Then Odysseus tore off his rags,
and sprang on to the broad pavement with his bow and his quiver full
of arrows. He shed the arrows on to the ground at his feet and said,
"The mighty contest [athlos] is at an end. I will now
see whether Apollo will grant it to me to hit another mark which no
man has yet hit."
On this he aimed a deadly arrow at
Antinoos, who was about to take up a two-handled gold cup to drink
his wine and already had it in his hands. He had no thought of death
- who amongst all the revelers would think that one man, however
brave, would stand alone among so many and kill him? The arrow struck
Antinoos in the throat, and the point went clean through his neck, so
that he fell over and the cup dropped from his hand, while a thick
stream of blood gushed from his nostrils. He kicked the table from
him and upset the things on it, so that the bread and roasted meats
were all soiled as they fell over on to the ground. The suitors were
in an uproar when they saw that a man had been hit; they sprang in
dismay one and all of them from their seats and looked everywhere
towards the walls, but there was neither shield nor spear, and they
rebuked Odysseus very angrily. "Stranger," said they, "you shall pay
for shooting people in this way: you shall see no other contest
[athlos]; you are a doomed man; he whom you have slain
was the foremost youth in Ithaca, and the vultures shall devour you
for having killed him."
Thus they spoke, for they thought
that he had killed Antinoos by mistake, and did not perceive that
death was hanging over the head of every one of them. But Odysseus
glared at them and said:
"Dogs, did you think that I should
not come back from the dêmos of the Trojans? You have
wasted my substance, have forced my women servants to lie with you,
and have wooed my wife while I was still living. You have feared
neither the gods nor that there would be future nemesis from
men, and now you shall die."
Homer. The Odyssey. Rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original. Samuel Butler. Based on public domain edition, revised by Timothy Power and Gregory Nagy. A. C. Fifield, London. 1900 (?).
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