Justice In Odysseus In Homer's Odyssey

In book 22 of The Odyssey, Odysseus finally returns home to Ithaca and seeks to rid his household of the suitors desiring to marry Penelope. While Odysseus is seeking personal revenge, he is simeoutanously enacting justice as the crimes of the suitors have violated the laws of guest friendship that are upheld by the gods. He intends to achieve this by purging his household of the suitors as well as any of his servants who have been disloyal to him by willingly aiding or benefitting from the actions of the suitors. To do this, Odysseus and his son Telemachus hid the weapons of the suitors and Odysseus acquired his bow. Odysseus killed the leader of the suitors, Antinous, and prepares to kill those remaining. Odysseus mocks the suitors for believing that he would never return and exact revenge on the men for the crimes they have committed. He continues by berating them for being so arrogant that they didn’t even fear the gods, who would consider the killings an act of justice for violating the laws of guest-friendship. He claims that it was their foolishness and actions that has led them to their ultimate demise. The actions of the suitors clearly are unjustifiable, but Eurymachus, one of the suitors, tries to deflect all the blame …show more content…
They have slept with the suitors or benefited from them and have disrespected both her and Penelope. As punishment, the women are to clear away the corpses and clean away the blood. Once that has been completed, they are to be taken outside and hacked to death. The distressed women complete their task, but Telemachus decides that the women will not be given clean deaths as they have been disrespectful towards him and his mother and they are the whores of the suitors. In view of this, he decides a more fitting punishment is to collectively hang them. The last to die is treacherous Menlanthius who is brutally tortured and killed for his