Odysseus's wife recognised her beggar husband early — she just didn't say so
The hosts argue Penelope has already recognised her disguised husband: her uncharacteristic laugh, her reading of her son's sneeze as a death omen for the suitors, and her talk of proper bride-gifts are all signals — and Odysseus gets them.
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The one recognition that needs no deception
Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, comes into town and passes Argos, the old dog lying in the mule dung with no one to care for him. The dog wags his tail and drops his ears; Odysseus weeps but cannot go over and hold him — the goatherd Melanthius is right there, and any exposure would wreck the revenge plan. The hosts say this passage is special because the book is layered with deception everywhere: he deceives his mother, he deceives his most loyal slave woman, whereas with Argos there is only pure perception, and it cuts straight across with no testing required. One student wrote a paper arguing Argos is Ithaca itself: a place neglected, slowly rotting, with no one stepping in to fix it; the suitors are the dung, and both Argos and Telemachus lie in the dung without becoming dung.
Has she recognised her husband or not
One host calls this the book's biggest hermeneutic question, one he has worn everyone out with in his honors seminar: by the end of Book 18, has Penelope recognised Odysseus? The other host's answer: if you don't ask, I'd say no, the text reads as no; but once you ask it that way, I think yes. The evidence: a fugitive prophet brings an oracle saying he is already on Ithaca; Telemachus sneezes, and she laughs and says it is a death omen for the suitors — before this she was either crying or about to soak the bed with tears, and she had never been this happy. The counter-evidence comes from the same person: Telemachus earlier wouldn't bring her to Odysseus because over the years many people had come bearing good news, and all of them were lying. The two land on this: she is already blinking at her husband in Greek Morse code.
The character test doesn't decide who dies
Athena has Odysseus disguised as a beggar begging among the suitors so as to see who is good and who is bad — but the text says in the very next line that she had no intention of saving anyone in the slaughter that follows. So the character test in this house carries no survival payoff; even the consistently decent Amphinomus still has to die. The hosts say this is a reminder: the point of the test is not to determine who lives. They attribute the test's motive to Athena — what she wants is to draw Odysseus's blood up, to put him back into the state of a killer, not to sift out who deserves pardon.
Begging in your own house is the hardest self-control
One line gets repeated throughout the disguise: a beggar cannot have shame. Odysseus has to behave in the most shameless way possible, and the hosts think this is harder than taking the stool to the back or enduring Melanthius's abuse — a once-great king now begging in his own house, from these people, for food that is his own. The humiliation is close to the limit here, but the more accurate word is that it humbles him: he is pressed down to the lowest point, in some sense he brought it on himself, and by accepting it and owning it he is rebuilding his personhood out of it. There is another layer: as king he was always courteous to beggars, and now that he is one himself, he may even feel some relief — at last he knows what those people's lives were like.
Winning is fine; winning too well gives you away
The other farce is Irus — a fat drunk who runs messages for the suitors and is nicknamed Iris for it — coming to fight Odysseus over begging turf, with a goat's stomach stuffed with fat and blood as the prize. The host says Odysseus is walking a tightrope: he cannot lose to this drunk, but he also cannot hit too hard, because once other suitors step in to help, he will have to beat them all at once and his identity will be exposed on the spot. So his trick is to make them swear that no one will raise a hand for Irus. The host compares it to Clark Kent fighting an ordinary man: you can't show what you can really do. Another laugh: the moment Irus shows fear, Antinous turns on him instantly and says he'll ship him off to some king who cuts off people's noses and ears.
The one who's really haunted is Odysseus himself
After winning, Odysseus sits down beside Amphinomus and gives that speech: of all the creatures that live and breathe and crawl on the earth, man is the weakest; our mood depends on whatever Zeus sends each day. Then he warns him: do not turn from the right way, do not disrespect the wife of a man who will soon be home. Amphinomus understands, paces back and forth through the house, his heart stirred — and the hosts say this is where they start reading these books as a ghost story: Odysseus comes back to town like High Plains Drifter, letting the suitors show their true faces and dig their own graves. But he adds that maybe he is the ghost, and he himself seems to be haunted by something too. The narrator's close is cold: the good get no exemption, and Amphinomus still has to die on a spear.
Penelope starts playing her own hand
Athena first gives Penelope a makeover, making her more beautiful and raising desire in the suitors. One host says he sometimes leans toward reading it as metaphor: a person who for so long could only weave the shroud and unravel it, stopping the clock, decides to act for the first time, and that excitement is itself the light on her face. The other won't give up the literal sense: the storyteller most likely really believed a god did this. Right after, Penelope tells the suitors that her husband made her promise to remarry once her son grew a beard, and the date has come; but a respectable family courting a bride should bring fat sheep and cattle and good gifts, not eat another man's food for free. Odysseus is pleased to hear it, because her mouth is saying fine things while her mind is calculating something else — and the hosts wonder how he can be so sure it's a trick when he hasn't tested her yet. Their answer is domestic: a husband just knows when his wife means it.
The god wants Odysseus to ache inside
After the slave woman Melantho taunts him and Eurymachus leads the mockery, the text says Athena keeps the suitors provoking him, because she wants the pain to sink deep into Odysseus's heart. The hosts ask why: one intuition is that she wants to rouse righteous anger; the other is that it's both — she likes a good fight, and Odysseus has not been in a warrior's mindset for a long time. This passage also makes them notice that the gods may not actually need to intervene: these men have been drinking all day and have seen so many strange things that they can go mad like that on their own, and they don't need a god to teach them to do vile things. And in these books Athena is very active yet never appears the way she used to, so even the hosts can't say for sure whether Odysseus and Telemachus know she is pulling strings.
In their own words · checked verbatim
He knows exactly who Odysius is. Odysius knows who he is and that's all that's required and like the dog Argos can die after that.
he's kind of making them dig their own graves, the suitors, you know, by like making them show their true colors.
And she's like giddy at this point. Like she has not acted like this at any point.
she's had a lot of people come tell her good news about Odysius over the years and all of those people were lying.
Although she had no thought of saving any out of the massacre which was to come.
One of the things that is said repeatedly here as Odysius is disguised as a beggar is that a beggar can't have shame.
Of all the creatures that live and breathe and creep on Earth, we humans are weakest.
Athena wanted pain to sink down deep inside Odysius.
Figures
| Episodes in this Odyssey podcast series | 12 | 0:02 |
| Years Odysseus was away fighting the Trojan War | 10 | 25:40 |
| Years the suitors have camped out in Odysseus's house | 4 | 34:42 |
| Page number of the passage where Athena keeps the suitors provoking him | 420 | 43:49 |
Glossary
- bum fight
- A sleazy early-2000s business in which people paid homeless men to fight and sold the footage; the host uses it for the Irus brawl.
- High Plains Drifter
- The Clint Eastwood western: a man who comes back to town like a ghost and makes the townspeople expose their own ugliness.
- xenia
- The ancient Greek code of hospitality, obliging a host to entertain a guest; the host says these freeloading suitors are the worst possible counterexample.
How to listen
People who have read the Odyssey or are catching up on it; screenwriters and novelists writing revenge, disguise, and the transfer of family power.
The last two minutes, on Nolan not being able to shoot comedy.