(Days 37–38 of the poem's main action, the last night before the bow-contest and the morning of the festival of Apollo; the porch and great hall of the palace at Ithaca)

Ulysses lies down in the porch on an ox-hide spread on the stone, sheepskins heaped over him, Eurynome the housekeeper laying a cloak across his shoulders. He cannot sleep. The maids — the ones whose names Eurycleia will give him later — slip out laughing in the dark on their way to the suitors' beds. His heart growls in him as a bitch growls and stands over her puppies at the approach of a stranger, ready to attack; he turns side to side as a cook turns the fat-stuffed paunch of a black pudding over a fire, twisting it this way and that to roast it through. Bear up, heart of mine — you bore worse in the Cyclops's cave. He repeats the words till he half-believes them.

Athena drops down from Olympus in the form of a woman, stands by his head, addresses him: fool, why so anxious? You are in your own house, with your wife inside and your son inside, the best son a man could have. Ulysses: yes, goddess, but how am I to kill all these men alone, single against a hundred and eight? And after I have killed them, the avengers — fathers and brothers and cousins — will come at me from every farm of Cephallenia, and I will fall for nothing. Help me. Athena: am I not a goddess and have I not protected you all these years? If fifty companies of men stood by your side they would not bring you off as I will. Sleep now. She closes his eyes with her hand and flies up to Olympus.

In her own chamber Penelope is awake, weeping. She has not slept since the conversation by the fire. She prays to Artemis: holy Artemis, daughter of Jove, drive an arrow into my breast and end it; or let me be carried away as the daughters of Pandareus were — they whose father and mother were destroyed by the gods, who were raised among them, fed by Aphrodite on cheese and honey and sweet wine, given by Hera height and beauty and wisdom by Athena, given by Artemis stature — and then suddenly the storm-winds caught them up and carried them away to the bay of Ocean to be servants of the Erinyes. So let me be carried away. I would rather go down to the dark below the earth still loving Ulysses, than be the wife of a worse man. She lies down again. Sleep is denied her. As the false dawn comes she has the dream of Ulysses sleeping beside her — the man as he was when he sailed for Troy — and she wakes, the bed empty.

Ulysses, waking in the porch, hears her weeping above him through the thin morning, and almost — almost, as he sat up in the half-light — believes she has known him all along and is standing at his head. He folds the bedding, hides it in the porch, and goes outside. He prays to Zeus: Father, if you have brought me back over land and sea on purpose, give me a sign — a word from one of the women of this house, and a great thing from outside. Zeus thunders out of a clear sky from the snowy top of Olympus. Inside the women's mill-room, where twelve slaves grind grain for the day's bread, eleven have finished and gone to bed; the twelfth, weakest of them, still works alone over her quern; she hears the thunder, lets her stones rest a moment, and prays aloud: Father Jove, you have thundered out of a starless sky — a sign for someone; grant the prayer of your poor servant too — make this be the last day the suitors shall feast in the house of Ulysses; their feasts have broken my back at the mill — let it end today. Ulysses, on the threshold, hears the woman's voice and hears the thunder and rejoices in his heart, for the gods have given the two signs together.

The household begins to stir for the festival of Apollo, which falls today. The maids kindle the hearth. Telemachus comes down armed with sandals, sword, and bronze-pointed spear, two dogs at his heel, and asks Eurycleia whether the stranger was well treated through the night. Mother is a good woman but she sometimes pays attention to the worse and lets the better go neglected. Eurycleia answers him: the stranger drank his wine, refused a proper bed, slept in the porch in the cold as a wretched man who has lost all his fortune. Telemachus, satisfied, goes out to the assembly. Eurycleia summons the maids: the suitors will be here early today, it is a feast day; clear the cloister, sweep the floor, sprinkle it with water, lay the purple covers on the chairs, polish the mixing-bowls, fetch fresh water from the spring. Twenty maids walk down to the public fountain; others sweep inside. The men begin chopping the day's wood.

Eumaeus arrives from the hills with three of the finest fattened boars for the day's meal. He greets the beggar civilly: stranger, how are they treating you in there now? are you used any better? Ulysses: Eumaeus, may the gods one day pay them for the wickedness they do in another man's house. Melanthius the goatherd arrives next, with the best of his she-goats and two herdsmen. He ties up the goats by the porch and turns on the beggar a third time: still here, you cursed nuisance? Get out, before you feel the suitors' hands today; there are other tables in town besides this one. Ulysses says nothing, only bows his head and broods.

Then Philoetius the cowherd arrives. The Odyssey introduces him for the first time in the poem. He has ferried over from the mainland with a barren heifer and fat she-goats, ferried by the daily ferrymen who carry travellers across the strait. He ties up the cattle by the porch, walks across to Eumaeus, points his chin at the beggar: who is this man? what people is he from? he is in a poor way but he has the bearing of a king — well, the gods scatter trouble even on great men. He goes up to the beggar himself and gives him a courteous greeting: health to you, father; you are in a sorry case now; may there be a better day for you. Father Jove, what a thing it is — the gods do not pity men, no matter what gods they have given themselves to. Even mortal kings end like this. He tells the beggar his own story: I am Philoetius. I am the cattle-herd. I keep the master's herds on the mainland — they have grown great under my hand, and every day I have to drive over the fattest of them for these men to slaughter in his hall. I tell you, if not for the master's son, I would have run with the herds long ago into another country and put myself under another master rather than watch this. But I keep telling myself that he is coming, that he will be here, that I shall yet see those men go down. Ulysses takes his hand and swears the same oath he swore to Eumaeus: Philoetius, you have an honest heart. By Jove and the hearth of Ulysses, before you leave this place you will see Ulysses come home, and you will see the suitors die. Philoetius: if the gods would only let it be — you would see what hands and arms I have.

The suitors, gathered outside, have been laying a fresh plot to kill Telemachus on his way back from the assembly. As they prepare to set out an eagle flying high on the left of the omen-bird passes with a frightened dove in its talons. Amphinomus, the decent one, calls it off: this is no day for that work. Let us go in to dinner. The suitors agree and go inside.

The animals are slaughtered for the feast; the inward parts roasted and shared; wine mixed in the great mixing-bowl; Eumaeus pours the cups, Philoetius lays out the bread, Melanthius mixes the wine. Telemachus, deliberately and in front of the company, seats Ulysses on a low stool by the threshold with a small table of his own. Sit here and drink among the company. I will protect you from any blow or insult — this is no public house, this is my father's, and through my father mine. As for any of you suitors, hold back your tongues and your hands today. The suitors bite their lips, marvelling at the boldness of the boy's voice. Antinous: that is hard speaking, Telemachus — but we will swallow it; if Jove had let us we would have stopped your bold tongue before now. Telemachus says nothing. Across the city, in the grove of Apollo, the citizens are gathering for the festival sacrifice.

The dinner is in full swing when Ctesippus son of Polytherses of Same — a man whose only virtue was his wealth, who was courting Penelope on the strength of his treasure — calls out: gentlemen, the stranger has had as fair a share of the meal as any one of us; that is well — for it would not be proper to insult a guest of Telemachus's; but I would like to give him my own gift, that he may pass on something to the bath-woman or to one of the other slaves of this old house. He picks up the great hoof of an ox from the platter and throws it. Ulysses turns his head a hand's-breadth — the hoof passes and strikes the wall — and he smiles a Sardonic smile, the grim Iliadic smile of the man who has decided. Telemachus stands up. Ctesippus, lucky for you the man stooped his head. If you had hit him I would have run my spear through your body, and your father would be making your funeral today, not your marriage. Hold your hands. I am no boy now — I know good from evil. I have endured the slaughter of my sheep and the drinking of my wine for long enough; I will not bear having strangers struck in this house any more. Strike me yourselves if you wish — better to die at once than watch this go on.

The hall is silent. Agelaus son of Damastor — a milder suitor — rises with a moderate speech. Friends, let us not answer his fair words with foul ones. Telemachus, listen — your father is not coming back, every man can see it now. Speak to your mother, tell her to choose the best of us and marry him; you will run your own estate, she will run another man's, and we shall stop eating up your goods. Telemachus: Agelaus, before Jove and before the sorrows of my father I swear I do not stand in the way of my mother's marriage to whomever she chooses; on the contrary, I urge her to it. But it is not in me to put her out of her own house against her will. Heaven forbid I should do that. Athena has been at work in the suitors's heads. They begin to laugh — not normal laughter, but the unsteady laughter of men whose minds have been knocked sideways by a god; the meat on their tables seems to drip blood; their eyes fill with tears; their hearts grow heavy with foreboding.

Then Theoclymenus rises from his seat by Telemachus — the seer from Pylos, the descendant of Melampus — and delivers the great prophecy of the back half. Unhappy men, what is on you? A black shroud is drawn over you from head to foot; you are crying without knowing it; the air rings with wailing; the walls and beams drip blood; the doorways of this house and the courtyard beyond are full of ghosts moving down into the dark; the sun is going out of the sky; an evil mist is over the land. The suitors burst out laughing. Eurymachus: the stranger is mad — he has just come, and he sees ghosts; throw him out into the marketplace, let him find day there if it is so dark in here. Theoclymenus: Eurymachus, do not trouble — I have eyes and ears and feet of my own, and a mind clearer than any in this room; I will take them out of this house with me before what is coming comes. He leaves the megaron, walks down to the house of Piraeus where his lodging is, and never appears in the poem again.

The suitors laugh harder. Telemachus, what a poor showing in guests you make: a useless beggar who eats and drinks, a false prophet who frightens us. Better put them both on a ship and sell them in Sicily to the slavers. Telemachus does not answer. He sits fixed on his father, watching, expecting every moment that the attack would begin. Penelope has had her chair set on the threshold of the inner door so that she can hear every word said in the hall and every word the suitors said came up to her chair. The supper goes on. Through the upper register of the book, set lightly against the heavy dread, the festival of Apollo is being celebrated across the city. Their dinner had been merry and abundant, for they had killed many beasts; but the supper they would have was the most pitiable supper that goddess and brave man ever set before any company of men — for they had brought it upon themselves.

Analysis

Chapter 0070 — Analysis

The book that holds its breath

Book 20 is the book that holds its breath. The plan is set; the bow-contest will happen tomorrow; the slaughter will begin the morning after that. Between the plan and the killing the poem inserts one whole book of dread. The book has no main action — Ulysses sleeps, Penelope prays, the suitors eat — but every detail is intensified by the knowledge of what is coming. It is the prelude book in the strict musical sense: the same materials we have already seen (the beggar in the hall, the suitor-insults, the loyal servants, the bird-omens, the bath, the wine, the meat) recombined into a new key of foreboding.

The growling heart

The opening image of Ulysses lying sleepless on the ox-hide in the porch with his heart growling like a bitch over her puppies at a stranger is one of the most famous passages in the poem and one of the most studied. The simile is unusual on two counts: it gives Ulysses's heart a separate identity (he addresses it as bear up, heart of mine), and it compares his heart to a bitch with puppies — a female-coded fierce-maternal image for an angry man's heart. The line bear up, heart of mine — you bore worse in the Cyclops's cave is the foundational text for the Western literary motif of self-address in moments of crisis. The motif passes into Greek tragedy (Sophocles's Ajax, Euripides's Medea), into Roman lyric (Horace's exegi monumentum tradition of self-address), into Renaissance soliloquy (Hamlet's to be or not to be), into every later "talking to oneself in extremity" passage. The fragment is in some traditions cited as the first appearance of interior monologue in Western literature.

Penelope's prayer to Artemis

Penelope's prayer in the upper chamber is one of the poem's most painful private speeches. Drive an arrow into my breast, holy Artemis, or let me be carried away as the daughters of Pandareus were. The reference to the Pandareid daughters — raised by Aphrodite on cheese and honey, given height by Hera, beauty by Athena, stature by Artemis, then swept away by storm-winds to be servants of the Erinyes — is one of the poem's most concentrated mythological images of innocent women carried away by the indifferent gods. The simile recalls the nightingale-of-Pandareus simile from book 19; the Pandareus family becomes the poem's emblem for the female condition of inexplicable suffering. Penelope frames her desire for death not as escape from grief but as preservation of love: I would rather go down to the dark below the earth still loving Ulysses than be the wife of a worse man. The line is the poem's clearest statement of Penelope's homophrosyne with her absent husband.

The two signs and the mill-woman's prayer

The two omens Ulysses asks for — a word from one of the women, a great thing from outside — are delivered together with extraordinary economy: Zeus's thunderclap from a clear sky, and the mill-woman's voice. The mill-woman is the only character in the poem given a long speech without ever being named. She is the weakest of twelve slaves who grind grain for the bread of the house; the other eleven have finished and gone to bed; she is still at the quern when the thunder breaks. Her prayer is the most plebeian voice in the poem and the most morally clear: let this be the last day the suitors shall feast in this house — their feasts have broken my back at the mill. The poem gives the household's lowest worker the speech that confirms the divine sign. The Odyssey at this moment makes the unnamed woman at the mill the moral pivot of the household. Few passages in archaic Greek literature reach this far down the social hierarchy for moral testimony.

Philoetius the cowherd

Book 20 introduces Philoetius for the first time. The poem holds him back for a single book — he will figure as the third loyal servant (with Eumaeus and Eurycleia) in the slaughter of book 22. His introduction here is one of the poem's most carefully judged: he is decent, observant, conflicted (I have often thought of running away with the herd to another country), and held by hope of his master's return. The speech he gives across the courtyard to the beggar — the gods do not pity men no matter what gods they have given themselves to — is a small companion-piece to Ulysses's longer speech to Amphinomus in book 18. The poem keeps three loyal voices in the household: Eumaeus (book 14), Eurycleia (book 19), Philoetius (book 20). All three will be present at the bow.

The third Melanthius insult, the third Antinous breach

The poem's repetitions are now exhausting themselves. Book 17 had Melanthius's first insult and Antinous's footstool; book 18 had the second insult and Eurymachus's second footstool; book 20 has Melanthius's third insult and Ctesippus's ox-foot. The pattern is deliberate: each act of breach is graver and the response is closer to revelation. By the third footstool-equivalent (the ox-foot) Telemachus is openly threatening murder of the suitors's son. The poem's escalation is calibrated tick by tick.

Theoclymenus's prophecy and the laughter of the doomed

Theoclymenus's vision of the hall — a black shroud drawn over you from head to foot, walls and beams dripping blood, the doorways full of ghosts moving down into the dark, the sun going out of the sky — is the most disturbing single piece of supernatural seeing in the poem. The suitors laugh; Athena has struck their minds sideways so that they laugh at the prophet who is telling them they will die in this hall by tomorrow night. The laughter-induced-by-divine-maddening is the poem's foundational image for hubris that does not see itself; the trope passes into Greek tragedy as the chorus's standard observation about doomed kings (Aeschylus's Persians, Euripides's Bacchae).

The detail that Theoclymenus then walks out of the hall and out of the poem — he never appears again — is the poem's quietest narrative gesture. The seer who has seen what is coming has no further function. He goes to Piraeus's house. The Odyssey gives him the gift of foresight and refuses him the further presence to do anything with it. The figure is exactly the figure of Cassandra in later Greek tragedy.

Penelope's chair at the threshold

The closing image of Penelope having her chair set on the threshold of the inner door so that she could hear every word said in the hall, and every word the suitors said came up to her chair is the poem's quiet acknowledgement that she is, by this stage, attending to everything. Whether or not she has recognised Ulysses, she is positioning herself to hear the conversation between the beggar and the suitors. The closing line of the book — they had brought it upon themselves — is the narrator's most direct judgement of the suitors and is one of the few moments of explicit narrator-evaluation in the poem.

Butler's prose at the prelude

Butler's prose is at its best in the rendering of small things this book offers: the ox-hide and sheepskins, the millstones, the ox-foot, the chair at the threshold. The big things — Theoclymenus's vision, the prayer to Artemis, the growling-heart simile — Butler renders without elevation and the result is, at moments, more affecting than Pope's couplets would manage. The flat register lets the dread accumulate without imposing it.

What to watch for

• The growling-heart simile and the self-address — the foundational interior-monologue passage in Western literature.
• The Pandareid daughters in Penelope's prayer — the Odyssey's emblem of inexplicable feminine suffering.
• The mill-woman's prayer — the household's lowest voice giving the divine sign.
• Philoetius introduced — the third loyal servant, completing the bow-and-slaughter team.
• The pattern of escalating breaches — three insults from Melanthius, three flying objects (footstool, footstool, ox-foot).
• Theoclymenus's prophecy and his exit — the seer-figure who walks out of the poem after speaking.
• Penelope's chair at the threshold — her positioning to hear what comes.
• The narrator's they had brought it upon themselves — rare direct evaluation.

Echoes across the cycle

Chapter 0070 — Echoes Across the Cycle

Backward echoes

The growling-heart simile and Ulysses's self-address (bear up, heart of mine — you bore worse in the Cyclops's cave) reaches back to book 9 by naming the worst test endured; the back half of the poem now closes its arc by formally calling forward the front half. The Cyclops-cave reference is the poem's first explicit cross-reference between the Wanderings and the homecoming, and it underwrites everything Ulysses is about to do — the discipline learned at the cliff-mouth is the discipline applied in the porch.

Penelope's prayer about the Pandareids reaches back to her own nightingale-simile in book 19 (the daughter of Pandareus singing in the wood for Itylus). The Pandareus family becomes the poem's emblem of suffering womanhood — both the mother who killed her own son and the daughters carried away by the storm-winds. Penelope is being placed in this lineage of female grief.

Theoclymenus's vision reaches back to the eagle-and-goose omen of book 15 (which he himself read) and to Helen's reading of the same kind of omen in book 4. The seer-figure has been gathering supernatural authority through five books; the prophecy here is its culmination.

The festival of Apollo at the city today reaches back into the calendar-detail of book 14 (the longest night of the year) and forward to book 21 (where the bow will be strung on Apollo's day, with the god as patron of the archer). The Odyssey is using the religious calendar as quiet plot-structure.

Forward echoes

• The growling-heart simile is the foundational text for the interior monologue tradition in Western literature. Cited by Aristotle in the Poetics as one of the chief examples of self-address; used by Plato's Socrates (Republic 4.439e on the bipartite soul); foundational for the soliloquy tradition in Renaissance drama; Joyce makes it the structural device of Ulysses (Bloom's interior speech echoes bear up, heart).
• Theoclymenus's vision of the doomed feasters becomes the model for every later "feast-of-the-doomed" prophecy. Aeschylus's Agamemnon (Cassandra's vision of the murder in the bath); Euripides's Bacchae (the vision of Pentheus's death at the maenadic feast); the medieval Vox Clamantis tradition; the memento mori feast-paintings of the early modern period (Holbein's Dance of Death); the dinner-of-the-doomed scene in countless later novels.
• The Pandareid daughters as the type of innocent women carried away by indifferent gods is taken up by Sophocles (the Antigone chorus on the Pandareids); by every later "fate-of-young-women" theme in Greek tragedy; by Ovid's Heroides; by the medieval Legend of Good Women tradition.
• The mill-woman's prayer as the lowest-status voice giving the divine sign is one of the Odyssey's quiet anticipations of Christian and modern moral inversions: the least of these tradition; the worker's prayer as more powerful than the king's; Hopkins's poems of agricultural-worker dignity; the Russian-orthodox tradition of the yurodivy (the holy fool whose unintelligible speech bears truth).
• The Sardonic smile — the grim Iliadic smile Ulysses gives after dodging the ox-foot — is the etymological source of the English word sardonic. The smile passes from Homer through Plato (Republic 1.337a — Thrasymachus smiles a Sardonic smile at Socrates) into the De Sardonicis tradition of late-Latin and Byzantine writing on bitter laughter.
• The pattern of three escalating breaches — the three insults, the three flying objects (footstool, footstool, ox-foot) — is the foundational template for every later escalation to climax in dramatic structure. Aristotle's Poetics on the kathekonta (the rising actions) draws on this pattern; the medieval tripartite escalation of Romance plot; the Hollywood three-acts-and-the-third-strike template.
• The growling-heart self-address is also the foundational text for the Stoic prosoche (paying attention to oneself) tradition. Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and the Meditations tradition all cite it.
• Philoetius's near-defection (I have often thought of running away with the herd to another country) is the seed of every later "loyal-but-tempted-to-betray-and-then-decides-to-stay" servant figure in Western drama. The figure passes into the miles gloriosus and the servus fidelis of Roman comedy, into the valet fidèle of French classical drama, into Sancho Panza's near-departures from Don Quixote.
• The festival-of-Apollo calendar timing of the slaughter has been read by classical commentators (from antiquity onward) as the structural-religious key to the poem's climax: the bow of Ulysses is the bow of Apollo; the new year's first day is the day of the killing; the festival of the archer-god is the festival on which the household's archer reclaims his bow.

Cast in this chapter

Chapter 0070 — Cast In This Chapter

On stage

• Odysseus — "Ulysses"; sleepless in the porch with the growling heart, soothed by Athena, asks for the two signs at dawn and gets thunder and the mill-woman's prayer, takes Philoetius's oath, dodges Ctesippus's ox-foot, watched by Telemachus through the long supper
• Penelope — sleepless in the upper chamber, prays to Artemis for death or for the wind-snatching of the Pandareids, sets her chair at the threshold to hear every word in the hall
• Telemachus — arms himself, asks Eurycleia how the stranger was treated, seats the beggar in his own care, threatens Ctesippus with the spear, swears by Jove and by his father's sorrows that he does not stand in his mother's marriage
• Athena — "Minerva"; soothes the sleepless Ulysses with the hand on his eyes, knocks the suitors's minds sideways into the maddened laughter at Theoclymenus
• Eumaeus — brings the three fat boars, asks the beggar how he is being treated, receives the oath that Ulysses is coming
• Eurycleia — the old nurse; rouses the maids for the day's work, defends the stranger to Telemachus

Mentioned / off-stage

• Zeus — "Jove"; thunders from a clear sky as the first sign
• Artemis — invoked in Penelope's prayer (cast under the closest available slug, Apollo, as twin god); given height to the Pandareids
• Aphrodite — "Venus"; in Penelope's prayer fed the Pandareids cheese and honey and sweet wine
• Hera — "Juno"; gave the Pandareids beauty and wisdom
• Apollo — the day's festival is his; the citizens are in his grove for the sacrifice
• Poseidon — implicit in the long history of grievance against Ulysses
• Antinous — speaks once in the hall in answer to Telemachus's defence of the beggar

Non-cast named figures: Eurynome (the housekeeper, lays the cloak across Ulysses's shoulders); the unnamed mill-woman (the twelfth of the grinding-women, weakest of them, gives the mill-prayer that confirms the omen); the Erinyes (named in Penelope's prayer as the masters the Pandareids were given to); Melanthius son of Dolius (the third insult); Philoetius the cowherd (introduced for the first time, the third loyal servant; ferries the heifer over from the mainland); Ctesippus son of Polytherses of Same (throws the ox-foot; threatened by Telemachus); Agelaus son of Damastor (the moderate suitor, urges Telemachus to send Penelope to her father); Amphinomus (the decent suitor, calls off the murder-plot on the eagle-and-dove omen); Eurymachus (mocks Theoclymenus and orders him out); Theoclymenus (the seer; delivers the great prophecy of darkness and ghosts and the going-out of the sun; walks out of the hall and out of the poem to Piraeus's house); Piraeus son of Clytius (Theoclymenus's host); the daughters of Pandareus (the named myth in Penelope's prayer).

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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.