Summary

Odysseus finds it difficult to sleep that night, worrying about what lies before him. He angrily notes the maidservants who sneak off and sleep with the suitors. Penelope finds it difficult to sleep as well, mourning for her husband. Just as Odysseus is drifting off to sleep, he is awakened by Penelope’s crying. To strengthen his resolve, he asks Zeus to show him a sign of his favor. Zeus sends a great thunderbolt, which a few of the servants interpret to be a sign of Odysseus’s homecoming. Odysseus is assured when he overhears them.

The servants prepare a great feast in the main hall. Eumaeus and Philoitios, the cattle foreman, arrive at the palace. They converse with the disguised Odysseus, expressing their longing for their master’s return.

Meanwhile, the suitors are plotting Telemachus’s murder when an eagle flies by with a dove in its claws. Amphinomos interprets this to be an ill omen and convinces the suitors to focus on feasting instead.

To further rouse Odysseus’s anger, Athena compels the suitors to loosen their restraint. As a result, they mock Odysseus again, and a suitor named Ctesippus throws an ox-foot at him. Telemachus scolds the suitors for their behavior, to which the suitor Agelaos replies that Telemachus should force Penelope to choose a husband with haste. Athena then drives the suitors to hysterical laughter, prompting the seer Theoclymenos to remark that the hall is filled with dark omens which point to their imminent deaths.

Analysis

In book 20, Athena compels the suitors to reveal their true nature, further emphasizing her primary role in The Odyssey—to watch over events and reveal, alter, or conceal. Even when she joins the battle in book 23, she does not manipulate all of the suitors’ arrows—thus Telemachus, Eumaeus, and Philoitios are wounded. The only instance in which she directly intervenes can be found in book 24, when she commands peace to be made on Ithaca with Zeus’s blessing. Because of this uncharacteristic intervention, however, some scholars speculate that Homer did not write book 24 and that it was added only after the poem’s original circulation. Hermes’s incursion to the Land of the Dead in book 24 is also somewhat controversial, as it is not traditionally Hermes’s duty to chaperone the dead.

Telemachus’s transition into manhood is made plain in books 20 to 24. Apart from assisting his father, Telemachus also addresses the suitors with a confidence he did not have prior to his visit to the Greek mainland. He is also almost able to string Odysseus’s bow, signifying his latent aptitude for reigning over the household (and, possibly, Ithaca). In fact, in book 24, Laertes rejoices to witness Odysseus and Telemachus vie over who is to face the wrath of the suitors’ families.

Odysseus is characteristically different from classical heroes such as Achilles or Heracles. However, the presence of a weapon only he can wield draws on a trope common among heroes not just of Greek mythology, but of other cultures as well. King Arthur, for example, is held as the only one fit to wield Excalibur. As weapons denote strength, the trope implies that true strength can only be exercised by those with great virtue and integrity.

As established repeatedly in the previous books, the slaughter of the suitors is a matter of divine justice as much as it is a matter of personal revenge. Thus, Eurymachus’s offer to pay Odysseus back for the damage to his household is meaningless, as the issue is not merely material. The suitors have disgraced Odysseus’s family and estate—and, by extension, the gods themselves. It is also important to note that Odysseus takes no pleasure in the slaughter. In fact, when Eurycleia rejoices to see the suitors dead, Odysseus reminds her that it is impious to take pleasure in the violence of divine justice:

No crowing aloud, old woman.
To glory over slain men is no piety.
Destiny and the gods’ will vanquished these,
and their own hardness. They respected no one,
good or bad, who came their way.
For this, and folly, a bad end befell them.

Finally, the execution of Odysseus’s disloyal maidservants point to the fact that, in The Odyssey, the master of the household has considerable leeway to dispense his own brand of justice in his home. Apart from this, disloyalty and betrayal is a consistent theme throughout The Odyssey, as seen in the emphasis placed on the fate of Clytemnestra, murdered by her son, Orestes, for betraying her husband, Agamemnon.