Odysseus is Guilty

“Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy.”

So begins Homer’s The Odyssey, an epic poem about Odysseus’ ten-year journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan War. When Odysseus arrives home he finds out that for the past few years suitors from all over have been staying in his house, trying to woo his wife, eating his food, and sleeping with his servants. This, of course, doesn’t please Odysseus, and he goes off on a rampage, killing each and every one of them. Odysseus’ actions were not justified.

When Odysseus is beginning to plot his revenge against the suitors with his son, Telemachus, he talks about hiding all of their weapons, “When Athena, Queen of Tactics, tells me it is time, I’ll give you a nod, and when you catch that signal round up all the deadly weapons kept in the all, stow them away upstairs in a storeroom’s deep recess- all the arms and armor- and when the suitors miss them and ask you questions, put them off with a winning story: ‘I stowed them away, clear of the smoke.’” This is giving Odysseus an unfair advantage over the suitors. When their battle does begin, the suitors have no way of defending themselves because he has hidden all of the weapons in a secret location. Here he was, getting all upset at the suitors because of what they had done to his house for the past few years, and how they were plotting to kill his son, when he was doing the same exact thing. Yes, it is a battle, and yes, Odysseus is going to want to win and be the best. If Odysseus was truly a great hero, he wouldn’t need to give himself an unfair advantage over them. This is just another example of how Odysseus’ actions were not justified.

At the beginning of the bloodshed, one of the suitors, Eurymachus begs for mercy from Odysseus. Promising him that if they spare their lives they will all pay him back what they had taken from him and more. “So spare your own people! Later we’ll recoup your costs with a tax laid down upon the land, covering all we ate and drank inside your halls, and each of us here will pay full measure too- twenty oxen in value, bronze and gold we’ll give until we melt your heart.” So here are the suitors, willing to pay back Odysseus everything and more, but he doesn’t accept their payment. The suitors are willing to atone for their sins, but that’s not enough for Odysseus. He wants revenge; and he wants them all dead. One of the men staying at Odysseus’ house while he was gone was actually a priest who claimed that he was forced to stay there by the other suitors. Odysseus replies, “Only a priest, a prophet for this mob, you say? How hard you must have prayed in my own house that the heady day of my return would never dawn- my dear wife would be yours, would bear your children! For that there’s no escape from grueling death- you die!” Odysseus then proceeds to kill this man. This action was not justified, in my opinion. Without interrogating this man any further, Odysseus simply kills the priest, who was quite valued back in this time period.

Not only does Odysseus kill the suitors, but he decides to go throughout his house and kill all of his disloyal servants. Not many of his male servants were disloyal, but a good dozen or so of his maids were. “These men the doom of the gods has brought low and their own indecent acts. They’d no regard for any man on earth- good or bad- who chanced to come their way. And so, thanks to their reckless work, they met this shameful fate. Quick, report in full on the women in my halls- who are disloyal to me, who are guiltless?” Here Odysseus was, about to round up and kill the maids who were disloyal to him. Before that, though, he makes them clean up the whole house from top to bottom, the whole mess he himself had just made from killing the suitors. The maids were not only helping the suitors by giving out a few secrets here and there, but they were also sleeping around with them. The fact that Odysseus kills them all is not justified. Sure, they were disloyal, but it was better that they were sleeping with the suitors than his wife; Odysseus should have been thankful for that, or understanding at least.

One of the disloyal servants was the goatherd, Melanthius. He has no hope that Odysseus will come back home; he doesn’t like the suitors either but has come to accept the situation; he doesn’t like his job as the goatherd; he never tried to sleep with Odysseus’ wife; and in the end Melanthius finds the storage and gives the suitors back the weapons Odysseus hid. None of these above mentioned things come anywhere close to what the suitors have done to Odysseus’ family, friends, and home. Yet Melanthius ends up getting punished the worst, “you two wrench Melanthius’ arms and legs behind him, fling him down in the storeroom-lash his back to a plank and strap a twisted cable fast to the scoundrel’s body, hoist him up a column until he hits the rafters- let him dangle in agony, still alive, for a good long time!” Instead of just killing Melanthius, like he did all the other suitors and disloyal servants, he decides to torture him first. Afterwards, “They hauled him out through the doorway, into the court, lopped his nose and ears with a ruthless knife, tore his genitals out for the dogs to eat raw and in manic fury hacked off hands and feet.” This is just another example of how Odysseus’ actions that day were not justified. Here he was, torturing his own servant who had been loyal to him most of his life and had just made one or two bad decisions.

In conclusion, Odysseus is guilty. His actions in killing the suitors are not justified. Odysseus goes overboard with his urge for revenge and bloodshed. He makes a mountain out of a molehill.