BOOK XXIV
Hermes of Kyllene summoned the souls of the suitors to come forth, and in
his hands he was holding the beautiful golden staff, with which he mazes
the eyes of those mortals whose eyes he would maze, or wakes again the
sleepers. Herding 5 them on with this, he led them along, and they
followed, gibbering.
BOOK 23
15/08/2025 | 13 min
BOOK XXIII
The old woman, laughing loudly, went to the upper chamber
to tell her mistress that her beloved husband was inside
the house. Her knees moved swiftly, but her feet were tottering.
She stood above Penelope's head and spoke a word to her:
5 ‘Wake, Penelope, dear child, so that, with your own eyes, you can see what
all your days you have been longing for.
BOOK 22
15/08/2025 | 21 min
BOOK XXII
Now resourceful Odysseus stripped his rags from him, and sprang up atop
the great threshold, holding his bow and the quiver
filled with arrows, and scattered out the swift shafts before him on the
ground next his feet, and spoke his word to the suitors: 5 ‘Here is a task
that has been achieved, without any deception.
BOOK 21
15/08/2025 | 19 min
BOOK XXI
But now the goddess, gray-eyed Athene, put it in the mind of the daughter
of Ikarios, circumspect Penelope,
to set the bow before the suitors, and the gray iron, in the house of
Odysseus: the contest, the beginning of the slaughter.
5 So she ascended the high staircase of her own house,
and in her solid hand took up the beautiful, brazen
and artfully curved key, with an ivory handle upon it.
BOOK 20
15/08/2025 | 17 min
BOOK XX
Then the noble Odysseus bedded down in the forecourt, and spread
beneath him the raw hide of an ox, and uppermost many fleeces of sheep
the Achaians had dedicated.
The Odyssey as we have it is an epic of over twelve thousand lines. It has been
divided, like the Iliad and probably at the same time, into twenty-four books.
Book number and line number are the standard terms of reference.
Colombia