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

by Daniel Mendelsohn

The jarring reference to the Suitors as “Achaeans”—the word Homer uses to refer to the Greek allies in the Iliad—prepares us for the fact that, however much the Odyssey has been preoccupied till now with its hero’s ability to use his wits to conquer his enemies, the climactic act of vengeance for which he has waited so long will be characterized by the kind of violence we associate with this poem’s great predecessor. After stripping off his rags and declaring to the astonished Suitors his true identity, he takes aim first at the loathsome Antinoüs; the arrow he shoots catches the leader of the Suitors in the throat just as he’s downing a cup of wine—a fitting ending to the character who, more than any other, emblematized the Suitors’ arrogance and impiety in defying the laws of hospitality. “You dogs,” Odysseus explodes at last, you never thought that I’d be home again from Troy! And so you ate my household up, forced yourself upon the servant girls, courted the wife of a man who was still alive, outraging the gods who hold up the wide heavens as if no one would ever take revenge: now dire destruction waits for all of you! Eurymachus dies next, after trying to smooth-talk his way out of his predicament (he blames everything on Antinoüs), and then poor Amphinomus, speared through the back by Telemachus as he tries to flee the hall. But the vengeance that ensues doesn’t, at first, go quite as Odysseus had planned. In a final nod to the theme of Telemachus’ education, Homer t...