Quote · Modern Wisdom
The True Story Of The Odyssey (and why it matters) - Alex Petkas - #1125
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The Fall of the Suitors
At 1:23:40 · chapter starts 1:19:57
Penelope announces the bow contest with what Alex calls a perfect trap: whoever can string Odysseus's great recurve bow and shoot an arrow through 12 axe-holes may marry her. The suitors line up and fail, each failure publicly announcing that none of them measure up to the man they've been trying to replace. Odysseus in disguise gets his hands on the bow, strings it effortlessly, and shoots — by which time Telemachus has hidden all other weapons, the swineherd has locked the palace doors, and Eurycleia has bolted the women's chambers. What follows is a bloodbath: Antinous (the leader who threw the bench) gets an arrow through the throat while lifting a cup. The rest die in the locked hall. Even a suitor who begs for mercy — claiming he was always the voice of reason — is executed by Odysseus with the cool logic that a prophet present for four years would have prophesied Odysseus's death to his own advantage. Alex notes the deliberate choice of the bow as murder weapon: in the Iliad it was a coward's weapon, used by Paris and Pandarus. Homer is making a statement that justice sometimes requires abandoning warrior honour. The episode ends with Agamemnon's ghost in Hades declaring that Penelope's faithfulness is the source of Odysseus's lasting glory — they are, and always were, a unit.
Penelope delayed choosing a new husband by weaving a funeral shroud for Laertes by day and secretly unweaving it each night — a deception that lasted years until a treacherous maid revealed it.
Odysseus doesn't storm back into his palace with an army. He begs, tests, waits, and lets the suitors expose themselves. Then he locks the doors, hides the weapons, and kills 108 men with a bow — the dishonourable weapon of tricksters. Justice reestablished, Odyssey-style.
The Iliad is built on the idea that dying young for eternal glory is the right trade. Then the Odyssey has Odysseus meet Achilles's ghost — and Achilles says he'd rather be a landless slave on Earth than king of the dead. It's Homer asking: was the whole first poem wrong?
When Odysseus meets Achilles in the underworld, Achilles says he would rather be a living slave with no land than king among the dead — suggesting glory is overrated.
Odysseus, his son Telemachus, and just two other workers killed all 108 suitors by locking the doors, seizing the weapons, and shooting with the bow first.
