The Last Feast

Out in the entrance hall, Odysseus lay down to sleep. He spread an untanned oxhide on the floor and piled fleeces on top, wool from the sheep the suitors had been killing and eating. When he stretched out, Eurynome threw a cloak over him.

But he did not sleep. He lay there wide awake, his mind churning with plans to destroy the suitors. And then the women came out of the great hall, the ones who had been sleeping with the suitors all along, laughing and giggling together, off to their lovers. Anger rose in his chest. He turned it over and over in his mind: should he leap up right now and kill every one of them, or let them go to the suitors one last time, this final night?

His heart growled inside him. The way a dog stands over her newborn pups and snarls at a stranger, ready to fight, that was how his heart growled at the wickedness in front of him. He struck his chest and spoke to his own heart: “Hold on. You’ve put up with worse than this. Remember the Cyclops¹, that monster with no limit to his hunger, devouring your strong men one by one? You held on then. Your cunning got you out of that cave when you were sure you would die.”

So he scolded his own heart, and it obeyed him and held steady. But his body kept twisting, side to side. Picture a man at a roaring fire, turning a sausage stuffed full of fat and blood, rolling it this way and that, eager to get it cooked fast — that was how Odysseus rolled from side to side, trying to work out how, alone, he could lay hands on so many shameless men.

Then Athena came down from the sky and stood over him in the form of a woman. “Why are you still awake,” she said, “you, the unluckiest man alive? This is your house. Your wife is inside it, and your son — a boy any father would be proud to call his own.”

“Yes, goddess,” crafty Odysseus answered. “Everything you say is true. But my mind keeps gnawing at one thing: how will I, alone, lay hands on these brazen men? They’re always together, all of them, inside. And there’s something worse I keep turning over. Suppose I do kill them, with the help of you and Zeus — where do I escape to afterward? Think about that for me.”

“You impossible man,” said the bright-eyed goddess. “People trust friends far weaker than I am, ordinary mortals who don’t know half of what I know. I am a goddess. I have guarded you through every trouble, all the way through. So I’ll tell you plainly: even if fifty companies of fighting men surrounded the two of us, hungry to kill, you would still drive off their cattle and fat sheep. Now sleep. Lying awake all night, keeping watch, that’s its own misery. You’ll come up out of your troubles soon enough.”

She poured sleep over his eyes and went back up to Olympus.

As sleep took hold of him, sleep that loosens the limbs and unties the knots of worry, his good and faithful wife woke up. She sat in her soft bed and cried. When she had had enough of it, she prayed first of all to Artemis:

“Artemis, great goddess, daughter of Zeus, I wish you would shoot an arrow into my chest and take my life, right now. Or let a storm wind snatch me up and carry me off down the dark paths of the air, and drop me where the river Ocean² pours back on itself. Snatch me the way the storm winds carried off the daughters of Pandareus³. The gods killed their parents and left them orphans in their house. Aphrodite herself fed them on cheese and sweet honey and good wine. Hera gave them beauty and wisdom beyond all other women, holy Artemis made them tall, and Athena taught them every fine and skillful craft. But while Aphrodite went up to high Olympus to ask Zeus (who knows all things, both the good and the bad fate of every mortal) to arrange happy marriages for the girls, the storm winds came and snatched them away and handed them over to serve the hateful Furies. Let the gods who live on Olympus blot me out the same way. Or let Artemis with her lovely hair strike me down, so I might go beneath the bitter earth with my eyes still fixed on Odysseus, and never have to gladden the heart of a lesser man.

“At least there’s a kind of grief a person can bear — when you cry all day, your heart torn, but sleep takes you at night, and sleep makes you forget everything, good and bad, once it closes your eyelids. But some god sends me even evil dreams. This very night someone lay beside me who looked just like him, the way he was when he marched off with the army — and my heart leapt, because I thought it was no dream, but really happening at last.”

She spoke, and then Dawn on her golden throne came.

Odysseus, waking, caught the sound of her crying. It troubled him. For a moment it seemed as if she already knew him and was standing right at his head. He bundled up the cloak and the fleeces he’d slept on and set them on a chair in the hall, and carried the oxhide outside. Then he lifted his hands to the sky and prayed to Zeus:

“Father Zeus, if you gods really did bring me home over dry land and wet sea, after you battered me so hard, let someone inside the house, just waking, speak a word of good omen for me, and let some other sign of yours appear outside.”

Zeus heard him. At once he thundered down from shining Olympus, high up above the clouds, and Odysseus rejoiced. And from inside the house a woman at the grinding-mill⁴ spoke the word he wanted. The mills stood near where he lay; twelve women worked them, grinding barley and wheat into flour, the food that keeps men strong. The others had finished their share and gone to rest, but one had not yet stopped; she was the weakest of them. She let her mill go still and spoke the words that became a sign for her master:

“Father Zeus, ruler of gods and men — what a thunderclap that was, out of a clear sky with no cloud in it! You’re showing somebody a sign. Then grant this too, for poor miserable me. Let this be the very last day the suitors ever feast in the house of Odysseus. They’ve worn me out, broken my knees, grinding flour for them. Let this be their last dinner — ever.”

Odysseus was glad to hear it, both the woman’s words and the thunder of Zeus. He was certain now: he would make the guilty ones pay.

The other slave women were gathering through the fine house, lighting the steady fire on the hearth. Telemachus got up from bed, godlike, and dressed. He slung his sharp sword over his shoulder, tied good sandals onto his oiled feet, and took up a strong spear with a sharp bronze point. He came to the doorway and called to Eurycleia:

“Nurse, did you treat the stranger well in the house, a bed and food, or is he just left lying there with no one caring for him? That’s how my mother is, wise as she is: she’ll honor some worthless man on a whim, and turn away a better one with nothing.”

“Don’t blame her, child,” wise Eurycleia answered. “Don’t blame her when she’s done no wrong. He sat and drank his wine as long as he liked. He said he wanted no more food — she asked him. And when he thought of bed and sleep, she told the slave women to make one up for him. But he wouldn’t have it — a man as broken and unlucky as he is wouldn’t sleep on a bed under blankets. He slept on an untanned oxhide and sheepskins out in the entrance hall, and I threw a cloak over him myself.”

Telemachus went out through the hall with his spear, and his two quick dogs trotted after him, off to the meeting place to join the Achaeans.

Eurycleia, daughter of Ops, called out orders to the slave women: “Quick now — some of you sweep the house and sprinkle it down, and lay the purple covers on the good chairs. The rest of you, wipe all the tables clean with sponges, scrub out the mixing-bowls and the fine two-handled cups. And some of you go to the spring for water, and hurry back. The suitors won’t stay away from the hall for long; they’ll be here early, because today’s a holiday for everyone.”

They listened and obeyed. Twenty went down to the spring with its dark water, and the others worked skillfully about the house. The suitors’ serving-men arrived and split the firewood well and expertly. The women came back from the spring, and after them came the swineherd, driving in three fat pigs, the best of his whole herd. He let them feed inside the good pens and then spoke gently to Odysseus:

“Stranger, are the Achaeans treating you any better now, or do they still disrespect you in the hall, the way they did?”

“Eumaeus,” Odysseus answered, “I only hope the gods pay them back for the outrage, the wickedness they cook up in another man’s house, without a shred of shame.”

While they were talking, Melanthius the goatherd⁵ came up, driving in the finest goats of all his flocks for the suitors’ dinner. Two herdsmen came with him. They tied the goats under the echoing porch, and then Melanthius started in on Odysseus with his mockery:

“Still here, stranger, pestering everyone in the house with your begging? Won’t you take yourself out the door? I don’t think you and I are going to settle this before we’ve tasted each other’s fists, the way you beg, with no manners at all. There are other places the Achaeans hold feasts, you know.”

Odysseus said nothing. He only shook his head in silence, deep down plotting harm.

A third man came up, Philoetius, a leader of men⁶, bringing a barren cow and some fat goats for the suitors. The ferrymen had brought them across, the same men who carry anyone who comes to the crossing. He tied the animals carefully under the echoing porch and went to stand beside the swineherd. “Who’s this stranger, swineherd,” he asked, “this newcomer to our house? What family does he claim? Where are his people, his homeland? Poor man — he has the build of a king. But the gods grind down men who wander far, and they spin out misery even for kings.”

Then he went over to Odysseus, took his right hand, and greeted him with these words: “Hello, old stranger. May things go better for you someday — right now you’re caught in a lot of trouble. Father Zeus, no god is crueler than you. You feel no pity for men, even though you made them yourself, when you give them over to misery and bitter pain. Sweat broke out on me when I saw this man, and my eyes filled with tears, remembering Odysseus, because I think he too is wandering somewhere among men in rags like these, if he’s still alive and seeing the light of the sun. And if he’s already dead and down in the house of Hades, then grief for him, my fine master, who set me over his cattle when I was just a boy among the Cephallenians. Now those herds are beyond counting; no man could raise broad-headed cattle better than I have, they multiply like ears of grain. And other men order me to keep driving them in for their own eating. They don’t care about the son in the house. They don’t fear the eyes of the gods. They’re hungry to divide up the property of a master who’s been gone so long. My heart keeps turning it over: it would be a terrible thing, while the son is alive, to run off with the cattle to some foreign country, to strangers — but it’s worse to stay here suffering, sitting over cattle that have become other men’s. I’d have gone long ago, fled to some other powerful king, since this is past bearing. But I still keep hoping for my poor master, that he’ll come from somewhere and scatter the suitors out of his house.”

“Cowherd,” said Odysseus, “you don’t seem like a bad or foolish man, and I can see for myself that you’ve got sense. So I’ll tell you something, and I’ll swear a great oath on it. Let Zeus first of all the gods be my witness, and this table where guests are honored, and the hearth of noble Odysseus that I’ve come to: while you are still here, Odysseus will come home. And if you want, you’ll see it with your own eyes — the suitors killed, the men who lord it over this house.”

“If only Zeus would make those words come true, stranger,” said the cowherd. “You’d see what my strength is, and what these hands can do.” And Eumaeus prayed the same way to all the gods, that Odysseus might come home.

While they talked, the suitors were busy plotting death for Telemachus. But a bird flew past them on the left⁷, a high-soaring eagle, gripping a trembling dove. Amphinomus stood and spoke to them: “Friends, this plan of ours won’t work — we won’t pull off the murder of Telemachus. Let’s just think about dinner.”

That suited them. They went into the house of Odysseus, laid their cloaks down over the chairs and benches, and sacrificed big sheep and fat goats, fattened pigs and a cow from the herd. They roasted the innards and passed them around, mixed wine in the bowls; the swineherd handed out cups, Philoetius passed bread in fine baskets, and Melanthius poured the wine. Then they reached out for the food laid ready before them.

Telemachus, working his own cunning, seated Odysseus inside the strong-built hall by the stone doorway, on a shabby stool at a little table of his own. He set out a portion of the innards for him and poured wine into a golden cup, and said: “Sit here now and drink your wine among the men. I myself will keep all the suitors’ insults and fists off you. This is no public house — it belongs to Odysseus, and he won it for me. So you, suitors — hold back your tempers and your hands, so no quarrel or fight breaks out.”

They all bit their lips and marveled that Telemachus dared speak so boldly. Antinous, son of Eupeithes, said to them: “Achaeans, hard as it is, let’s accept what Telemachus says: he’s threatening us in earnest. Zeus wouldn’t allow it, or we’d have shut him up in this hall already, for all his clear, ringing speeches.” But Telemachus paid no attention to him.

Through the city the heralds were leading the gods’ holy sacrifice, a hundred animals, and the long-haired Achaeans gathered in the shady grove of Apollo, the far-shooter. They roasted the outer meat and pulled it off the spits, divided the portions, and feasted at their splendid meal. The servers set down a portion for Odysseus equal to their own; Telemachus had ordered it so.

But Athena would not let the proud suitors hold back from their cruel insults; she wanted the pain to bite even deeper into the heart of Odysseus. There was one man among them who knew no decency, named Ctesippus, with a house in Same⁸. Trusting in his great wealth, he too was courting the wife of long-absent Odysseus. Now he spoke up to the brazen crowd:

“Listen to me, you proud suitors. The stranger’s had his fair share for a while now, as he should; it’s neither right nor proper to cheat a guest of Telemachus who comes to this house. But here, I’ll give him a present too, so he can hand it on as a gift to the bath-woman, or to some other of the slaves in the house of noble Odysseus.”

With that he grabbed an ox’s foot lying in the basket and hurled it with his thick hand. Odysseus dodged it — a slight tilt of the head, and inside he smiled, a grim, bitter smile, while the foot struck the well-built wall.

Telemachus turned on Ctesippus: “Ctesippus, you’re lucky for your own sake. You missed the stranger. He dodged your throw himself. If you’d hit him, I’d have run you through the middle with my sharp spear, and instead of your wedding your father would be seeing to your funeral, right here. So let no one show me ugly behavior in this house. I notice things now, I understand it all — the good and the bad. I’m not the child I used to be. We’ve put up with watching all this, our sheep slaughtered, our wine drunk, our food eaten, because it’s hard for one man to hold off so many. But stop now. Stop doing me harm out of spite. And if you really mean to kill me with your bronze, then do it — I’d rather that, far rather die, than keep watching these disgraces day after day: guests knocked about, slave women dragged through this fine house in shame.”

They all went quiet, silent. At last Agelaus, son of Damastor, spoke: “Friends, when a thing is said justly, no one should fly at it with angry words. Stop knocking the stranger around, and any other slave in the house of noble Odysseus. But I’d say a friendly word to Telemachus and his mother. I hope it pleases them both. As long as your hearts could still hope Odysseus would come home, no one could blame you for waiting, for holding the suitors off in your house; that would have been the better thing, if he’d come back and reached his home. But now it’s plain: he’s never coming back. So go and sit with your mother and tell her this — marry whoever’s best, the man who offers the most. Then you can enjoy your father’s whole inheritance, eating and drinking, while she keeps another man’s house.”

Clear-thinking Telemachus answered him: “No, Agelaus, by Zeus, and by the suffering of my father, who’s either dead far from Ithaca or wandering somewhere, I’m not holding up my mother’s marriage. I tell her to marry whoever she wants, and I’ll give her countless gifts besides. But I’m ashamed to drive her out of the house against her will with harsh words. May god never make me do that.”

Then Pallas Athena set loose among the suitors a wild, helpless laughter and sent their minds reeling. They were laughing with jaws that weren’t their own. The meat they ate was spattered with blood. Their eyes filled with tears, and their hearts felt the rising of grief. Theoclymenus, godlike, spoke to them⁹:

“You miserable men — what is this horror falling on you? Your heads are wrapped in night, and your faces, and your knees below. Wailing has broken out. Your cheeks are wet with tears. The walls and the fine beams are spattered with blood. The porch is crowded with ghosts, and the courtyard is full of them, rushing down to the darkness of Erebus. The sun has died out of the sky, and an evil mist creeps over everything.”

They all laughed sweetly at him. Eurymachus, son of Polybus, took the lead: “Our newcomer stranger’s out of his mind. Quick, young men, send him out the door, let him go to the meeting place, since the house seems like night to him.”

But Theoclymenus answered: “Eurymachus, I’m not asking you to send anyone to guide me. I have eyes and ears, two feet of my own, and a mind in my chest built sound enough. I’ll take myself out the door, because I see the disaster coming on you, and not one of you suitors will escape it or dodge it, you who in the house of godlike Odysseus abuse men and scheme your reckless schemes.”

He walked out of the well-built house and went to Piraeus, who welcomed him gladly. The suitors all looked at one another and went back to needling Telemachus, mocking his guests. One of the arrogant young men said: “Telemachus, no one has worse luck with guests than you. First there’s this filthy beggar you keep, hungry for bread and wine, no good at work or fighting — just a dead weight on the earth. And now this other one stands up to play prophet. Take my advice, it’d be far better: load these strangers onto a many-benched ship and send them off to Sicily, where they’d fetch you a good price.”

So the suitors talked, but Telemachus paid them no mind. He sat silent, watching his father, waiting always for the moment when he’d lay hands on the shameless men.

Penelope, daughter of Icarius, wise as she was, had set her beautiful chair facing them, just across the way, and she listened to every word each man said in the hall. They had made their dinner amid all that laughter, sweet and rich, since they’d slaughtered so many animals. But no supper could be more bitter than the one a goddess and a strong man were about to set before them, because they themselves had been the first to do the foul, wicked things.