The Return to Ithaca

The Story

After twenty years away from Ithaca, Odysseus finally returned home.

But Athena advised caution.

The palace was filled with suitors seeking to marry Penelope and take control of Odysseus' household.

They consumed his livestock, used his wealth and treated his long absence as proof that he was dead.

Odysseus therefore returned in disguise.

He appeared as an old beggar.

Few recognised him.

His old dog Argos recognised his master before dying.

Telemachus eventually learned the truth, and father and son prepared their attack.

Penelope had resisted the suitors for years through intelligence of her own.

She famously promised to choose a husband after finishing a burial shroud, but each night secretly undid the work she had woven during the day.

Eventually the deception was discovered.

A final contest was arranged.

The suitors were challenged to string Odysseus' great bow and shoot through a line of axe heads.

None could do it.

The disguised stranger asked for a chance.

Odysseus strung the bow.

He made the shot.

Then he revealed himself.

With Telemachus and a small number of loyal allies, Odysseus attacked the suitors.

The palace became the final battlefield of his journey.

When it was over, Odysseus still had to prove his identity to Penelope.

She tested him.

She ordered that their marriage bed be moved.

Odysseus objected because he knew the bed could not simply be moved.

He had built it around the trunk of a living olive tree.

That private knowledge convinced Penelope that the man before her was truly her husband.

The Odyssey ends not merely with a warrior winning another fight.

It ends with recognition.

After years of disguise, wandering and uncertainty, Odysseus is finally known again in his own home.