The suitor in charge
Antinous is introduced as the most arrogant of the suitors. He sits at the head of the group, eats the best portions, and speaks for them when Telemachus calls the assembly in Book II. He dismisses the young man’s complaint and blames Penelope for refusing to choose a husband. Later he proposes to ambush Telemachus on his way home from Pylos.
His behaviour is a systematic violation of xenia. A guest should receive hospitality and give gifts; Antinous consumes his host’s herds, insults the household, and plots against the heir. The poem makes him the embodiment of what is wrong with Ithaca during Odysseus’s absence.
The first death
When Odysseus finally strings the bow in Book XXI, Antinous is the first to be shot. The arrow goes through his throat as he lifts a cup to drink, and he falls across the table. The image is deliberately grotesque: the guest dies at the feast he has been consuming.
His death begins the slaughter in the hall. The other suitors try to fight, but they are trapped without weapons, and Odysseus, Telemachus, Eumaeus, and Philoetius kill them all. Antinous’s fate is the poem’s judgment on the abuse of hospitality, delivered in the most direct way possible.
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Enemy
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