INTRODUCTION.

Melanthius the disloyal goatherd who betrayed Odysseus attempts a second visit to the storage chamber, but the loyal herdsmen catch him at the door. They leave him hanging helpless from the roof, reserved for even more hideous tortures later. Meanwhile, Athena breathes new courage into Odysseus and his comrades; she turns away the javelins of the suitors and scares them with the sight of her terrible Aegis a divine shield or breastplate, often decorated with a Gorgon's head, representing the power of Zeus or Athena. Only the herald Medon and the singer original: "minstrel" Phemius are spared from the wholesale slaughter. Among the handmaidens of the palace, some had been guilty of disloyalty and unchastity. These women are forced to the horrible task of washing the blood-stained floor and removing the corpses of the men who had been their lovers original: "paramours". Then they are shamefully original: "ignominiously" put to death. The whole palace is afterward purified with the fumes of sulphur.

Eurycleia Odysseus's old nurse comes hastening (Book 23) with triumphant laughter to her mistress’s room to announce the return of Odysseus and the slaying of the suitors. Penelope cannot believe it. “It is not by the hand of Odysseus,” she thinks, “that these worthless men have fallen, but by the immediate vengeance of heaven.” Yet she goes down to see the scene of slaughter. There she meets Odysseus, but she is still unconvinced: “It cannot be he!” Odysseus can afford to wait. He knows that he holds the secret of recognition in his own hands; so, for the time being, he moves on to other things. The festival must be kept up; the sounds of music and dancing must hide the tragedy that has been enacted within from the people of the town. Yet even when Odysseus comes back from the bath, royally robed, his wife is still unbelieving. She decides to put him to a final test. “Bring out the bed,” she cries, “from the bridal chamber,” knowing that no one could move the solid frame. It had been carved into the living trunk of an olive tree that grew through the floor, around which the chamber itself had been built.

His answer to her command clears away her last doubt, and husband and wife are locked in one another’s arms.

Athena made the night linger original: "tarry" in its course for them, for they had much to tell each other—the story of Penelope’s persecutions, the story of the husband’s past adventures, and the trials and the wanderings that still awaited him.