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Summary
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Penelope brings out Odysseus’ bow and announces the contest. Telemachus sets up the axes, and the suitors try and fail to string the bow.
Odysseus asks to try. The suitors object, but Telemachus insists that the beggar be allowed. Odysseus strings the bow easily and shoots through all twelve axes. The door is locked, and the killing is about to begin.
Opening lines
But the goddess, flashing-eyed Athena, put it into the heart of the daughter of Icarius, wise Penelope, to set before the wooers in the halls of Odysseus the bow and the gray iron, to be a contest and the beginning of death. — Homer, Odyssey XXI.1ff., trans. A. T. Murray (Loeb; Perseus Digital Library, CC BY-SA 4.0).
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