Odysseus' Bow Trial Ending Explained | From Antinous' Death to Penelope's Bed Test

When Penelope declared that she would hold a bow trial, the suitors and Penelope herself believed it was merely a procedure for choosing a new husband. But her son Telemachus had already reunited with his father, who had secretly returned a few days earlier at the swineherd Eumaeus' hut, and the two had worked out a plan to destroy the suitors. While most of the palace servants and guests knew nothing, father and son alone already knew where this trial would ultimately lead.

The trial of stringing the bow, the battle to destroy the suitors, and the bed scene in which Penelope recognizes her husband are not one fused scene but three separate events unfolding in sequence. Successfully stringing the bow does not immediately reveal his identity on the spot, and destroying the suitors does not send Penelope straight into her husband's arms. Between each event there were hidden choices and unexpected costs, and those costs opened the next scene. Let's follow that flow in order.

Why Penelope Brought Out Odysseus' Bow

Having run out of excuses to postpone remarriage to the suitors, Penelope finally proposes the bow trial. But this was no ordinary bow. In his youth, Odysseus had gone to Lacedaemon and met a young man named Iphitus. While Iphitus was searching for his lost horses, the two exchanged a sword and a spear and formed a friendship, and on that occasion Iphitus presented the bow of his father Eurytus as a gift. Later, after Iphitus lost his life to Heracles, Odysseus treasured the bow and left it safely at his home rather than taking it to the battlefield of Troy.

Penelope brought out the bow and set a condition before the suitors: she would leave this house with whoever could string the bow most easily and shoot an arrow through all twelve axe heads. Telemachus dug a long trench in the courtyard, lined up twelve axes in a row, and packed down the earth. It was a condition demanding both the strength to string the bow and the accuracy to shoot an arrow, all at once.

While the Suitors Failed One by One

The first to step forward was the priest Leodes. Weak-handed, he could not even attempt to string the bow and set it down, leaving behind an ominous remark that this bow would one day take the lives of many in that hall.

Antinous scolded Leodes and suggested they warm the bow over a fire and grease it. He ordered the goatherd Melanthius to light a fire and lay out the sheepskins. But warming the bow was useless. The suitors stepped up one by one to try, but none could string it, until only Antinous and Eurymachus remained, eyeing each other.

When the Beggar Asked for the Bow

At that point Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, stepped forward and asked to test the strength of his own hands as well. He said he wanted to see whether he had lost his strength through travel and neglect or whether he was still as he once was.

Antinous flew into a rage. He berated the beggar for his insolence and threatened that if he dared to string the bow, he would hand him over to King Echetus to be killed. He even dredged up the old story of the centaur Eurytion, who got drunk at a feast and committed violence, pressing the point: do you not know what happens when a bow is entrusted to a stranger?

Eurymachus' concern was a little different. What he feared was that if word spread that a lowly beggar had strung the bow, the suitors' honor would be utterly destroyed. It was Telemachus who cut through this standoff. Declaring that the decision about the bow belonged to himself, the master of the house, he sent his mother Penelope off to her chamber, and pressed the hesitant Eumaeus to hand the bow over to the beggar. The suitors watched this and laughed in disbelief.

Quiet Preparations in the Courtyard

Before receiving the bow, Odysseus called the swineherd Eumaeus and the cowherd Philoetius aside, out by the gate beyond the courtyard. He asked whether, if a god suddenly sent Odysseus back, they would fight the suitors for him. Both swore without hesitation that they would.

Only then did Odysseus reveal who he was. He told them he had returned to his homeland after many hardships, after 20 years. He then showed them the scar on his leg from a boar hunt on Mount Parnassus as proof.

It was not a reunion of words alone. Odysseus immediately gave orders. He had Eumaeus hand him the bow and then tell the women to lock the doors of the hall, and commanded Philoetius to bolt the gate of the outer courtyard securely. He added that no matter what sounds came from inside, the women must never come out. Before the bow trial had even begun, the palace was already sealed and prepared for battle.

The Sound of the Bowstring and the Signal of a Glance

Even after receiving the bow, Odysseus did not hurry. Only after turning it over and examining it to see whether worms had gnawed at the horns did he string it, and his movements were as natural as a skilled bard fitting a new string to his lyre. When the taut string rang out as clear as the cry of a swallow, the suitors' faces turned pale, and at that moment Zeus thundered from the sky.

Seated where he was, Odysseus picked up an arrow, set it to the string, took aim, and shot. The arrow flew through the holes of all twelve axes without missing a single one and flew out into the outer courtyard.

Yet he did not reveal who he was here. He only sent Telemachus a signal with a glance, saying that his host had not shamed him, that stringing the bow had not taken long, and that he was still strong, unlike the suitors. Then he calmly changed the subject, saying it was now time to eat dinner and pass the time with song and dance. Telemachus understood the signal and quietly stood at his father's side, sword at his belt and spear in hand.

Antinous' Death and the Belated Revelation

Between the success of the bow trial and the next arrow, one step still remained. Odysseus said the bow trial was over and that he would now try to hit a target no one had ever hit, and then let fly his arrow. The arrow pierced the throat of Antinous, who at that very moment was raising a golden cup in both hands, about to drink. He dropped the cup, blood poured from his nostrils, and food spilled over the table he kicked away.

At first the suitors believed it was an accident. They reproached him, saying the stranger would pay the price for shooting a man by mistake, and that the man he had killed was the finest young man in Ithaca. They turned their eyes to the walls to look for shields and spears, but they were nowhere to be seen.

At that very moment Odysseus revealed his identity. He rebuked them, asking whether they had thought he would never return from Troy, and declared that because they had squandered his property, lain with his maids, and wooed his wife while he was still alive, they would die for their sin of fearing neither gods nor men. It was not at the moment he succeeded with the bow, but only right after shooting Antinous, that his identity came to light.

An Unarmed Palace and Melanthius' Betrayal

There was a reason the suitors could find no shields or spears even as they searched the walls. Odysseus had moved those weapons to the storeroom in advance. Following his father's instructions, Telemachus fetched from the storeroom four shields, eight spears, and four helmets for himself, Eumaeus, and Philoetius, and completed their arming.

But this arming did not remain the property of Odysseus' side alone. Melanthius the goatherd, who sided with the suitors, slipped into the storeroom through the back passage and began bringing out shields, helmets, and spears, twelve of each, to hand to the suitors. Only then did Telemachus realize his mistake and confess to his father that leaving the storeroom door open had been his fault.

When Melanthius went for weapons a second time, Eumaeus and Philoetius seized him. After binding his hands and feet, putting a noose around his neck, and hoisting him high up a storeroom pillar, the two returned to the battle.

The Order in Which Eurymachus and Amphinomus Fell

Here the order needs to be made clear. Eurymachus and Amphinomus had already lost their lives before Melanthius brought weapons to the suitors. Right after Telemachus returned from the storeroom with the arms, Eurymachus drew his sword and rushed at Odysseus, only to be struck down when an arrow pierced his chest and sank to the hilt.

Amphinomus also drew his sword and charged straight at Odysseus, but he collapsed when Telemachus drove a spear into his back between the shoulders. Both were bare of any armor or shield.

It was only after that that the suitors actually resisted while armed. Armed with the shields, helmets, and spears Melanthius had delivered, the suitors held out for a while, but after Melanthius was caught during his second trip and the supply of weapons was cut off, the remaining suitors fell one after another.

After the suitors who had long trampled the palace were gone, the maids who had betrayed Odysseus and sided with the suitors, along with Melanthius, were coldly punished at Telemachus' hands. In a single day, the entire band that had dominated the palace was wiped out.

Why Penelope Did Not Embrace Him Right Away

The nurse Eurycleia ran at once to wake Penelope and tell her that her husband had returned. But Penelope did not readily believe the news. She doubted it, saying that the gods sometimes drive the wise mad and make the foolish wise, and she even feared that a god might be deceiving her. Her conviction that the dead Odysseus was far away and would never return had been the resignation that sustained her for 20 years.

Even when she sat before the man claimed to be her husband, Penelope gazed at him in silence for a long while. It was a silence in which wonder and doubt mingled, leaving her certain of neither. Telemachus, frustrated, even reproached his mother, asking what other woman could keep herself so distant from a husband returned after 20 years.

A Single Remark: Move the Bed

Penelope finally decided to set a test. She instructed the nurse to bring out the bed from the chamber Odysseus had built with his own hands and set it up outside.

Hearing this, Odysseus flared up at once. Who had moved his bed? he demanded, saying that even the most skilled carpenter would have found it no easy task without a god's help, and that the bed was a marvelous thing he had built with his own hands.

Then he began to explain, point by point, why the bed could not be moved. He had built a stone wall and a roof around a young olive tree growing within the house, using it as a pillar; he had cut away the upper branches but left the stump, and with carpenter's tools had carefully shaped it into the central post of the bed. He went on to the finest details of its making: inlaying it with gold and silver and covering it with a deep crimson hide. Because the bed had been built as one with the chamber from the start, it was a thing that could not be moved unless the tree were cut down at the root.