“Odysseus looked round his house to see whether any survivors were hiding to escape black Death. But he found the whole company lying in heaps in the blood and dust, like fish that the fishermen have dragged out of the grey surf in the meshes of the net onto a curving beach, to lie in masses on the sand longing for the salt water, till the bright sun ends their lives. So there the Suitors lay in heaps, one upon another.” (Od. 22. 380ff). This descriptive simile is from Homer’s epic the Odyssey, a story which details the Ithacan commander Odysseus’s journey back to his native land and the hardships he had to overcome after the decade-long Trojan War. It illustrates the aftermath of Odysseus’s merciless slaughter of all 108 suitors who had been plaguing his palace for the last four years, courting his wife, and wasting Odysseus’s resources. A harsh punishment indeed. But did the Suitors really deserve this fate?
At first the crimes of the Suitors do not seem heinous. They consisted of attempting to court the wife of Odysseus, living off of Odysseus’s goods and land at no cost to themselves, maltreating the household servants, and their insolent, raucous, and ill-mannered behaviour. Behaviour of this sort would of course be totally inappropriate and unacceptable, using their strength in numbers to exploit the homestead of a defenceless woman and her callow child. But did these actions deserve death? As the story progresses, more serious offences are hatched or committed by the Suitors. There is talk about killing Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, and dividing up his property between them. Some of the Suitors even attempted to kill Telemachus in an ambush at sea, which is the most serious of all the crimes they plotted. The Suitors also made bold statements of what they would do to Odysseus should he ever come back to Ithaca. It was suggested that his mere appearance would lead to his death. However, the fact remains that they did not kill anyone. The norm of those days was that those who have committed like crimes would resort to restitution. This would consist of a payment in the form of reparations to the man who had been wronged. Eurymachus makes this clear after Odysseus has killed the suitor Antinous with the bow he had just strung in Book 22 (Od. 22. 55-59). This was not how Odysseus chose to respond to the transgressions of the Suitors. Such was the implacable anger of Odysseus that not only did he slaughter all 108 of the Suitors, but he also hanged 12 of his maids who had proved disloyal to his household. Betrayal seems to be the motivating factor in Odysseus’s actions. No doubt many today would judge Odysseus’s response harsh and the punishment the Suitors were given was not justified. However, to get a better perspective, it might be a good idea to view the situations from the major characters from the poem.
So how did other characters in the Odyssey view the situation and what punishment did they think the Suitors deserved? Let’s start with the gods, the guardians of justice, and in particular Athene. They certainly believed that the Suitors deserved nothing else but death. During a discussion among the gods about the murder of Agamemnon by Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, the sage goddess Athene says, “Father of ours, Son of Cronos, King of Kings, Aegisthus’ end is just what he deserved. May all who act as he did share his fate!” (Od. 1. 45-48) Athene was the god that helped Odysseus the most throughout his journey and was instrumental in the plan of the destruction of the suitors. Eumaeus, Odysseus’s swineherd, believed the Suitors were committing a great injustice towards Odysseus as he says, “Yet the blessed gods don’t like wicked acts. Justice and fair play are what they respect in men.” (Od. 14. 83-84) Indeed Zeus, at the beginning of Book 1 makes it perfectly clear that despite blaming the gods for their troubles, it is man and his transgressions which brings upon himself sufferings that were not his destiny (Od. 1. 33-36).
In terms of Odysseus’s peers, Menelaus and Nestor were well aware of what was happening in his palace. Menelaus’s desire for appropriate justice in respect to the Suitors is shown by his line when visited by Telemachus, “By Father Zeus, Athene, and Apollo, that’s the Odysseus I should like to see these Suitors meet. A swift death and a sorry wedding there would be for all.” (Od. 4. 343-345). News of the outrages of Odysseus’s palace had also filtered through the Underworld. Teiresias informs Odysseus of the situation of Odysseus’s house in Book 11 and asserts that he must take revenge on these men for their misdeeds by killing them (Od. 11. 116-119). When the Suitors enter the Underworld in Book 24, Agamemnon revels in their slaughter contrasting the dutiful Penelope with the crimes of his own wife Clytemnestra. Odysseus’s peers certainly approved of the act.
With respect to the family, dutiful Telemachus and sagacious Penelope, Odysseus’ wife and son, suffered greatly at the hands of the Suitors in their own home. Telemachus tried his best to keep order in the palace as he saw himself as the rightful successor to his father’s estate. Passionate and reckless in the beginning of the poem, he matures as the story progresses. He was angry at the insolence and wastefulness of the Suitors and his only wish was for his father to come back and punish them. This is illustrated in the line where Athene disguised as Mentes in Book 1 comes across the doleful Telemachus, “The first to see her was Telemachus, the godlike youth, who was sitting disconsolate among the Suitors imagining how his noble father might come back out of the blue, drive the Suitors headlong from the house, and so regain his royal honours, and reign over his own once more.” (Od. 1. 113-119). The Suitors had taken advantage of Telemachus because of his weakness, and only started to view him as a threat when he abused them in the assembly in Book 2 and expressed his intention to journey to the mainland. They feared he was going to bring back men to drive them from the palace.
Penelope, on the other hand, had to endure the pestering of the Suitors who all wanted her hand in marriage. For the most part, she stayed in her room lamenting what she thought was the death of Odysseus and devised many schemes to try to put off the unwanted marriage with one of these squanderers of her household goods. She showed disgust at what the Suitors were doing in lines such as, “They slaughter our oxen, our sheep and our fatted goats; they feast themselves and drink our sparkling wine, without a second thought. The truth is, much of our wealth is being squandered. There is nobody like Odysseus in charge to purge the house of this blight. Ah, if only Odysseus could only come back to his own country! He and his son would soon pay them out for their crimes.” (Od. 17. 534-541). Both Telemachus and Penelope had no reservations at Odysseus slaughtering the Suitors for the crimes against his family.
So far everybody, the gods, the peers of Odysseus, his family and faithful servants, all are in agreement that the Suitors should pay with their lives for their crimes. But in defence of the Suitors, the fact remains that they were not guilty of killing anyone. The only crimes they committed were wasting Odysseus’s resources, appalling behaviour, and treating Odysseus’s family with disrespect. True, there was a plan to dispose of Telemachus on his return from the mainland. There was also talk of killing him in the palace, but they were restrained by the Suitor Amphinomus (Od. 16. 393-405). Not all the Suitors were bad. Amphinomus was described as a man of principle (Od. 16. 398). Others too were shown in a good light. Agelaus complains of maltreatment of strangers in Odysseus’s household (Od. 23. 21). Leodes abhorred the Suitors’ recklessness, and their conduct filled him with indignation (Od. 21. 144). However, most of the Suitors followed the lead of the thuggish Antinous and the oily Eurymachus. Their intentions for Telemachus are clear throughout the book. He was going to be disposed of. Antinous is the archetypal suitor, brutish, ill-mannered, and disrespectful. Eurymachus had more charm but was equally detestable. Both of them physically abused the disguised Odysseus as he wandered as a beggar in his own household in the later books.
The stringing of the bow heralded the destruction of the Suitors. Odysseus’s first victim was Antinous. The sudden turn of events stunned the Suitors. Eurymachus tried to convince Odysseus that the main culprit of the misdeeds was indeed Antinous and promised to give Odysseus reparations. “The man who was responsible for everything lies dead already. Antinous here, the prime mover in these misdeeds, inspired not so much by any wish or need to marry as by a very different aim, in which Zeus, Son of Cronos, has thwarted him. And that was to make himself King of the fair city and land of Ithaca, after ambushing your son and murdering him. But he has got deserts now and been killed. So spare us, who are your own people. And afterwards we will make amends to you by a public levy for all the food and drink that has been consumed in your house.” (Od. 22. 48-57). This seems to be the standard of the time judging from the account where Odysseus had gone to the mainland to recover stolen cattle from the Messenians and had accepted restitution instead of slaughtering a large number of them (Od. 21. 15-18). However, Odysseus’s response to the Suitors in the palace with the bow in his hands was uncompromising. Fight or die. He killed them all. But he did so for what he perceives as a just reason. As he later reprimanded the gloating Eurycleia (Od. 22. 413), the Suitors had fallen victim to the will of the gods and their own infamy. Their own transgressions had caused their death. To Laertes, Odysseus boasts that he had killed the gang of Suitors in his palace and that he had thus taken revenge for their bitter insults and crimes (Od. 24. 323). Odysseus certainly saw the deaths of the Suitors as just for the misdeeds in his house.
To modern eyes, Odysseus’s actions seem grossly unfair. Not all the Suitors were reckless, insolent, and covetous of his wealth and the death of his son. Yet, all the main characters in the book agree that their fate was deserved. Maybe we should take heed of Zeus’s warning at the beginning of the poem. “Man’s own transgressions bring him suffering that was not his destiny.” (Od. 1. 35). By tangling with Odysseus, the Suitors brought upon themselves their own demise.