Contest of the Bow

The Contest of the Bow is the climactic turning point of the Odyssey, the carefully staged event through which Penelope, prompted by Athena, forces the suitors to compete for her hand—and through which Odysseus, still disguised as a beggar, reclaims his identity and begins the slaughter that restores his house. It is the moment when the long-deferred homecoming finally becomes action, when the bow that only its true master can string becomes both a test of worth and an instrument of justice.

Origins and Symbolism of the Bow

The bow that Penelope brings down from the storeroom is no ordinary weapon. It had been given to Odysseus by Iphitus, son of Eurytus, whom they met in Messene while Odysseus was still a young man on a mission to recover three hundred sheep stolen by the Messenians. Iphitus had come seeking twelve brood mares and mule foals, but those mares would be his death: when he later visited the house of Hercules, that hero killed him—his own guest—and kept the mares. Before that fatal visit, Iphitus gave Odysseus the bow that his father Eurytus had carried, and Odysseus gave him a sword and spear in return. The bow thus carried the memory of a friendship cut short by a violation of hospitality, the very crime the suitors were now committing in Odysseus's own house. Odysseus had left the bow behind when he sailed for Troy, treating it as a keepsake rather than a piece of equipment. It had hung untouched for twenty years in the storeroom, alongside the treasures of gold, bronze, and wrought iron that Penelope now also brings out—the twelve axes that her husband used to set up in a row and shoot through.

Penelope's Announcement and the Setup

Athena put it into Penelope's mind to make the suitors try their skill with the bow and the iron axes as a means of bringing about their destruction. Penelope went upstairs, took the bronze key with its ivory handle, and unlocked the storeroom door. She lifted down the bow in its case, sat down with it on her knees, and wept bitterly before carrying it—along with the quiver full of deadly arrows and a chest of iron and bronze prizes—to the cloister where the suitors sat. Standing by a bearing-post with a veil before her face and a maid on either side, she declared that she would marry whichever man could most easily string the bow and send an arrow through all twelve axes. She added that even so she doubted not that she would remember her husband in her dreams. Then she told Eumaeus to set the bow and the pieces of iron before the suitors. Both Eumaeus and the stockman Philoetius wept when they saw their master's bow, but Antinous scolded them, claiming he remembered Odysseus from his own childhood and knew the bow would be no light matter to string.

The Suitors' Failure

Telemachus first tried the bow himself. He set the axes in a long groove he had dug and made straight by line, stamping the earth tight around them—a feat that surprised everyone, since he had never seen it done before. Three times he tugged at the string with all his might, and three times he had to leave off. He was trying for the fourth time and would have strung it had Odysseus not made a sign to check him. Telemachus then put the bow down, letting it lean against the door, and told the others to try. Leiodes, the sacrificial priest who hated the suitors' evil deeds, was the first to attempt it, but his hands were too weak and he could not string it. He declared that the bow would take the life and soul out of many a chief among them, and that it was better to die than to have missed the prize. Antinous rebuked him and ordered Melanthius to light a fire and bring lard so they could warm and grease the bow. They did so, but none of them was strong enough to string it. Antinous and Eurymachus, the ringleaders, still remained to try, but even Eurymachus, after warming the bow by the fire, could not bend it. He grieved not so much for losing the marriage—there were plenty of other women—as for the disgrace of being so inferior to Odysseus.

Odysseus Strings the Bow

When the suitors had given up and were making drink-offerings, Odysseus, still in his beggar's rags, asked to try the bow. The suitors were angry and afraid he might succeed. Antinous rebuked him fiercely, threatening to ship him off to King Echetus, who kills everyone who comes near him. Penelope defended the stranger's right to try, but Telemachus asserted his authority as master of the house and told his mother to go inside and busy herself with her loom and distaff, for the bow was a man's matter. She went upstairs wondering, and Minerva sent sweet sleep over her eyes. Eumaeus, despite the suitors' protests, brought the bow to Odysseus and placed it in his hands. Philoetius quietly slipped out and made fast the gates of the outer court with a ship's cable. Odysseus examined the bow all over, turning it every way to see whether worms had eaten into its horns during his absence. Then he strung it as easily as a skilled bard strings a new peg of his lyre. He took it in his right hand to prove the string, and it sang sweetly under his touch like the twittering of a swallow. The suitors turned pale, and at that moment Zeus thundered loudly as a sign. Odysseus took an arrow from the table, laid it on the center-piece of the bow, drew the notch and the string toward him while still seated, took aim, and let fly. The arrow pierced every one of the handle-holes of the axes from the first onward till it had gone right through them and into the outer courtyard.

The Turn to Violence

Odysseus then said to Telemachus that his guest had not disgraced him, and that it was time for the Achaeans to prepare supper while there was still daylight. As he spoke he made a sign with his eyebrows, and Telemachus girded on his sword, grasped his spear, and stood armed beside his father's seat. The contest was over; the slaughter was about to begin. The bow that had been a test of worth became a weapon of execution, and the man who had been a beggar revealed himself as the master of the house.