THE TEST OF THE GREAT BOW
Penelope tells the suitors that she will marry the one suitor who can string Odysseus’s great bow and then shoot an arrow through twelve ax-helve sockets.
Eumaeus is a swineherd and Odysseus reveals his true identity to him and to the cowherd after he is convinced that they are loyal to him.
Odysseus is making plans and giving orders to the cowherd and to the swineherd to take command of the great hall where the drunken suitors are eating and drinking. The two herders are instructed to keep the women locked in their quarters and for them not to leave their quarters regardless of any noise they may hear coming from the great hall.
Telemachus has taken the suitors’ weapons and locked them outside the great hall.
Still dressed as an old beggar, Odysseus asks if he may participate in the competition of the great bow. Penelope agrees to accept him as a competitor for her hand.
When Odysseus reaches for the bow, Zeus sends a thunderbolt to express his approval.
Chronus is the father of Zeus and is the father of time. There was no time before Chronus. This is where time comes from.
Cronus was told that he would be over thrown by one of his children and so he starting killing his children as they were born from his forehead. Zeus managed to avoid his fate and kill Cronus and assume the throne of the gods.
This is where we get the word chonological, chronology and chronometer which refers to time.
DEATH AT THE PALACE
ANTINOUS is the ringleader of the drunken, insolent and rude suitors.
He strings the arrow and then lets it loose where it whizzes perfectly through the twelve ax-helve socket. The men strangely enough don’t seem to notice. Perhaps they are too drunk? Odysseus then shrugs off his beggar’s clothes, and his son, Telemachus takes his position next to his father at the front of the great hall.
Odysseus pours out a rain of arrows and reaching for the “cruel head” of an arrow for the rudest of the suitors, Antinous who seduced Penelope’s maids, turning them against her, turns the weapon on Antinous. The arrow catches him right in the throat as he is lifting a beautiful golden chalice of wine to his lips.
(“And did he dream of death?” as he lifted the cup to his lips to drink wine that did not belong to him?)
Figurative Language:
Personification:
The cup fell from his SHOCKED HAND: Can a hand be shocked?
Revelry: partying, merry making, having fun
Odysseus’s arrow penetrates his neck and punches all the way through to the quiver (the front of the arrow is sticking out the back of Antinous’s neck and just the quiver is sticking out the front of his neck).
The suitors think it’s a wild, unintended shot and begin looking around for their weapons to kill the annoying old beggar but when they realize their weapons are gone, they can only yell and scream their outrage at the old man.
The rowdy suitors are angry and begin yelling, “Foul! Unfair! You shot the best man!”
Then the suitors become deathly afraid as it slowly dawns on them as to who this old beggar might actually be.
Metaphor: Sickly green fear pulled at their entrails (guts).
Eurymachus, the self appointed speaker for the suitors, steps forward and does what weasels always try to do – weasel out of something by blaming somebody else. In this case, it’s the dead guy – Antinous. He promises that the suitors will give restitution but Odysseus says that they fought their way into his palace, let them fight their way out now.
Trapped in the great hall without their weapons, the suitors are cut down left and right by Odysseus, Telemachus and the two faithful herders.
Athena sends a thundercloud in the shape of her aegis (shield) sailing through the smoky hall where many of the suitors are lying dead or dying in pools of blood. The rest, the few who are still standing, seeing her great shield taking form in a storm cloud in the hall, become mad with fear and try to stampede out the massive doors.
Homeric Simile:
And the suitors, mad with fear, at her great sign, stampeded like stung cattle by a river…” and “after them the attackers wheeled as terrible as falcons….”
After all the suitors are killed, Telemachus then calls the maids from their quarters and orders them to drag the bodies of their lovers outside to be buried in a mass grave and then to clean up the blood stained floor. After the maids are finished with their horrible work, Telemachus then hangs them all – all who were disloyal to their mistress, Penelope.
Hide: skin of an animal.
