Odyssey - The Suitors quotes

Suitors’ Exploitation of Xenia - Book 1

"The suitors came swaggering in... They helped themselves to the good things spread before them"

- Arrogance and lack of respect

- Reflects sense of entitlement to Odysseus' household

Suitors’ Abuse of Xenia told by Athene (Religious Connection) - Book 2

"[…] it is their own skins they are risking when they squander Odysseus' estate in the belief that he is gone for ever."

- Demonstrates suitors' blatant disregard for divine/religious and moral duty

- Athene's divine judgement to kill suitors is clear

Abuse of Xenia - Telemachus to Athene in Book 1

"Meanwhile they are eating me out of house and home. And they will very soon destroy me too."

- Clear violation of xenia

- Betraying sacred Grecian values

Suitors’ Abuse of Xenia (Spoken by Telemachus to Athene) & Disrepect to Odysseus’ Oikos - Book 1

"They are living free off another man — a man whose white bones are rotting in the rain upon some distant land or rolling in the salt sea waves.”

- Violation of Xenia

- Disrespect for the dead, treatment of Odysseus' oikos illustrates hubris

Antinous’ Violation of Xenia to Odysseus - Book 17

"talk like that will end in our young men dragging you through the house by the leg or arm and tearing your skin to ribbons"

- Aggressive remark exemplifies violent and threatening nature

- Clear violation of Xenia

- Heightened antagonisation

Suitors’ Abuse of Xenia Announced by Telemachus Book 2

"Too cowardly to present themselves... They slaughter our oxen, our sheep, our fatted goats" "while I pray that Zeus will bring a day of reckoning…"

- Emphasises suitors gluttony and abuse of Ithaca's resources

- Telemachus' outrage reflects his growing understanding of the suitors' evil an the justice which they deserve

Good Suitors or all bad? - All of the suitors towards Penelope in Book 1

"the Suitors burst into uproar, and each man voiced a prayer that he might sleep with her."

- All are culpable for having broken xenia and disrespect for Greek values

- Like what T says to Achaeans' in Assembly, it is just as bad to let suitors continue to do bad

Odysseus' revenge - Odysseus before killing the suitors in Book 22

"Not if you made over all your patrimony to me... would I keep my hands from killing until you Suitors had paid for all your transgressions"

- Highlight theme of justice

- Inevitabiliy of punishment

- Violation of divine and human laws

Odysseus' revenge - Odysseus after the killing in Book 22

"She found Odysseus among the corpses of the dead, spattered with blood and gore, like a lion... with blood dripping from his breast and jaws on either side, a fearsome spectacle"

- Simile underlines Odysseus' power and authority

- Suggests predatory and furor, perhaps over-excessive violence

Telemachus’ Xenia - Book 1

“He went straight up to his visitor, grasped his right hand, took his bronze spear and gave him cordial greetings. ‘Welcome, friend!’ he said. ‘You can tell us what has brought you here when you have had some food.’ “

Odysseus’ Lamenting His Loss of Kleos - Book 5

“If only I too could have met my fate and died the day the Trojan hordes let fly at me… I should have at least have had my burial rites and the Achaeans would have spread my fame abroad. But now it seems I was predestined to an ignorable death.”

Odysseus’ on Nausicaa’s Oikos - Book 6

“… there is nothing better or finer than when two people of one heart and mind keep house as man and wife, a grief to their enemies… and their reputation spreads far and wide.”