Book 24 · Book Guide
The last book ends the poem in two movements. First, Hermes leads the souls of the dead suitors down to the Land of the Dead, where the ghosts of the Trojan War heroes Achilles and Agamemnon are talking. One of the suitors tells Agamemnon the whole story of how Odysseus killed them, and Agamemnon praises the faithful Penelope, whose goodness will be sung forever.
Back on Ithaca, Odysseus goes to his father Laertes’s farm and, after testing the grieving old man one last time, reveals himself with sure proofs. But the suitors’ kinsmen, led by Antinous’s father Eupeithes, take up arms for revenge. Odysseus, Telemachus, and old Laertes meet them in a brief fight; Laertes kills Eupeithes, but before more blood is shed, Athena and Zeus impose peace and bind both sides to an oath. Odysseus is home and king again, and the long story is done.
Hermes, guide of souls, herds the suitors’ ghosts down to the underworld — squeaking like bats in a cave — where they interrupt an old conversation: Achilles and Agamemnon comparing endings. Achilles died young at Troy but received a hero’s funeral that a god would envy; Agamemnon survived the war only to be butchered at his homecoming table. Now a suitor tells their story, and Agamemnon — of all souls — delivers the poem’s final verdict: blessed Odysseus, whose wife was faithful; her fame will never die, while Clytemnestra’s song will be hatred forever. The poem opened with Agamemnon’s story as a warning. It closes with the same man, in the dark, pronouncing Penelope the answer.
One recognition remains. Odysseus finds his father alone in the orchard, old and shabby with grief, and — true to form — tests him with one more lying tale before the sight of the old man crying breaks him. The proof he offers is the gentlest in the poem: the scar, and then the trees — the thirteen pear trees, ten apple trees, forty fig trees Laertes gave him by name when he was a small boy trailing his father through this same orchard. A scar, a bed, a row of trees: identity, in this poem, is the ordinary things two people both remember. Then three generations — Laertes, Odysseus, Telemachus — stand armed together, and the old man calls it the happiest day of his life.
The poem has one problem left, and it’s a real one: the families of a hundred dead suitors are obliged by custom to take vengeance — that’s how blood justice worked, kill for kill, without end. Ithaca stands one skirmish from a civil war that could grind on for generations. Homer’s solution is blunt: after the first exchange — old Laertes, gloriously, gets the only kill — Zeus and Athena stop the fight and impose peace, wiping the grievance from both sides. Readers have always found the ending abrupt, but its meaning is anything but: left to custom, the killing never stops; someone larger than both sides must close the ledger. The poem that began with a house in chaos ends with a sworn peace — order restored, at a king’s hearth and an island’s.
Hermes leads the squeaking souls of the slain suitors down to the underworld, to the meadow of asphodel where the dead live. There the ghosts of the great Trojan War heroes are gathered.
The ghosts of Achilles and Agamemnon talk of their deaths. Agamemnon describes Achilles’s magnificent funeral at Troy, then laments his own wretched murder at home, a contrast that runs through the whole poem.
Agamemnon recognizes the ghost of the suitor Amphimedon and asks how so many fine young men died together. Amphimedon tells the whole story: Penelope’s weaving trick, Odysseus’s return in disguise, the contest of the bow, and the slaughter in the hall.
Agamemnon praises Odysseus for winning so faithful and good a wife, whose virtue will be sung forever, unlike his own murderous wife Clytemnestra, who shamed all women.
On Ithaca, Odysseus reaches his father’s farm and finds Laertes alone in the orchard, old, filthy, and dressed in rags, sunk in grief. Moved to tears, Odysseus decides to test him first rather than reveal himself at once.
Odysseus approaches with yet another false story, claiming to be a stranger who once hosted Odysseus. The grief this brings on his father, who pours dust over his own head, is more than Odysseus can bear.
Odysseus breaks off the pretense and declares himself. To convince his doubting father, he shows the scar and names the very trees Laertes gave him as a boy. Laertes faints with joy, then embraces his son, overjoyed that the suitors have paid.
At the farmhouse, Athena restores Laertes, making him taller and stronger, and the household sits to a feast. The old servant Dolius and his sons recognize Odysseus and greet him with joy.
Rumor spreads the news of the slaughter through the town. The families bury their dead, and Eupeithes, father of Antinous, rouses a mob for revenge. The herald Medon and the prophet Halitherses warn that the gods were behind the killings and that the suitors brought it on themselves, but more than half the men arm and follow Eupeithes.
On Olympus, Athena asks Zeus whether to allow more war or make peace. Zeus decrees peace: Odysseus shall remain king, and the people shall forget the slaughter and live in friendship and plenty again.
The two sides clash by Laertes’s farm. Strengthened by Athena, old Laertes kills Eupeithes with his spear, and Odysseus and Telemachus charge. They would have killed them all, but Athena cries out to stop the fighting, and the terrified kinsmen flee. When Odysseus pursues, Zeus hurls a thunderbolt, and Athena, in Mentor’s form, sets a lasting oath of peace between Odysseus and his people. The Odyssey ends.
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