all the year, clothe you, give you sandals — but a beggar of your kind will not work, he had rather wander begging. Ulysses lifts his head: Eurymachus, may we have a contest some day in early summer when the days are long. Give me a good scythe and take another, and let us see who can mow longest from dawn to sundown without break or food. Or set me before a team of oxen on the long-furrow plough, and see who will plough the cleanest line by day's end. Or let war break out tomorrow, give me a shield and two spears and a helmet of solid bronze, and you will find me forward in the front line, and you will not jeer at my belly any more. You are an arrogant cruel man, who has lived in a small world without much labour and thinks you are great because the company you keep is mean. If Ulysses comes home to his own — and he is coming — these wide doors of his house will look narrow to you when you try to slip through them.

Eurymachus, white with rage, snatches a footstool — but Ulysses dropped to the knees of Amphinomus of Dulichium as the stool flew; it missed him, struck the wine-steward on the right hand, the silver mixing-jug clattered down ringing, the cup-bearer fell back groaning. The hall erupted. Some suitors muttered if only this beggar had died on the road and never come to this house, we would have had peace. Telemachus rose and called out, gentlemen, are you mad? you have eaten enough; the wine has spoken in you; go home to bed, gentlemen, take your suppers and go. They sat astonished at the boy's voice. Amphinomus, the decent one, restored the room with a moderate speech: no man should answer a fair word with a foul blow. Let us not take this further. The stranger is the master's guest by the master's son's say-so. We will pour libations and go home. His servant Mulius mixed the wine; the libation went round to Jove the lord of the meal-ending; the suitors drained their cups, rose, and walked out of the hall to their houses in the city. The hall stood at last quiet around the beggar by the braziers.

Analysis

Chapter 0068 — Analysis

The poem's only comic boxing match

Book 18 begins with the poem's only comic athletic contest. The Iliad's funeral games for Patroclus (Iliad 23) and the Phaeacian games for the stranger (Odyssey 8) are both serious athletic events with rules and prizes; the Irus fight is street brawling staged for the suitors's amusement, with a goat's-paunch as prize. The Odyssey is showing us the degradation of the form. What was a noble contest among heroes has become a sideshow for drunks. The match is over in three lines: Irus's clumsy swing, Ulysses's measured punch below the ear, the broken jawbone, the blood, the kicking on the floor. Even the cruelty is calibrated — Ulysses pulls the punch because the suitors would suspect who I am if he killed the man outright. The discipline of restraint, established with the footstool in book 17, is sharpened here. The hero is still saving his force for the right moment.

The body of the hero revealed

The brief moment when Ulysses strips off the outer rag and the broad chest, the great shoulders, the thighs and arms still strong with the marrow of a fighting man are visible is the only sight the suitors get of who is in their house. Athena thickens the limbs further as he stands. The shock in the room is precisely choreographed: Irus will be no Irus at all. For three seconds the disguise drops; the suitors look at the body of the king without recognising him. They will see it again, in full, in book 22 when he stands on the threshold and strings the bow.

The warning to Amphinomus

The warning to Amphinomus is the poem's most extended philosophical statement on the changeability of human fortune, and it is delivered by a beggar to a decent young man across a cup of wine in a hall full of doomed company. Man is the lightest of all creatures the earth feeds — while the gods give him strength and prosperity he thinks no evil will touch him; when the gods turn the day against him, he bears what he must. The speech is a thumbnail Stoicism avant la lettre; it will be quoted by Marcus Aurelius and by Boethius in The Consolation of Philosophy. What makes it tragic is its uselessness. Amphinomus hears the warning, foresees evil, bows his head, and walks back to his place. The poem closes the parenthesis with the line that confirms the limit: but it was already fated by Athena's will that he should die by Telemachus's spear. The poem grants Amphinomus the perception that should save him and refuses him the action that would. Greek tragedy will adopt this combination of foresight-and-bound-fate as its single greatest plot-device; the Odyssey here gives it small but perfect formal expression.

Penelope enhanced

The middle of the book is the descent of Penelope to the hall, divinely enhanced, deliberately drawing gifts from the suitors. The strategy is masterful and morally complex. Penelope, who hates the suitors, comes down adorned by Athena in Aphrodite's borrowed beauty and lets them stare at her. She allows Eurymachus's flattery, she replies with the long speech about Ulysses's parting instruction (if I do not come back, marry whom you will and leave the house), she invites the gift-giving by complaining that proper suitors bring gifts. The suitors send for their gifts; she receives them and goes upstairs. Ulysses is delighted: she means to flatter gifts out of them; her heart is set on other things.

The episode has unsettled readers since antiquity. Why does Penelope take the gifts at all? Why does she let them praise her? Why does she repeat Ulysses's old permission to remarry? The poem's answer is that this is one of her strategies — she is depleting the suitors' wealth (gifts cost them); she is keeping them at the bow's distance (no marriage); she is buying time. Whether or not Penelope knows the beggar is Ulysses (the poem leaves this question deliberately open) she is acting in concert with him. The Odyssey is interested in Penelope's agency in ways the courtly tradition mostly failed to read.

Melantho, the bad maid

Melantho the maid is set up here as the female counterpart to Melanthius the goatherd (her brother — they share the father Dolius). She has been raised by Penelope like her own daughter; she has been sleeping with Eurymachus; she insults the beggar. The Odyssey is establishing in this single scene the moral case against the twelve maids who will hang in book 22 — not because they slept with the suitors but because they sided with the suitors against the household that raised them. The execution of the maids is one of the most disturbing passages in the poem and one of the most discussed in modern criticism (Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad is a sustained answer to it); book 18 prepares the ground by giving Melantho a name, a face, a kindness from Penelope, and a taunt of the beggar.

Eurymachus's second footstool

The second footstool of the poem is thrown by Eurymachus, misses Ulysses, and strikes the wine-steward. The repetition with variation is the poem's signature device: Antinous's footstool in book 17 hits Ulysses; Eurymachus's footstool in book 18 misses Ulysses and breaks the steward's hand. Both throws are escalating breaches of xenia; the second is also an escalating breach of symposium manners (you do not throw stools at the wine-steward). The poem is showing the suitors deteriorating; book 22's slaughter is morally underwritten by every successive breach.

Telemachus emerging

The young man's growing authority is on display this book. He is publicly corrected by his mother (and accepts the correction with grace); he answers her with the news of Irus's defeat; he intervenes during the chaos of the second footstool with a measured gentlemen, go home, you have eaten enough. The voice is no longer the boy's voice of book 1; the Telemachy has done its work. The reader watches a young man become competent at command in the same room where his disguised father is also becoming visible.

What to watch for

• The Irus fight as the comic-degraded form of the Iliadic and Phaeacian athletic contest.
• The brief revelation of Ulysses's body — the king visible for three seconds without being recognised.
• The Amphinomus warning as proto-Stoic philosophy of mutable fortune; foresight without saving action.
• Penelope's strategic descent — drawing gifts, postponing marriage, possibly working in concert with the beggar.
• Melantho's set-up as Eurymachus's lover and the moral case for the maid-executions of book 22.
• The second footstool as escalating breach of xenia and symposium.
• Telemachus emerging into adult command.
• The discipline of held-back force still sharpening.

Echoes across the cycle

Chapter 0068 — Echoes Across the Cycle

Backward echoes

The Irus fight is the comic-degraded form of two earlier athletic contests in the Trojan cycle. The funeral games of Patroclus in Iliad 23 — the boxing match of Epeius and Euryalus, with the formal prizes, the prayers to Hermes, the dignified withdrawal of the beaten man — is the noble original. The Phaeacian games of Odyssey 8, with Ulysses's discus-throw past every Phaeacian mark, is the recent precedent. Book 18 takes the form and degrades it: street beggars, a goat's-paunch as prize, drunken spectators, a single pulled punch. The Odyssey is showing what twenty years of suitor-rule have done to civic ritual.

Penelope's descent rhymes with Helen's appearance in book 4 — both queens descend to the hall to perform a kind of choreographed femininity that the men receive as marvel. Helen drugs the wine; Penelope drugs the wedding-wallets. Helen reads the omen of the eagle correctly in book 15; Penelope manipulates the gift-economy here. The two queens are the poem's two pictures of feminine power: Helen by glamour and nepenthe, Penelope by patience and stratagem.

The warning to Amphinomus rhymes with several earlier moments: Calchas's warning to Agamemnon in Iliad 1; Polydamas's repeated warnings to Hector in Iliad 12, 13, 18; the warnings Cassandra is doomed to give in tradition. The Odyssey transposes the fated-warning-ignored topos to a single domestic scene at a goblet.

Forward echoes

• The discipline of held-back force at the Irus fight (if I hit with all my strength he will die and they will suspect me) becomes the model for every later "hero saving himself for the right moment" scene. Achilles holds back his full force at no moment in the Iliad; Ulysses holds back his full force across four whole books. The Stoic and Imperial-Roman literature on temperantia and patientia cites this passage; medieval romance's countless scenes of the disguised knight who must not yet fight at full strength descend from it.
• The warning to Amphinomus is the foundational text for the Western literary topos of fata cum monitis — fate fore-warned and not heard. Aeneid 4's repeated warnings to Dido by Anna and by Aeneas himself; Shakespeare's Macbeth and the warnings of Banquo; every later tragic play in which the doomed figure receives the warning that should save them but does not act on it.
• Penelope's strategic descent has been one of the most debated scenes in the poem since antiquity. The question — did she know the beggar was Ulysses? — is the modern critical version of an old reading-puzzle. Penelope-as-strategist is the model for every later "patient wife who manages the household from behind the veil" in Western literature: the Roman matron of imperial moral literature; the medieval grande dame of the courtly tradition; the great female household-managers of the Russian and English novel (Natasha Rostov as wife, Mrs Ramsay in To the Lighthouse).
• Melantho the bad maid is the moral and structural setup for one of the most-discussed passages in the poem: the hanging of the twelve maids in book 22. Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad (2005) is the most sustained modern answer to that passage and reads book 18 with care as the place where Melantho is given her name and her crime. The Odyssey's careful preparation of the maids's complicity is the poem's defence of the executions; Atwood's novel is the poem's defence read back as indictment.
• The Amphinomus warning as proto-Stoicism is taken up by Marcus Aurelius (Meditations 12.3 echoes the phrasing about mortal fortune), by Seneca, and via Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy by the whole medieval Fortune tradition (the wheel of fortune, the Boethian De casibus virorum illustrium genre).
• The second footstool (Eurymachus's throw that hits the wine-steward) is the precise pre-figuring of the cup-thrown-at-the-wine-steward of medieval banquet-violence; the topos passes into Anglo-Saxon poetry (the Battle of Maldon's breach of feast-decorum) and into every later medieval scene of the feast-gone-wrong.
• The labour-and-war challenge Ulysses offers Eurymachus (give me a scythe and we shall mow from dawn to dusk; give me a plough; give me a shield and two spears) is the foundational image of the labor improbus tradition — the noble worker rebuking the indolent gentleman; the figure passes through Hesiod's Works and Days, through Virgil's Georgics opening (where Aeneas the warrior is implicitly the same man as the ploughman), through every later defence of work over idleness in European literature.

Cast in this chapter

Chapter 0068 — Cast In This Chapter

On stage

• Odysseus — "Ulysses"; the beggar; takes Irus's challenge, strips and reveals his body, drops Irus with the pulled punch, warns Amphinomus to flee, answers Eurymachus's mockery with the labour-and-war challenge, dodges the second footstool
• Penelope — descends to the hall enhanced by Athena's beauty, rebukes Telemachus for letting the beggar be beaten, answers Eurymachus's flattery with the speech about Ulysses's parting instruction, draws gifts from the suitors and returns to her chamber
• Telemachus — pledges support to the beggar before the fight, accepts his mother's public correction, intervenes after the second footstool with the dismissal speech
• Athena — "Minerva"; thickens Ulysses's limbs before the fight, puts the descent-to-the-hall idea into Penelope's mind, enhances her beauty in sleep, eggs on Eurymachus's mockery so that Ulysses's anger may grow further
• Antinous — proposes the boxing match, threatens Irus with Echetus the mutilator-king, sets up the goat's-paunch as prize, urges the suitors to gift Penelope

Mentioned / off-stage

• Zeus — "Jove"; sworn by, libations to him close the meal
• Aphrodite — "Venus"; the borrowed beauty Athena gives Penelope in sleep
• Iris — the goddess Irus is jokingly named after (the gods' errand-runner)

Non-cast named figures: Arnaeus, called Irus (the local glutton-beggar, defeated and dumped against the outer wall); Echetus (the mainland tyrant who mutilates with the bronze, used by Antinous as threat); Amphinomus son of Nisus of Dulichium (the decent suitor; receives the warning to leave; foredoomed by Athena); Mulius (Amphinomus's servant, mixes the final wine); Eurymachus son of Polybus (mocks the beggar as a torch-bearer, offers him work, throws the second footstool); Eurynome (Penelope's waiting-woman); Autonoe and Hippodamia (the two maids who accompany Penelope to the hall); Eurydamas (one of the suitors, gives the drop-earrings); Peisander son of Polyctor (gives the necklace); Melantho (the bad maid, daughter of Dolius, sleeping with Eurymachus, raised by Penelope as a daughter, insults the beggar at the brazier); Dolius (the orchard slave, father of Melantho and Melanthius); the unnamed wine-steward struck by Eurymachus's footstool; King Echetus's reputation as off-stage threat.

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This post is part of Reading Troy, a slow daily readalong through the four canonical Trojan-cycle epics — Homer's Iliad, Quintus Smyrnaeus's Posthomerica, Virgil's Aeneid, and Homer's Odyssey — read in chronological narrative order.