An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic

by Daniel Mendelsohn

Penelope’s growing sympathy for the beggar who has come to the palace sets this great scene in motion. By the end of Book 17, rumors about the unusual vagrant, together with reports of Antinoüs’ disgraceful treatment of him, have reached the queen’s ears, and she summons him to her chambers. The two finally meet at the beginning of Book 19. (Odysseus’ encounters with the various Suitors and his exchanges with the villain Antinoüs and the doomed Amphinomus take up most of Book 18. Penelope shrewdly insists on meeting with the beggar later that evening in secret, after the Suitors and their henchmen have gone to bed.) The beggar and the queen talk late into the night. Pretending to be a Cretan prince down on his luck after the Trojan War—another of his Cretan tales, which so confusingly blur the boundaries between fact and fiction; Odysseus himself, as we know, being a king who’s been down on his luck since the Trojan War—Odysseus insists to the queen that he has recently seen her long-lost husband, and that he is not only alive but about to return to Ithaca at long last. Since many travelers and guests have passed through Ithaca’s palace over the years claiming to have news of Odysseus, he demonstrates his bona fides by describing a certain brooch that, he tells Penelope, Odysseus was wearing when they met. Of course the description is accurate, and on hearing it the queen dissolves in tears. Collecting herself at last, she declares to her maidservants that the beggar must ...