Book XXII · Episode 5 of 5
Cleansing the House
Odysseus cleanses palace, maids hanged
Scenes
- Survey and Summons — Odysseus surveys dead, summons Eurycleia
- Suitors lie heaped like dying fish
- Sends Telemachus to fetch the nurse
- Eurycleia finds him blood-soaked like a lion
- His hands and feet are stained red
- Stops her before she can speak
- Naming the Guilty — Eurycleia names twelve disloyal maids
- Chides her for exulting over the dead
- Says their own guilt brought this fate
- Fifty maids trained to the household’s work
- Offers to wake the queen with news
- Odysseus tells her to let Penelope sleep
- Hall Cleared — Corpses removed, hall washed clean
- Maids scrub the thrones and tables clean
- Guilty women led to a narrow yard
- Maids haul out the bodies in tears
- Telemachus and helpers shovel the floor clean
- He turns to address the women
- Maids and Goatherd Punished — Telemachus hangs maids, Melanthius mutilated
- Refuses the maids a clean death
- Strings a hawser between pillar and vault
- Their feet twitch, then go still
- Melanthius is dragged out through the porch
- His nose, ears, and hands hacked off
- Joyful Reunion — Odysseus purges hall, weeps for joy
- Insists the fire come before clean clothes
- Fumigates the hall and court with sulphur
- Maids crowd around him with torches
- They seize his hands, kiss his brow
- Odysseus weeps, recognizing each one of them