Odysseus and the 12 axes: who strung the bow?

The quick answer

Odysseus won. He was the only man in the contest who strung the great bow and shot an arrow through all twelve axes. He did it in Book 21 of the Odyssey, while disguised as an old beggar.

The contest was set by Penelope, his wife. She told the men who were trying to marry her that she would go with whichever one could string her husband's bow and shoot through twelve axes set in a line. In the story, the goddess Athena puts the idea into her mind, and it turns out to be a trap that brings Odysseus his revenge.

The setup: Penelope, the suitors and the bow

Odysseus has been away for twenty years, first at the war at Troy and then lost on the sea. Back on Ithaca, over a hundred young nobles have moved into his house. They eat his food, drink his wine and demand that his wife Penelope choose one of them as her new husband. Penelope has put them off for years, but by Book 19 she says she can stall no longer.

In Book 19 she tells the disguised Odysseus about her plan to hold a contest with his old bow. She does not know who he is. He encourages her to go ahead and says her husband will be home before the suitors finish. Then, in Book 21, she fetches the bow from the storeroom, weeping as she lifts it down.

The bow has a history. A man named Iphitus gave it to Odysseus when they met as young men, and Odysseus left it at home when he sailed to Troy because it was a keepsake from a friend. The story also says Penelope's son Telemachus digs a long trench and sets the axes upright in a row, packing the earth tight around them. The suitors are amazed at how neatly he does it.

Who tried and failed

Before anyone else, Telemachus tries. He pulls at the string three times and cannot bend the bow. On the fourth try he would have strung it, but Odysseus quietly signals him to stop. Telemachus then says he is perhaps too young and weak, and hands the contest to the older men.

The suitors go in order, from the right of the wine server. Leiodes, a priest who has always disliked the suitors' behaviour, goes first. His soft hands cannot do it, and he warns that this bow will bring grief to many of them. (His name is also written Leodes in some translations.) Others try after him. They warm the bow by a fire and rub it with fat to make it easier to bend, and still nothing works.

That leaves the two strongest men, Antinous and Eurymachus. Eurymachus tries by the fire and fails, and he complains that they are shamed for being so much weaker than Odysseus. Antinous, the leading suitor, says it is a feast day of Apollo and suggests they stop and try again tomorrow.

How Odysseus did it

The beggar asks to try. The suitors are furious, and Antinous threatens him. Penelope speaks up for the stranger, but Telemachus, who is now the master of the house, sends her upstairs and takes charge. The bow is placed in the beggar's hands, the courtyard gates are locked, and the women are kept in their rooms.

Odysseus turns the bow over slowly, checking it for damage after so many years. Then he strings it without effort. In Samuel Butler's 1900 translation, he does it "as easily as a skilled bard strings a new peg of his lyre." When he plucks the string, Butler writes that it "sang sweetly under his touch like the twittering of a swallow." The suitors turn pale, and Zeus thunders overhead as a sign.

Still sitting on his seat, Odysseus fits an arrow, draws and lets fly. The arrow passes through the holes of every axe, one after another, and lands in the yard beyond. He tells Telemachus the guest has not shamed him, and with a nod of his brow, Telemachus arms himself and stands beside his father.

What happened next

Book 22 opens with Odysseus throwing off his rags. His first target is Antinous, who is just lifting a cup of wine and has no thought of danger. Odysseus tells the suitors who he is, and says they will now pay for what they did to his house.

Eurymachus offers to repay what they ate and drank, but Odysseus refuses. With Telemachus, the swineherd Eumaeus and the cowherd Philoetius at his side, and with help from Athena, he defeats the suitors in the hall. The story spares only two men, the herald Medon and the singer Phemius. The next book is the reunion with Penelope, which does not come easily, because she makes him prove that he is really her husband.

What does "through the axes" actually mean?

Nobody is completely sure how the feat worked, because Homer does not explain it. Readers and scholars have long disagreed, and the Greek wording is hard to translate exactly. We do not know for certain what these axes looked like, so it is best to treat every explanation below as a theory.

One common reading is that the axes were axe heads with a hole where a wooden handle would fit. Set in a straight line, with the holes lined up, they would form a tunnel for the arrow. Butler's translation follows this idea when it says the arrow went through the "handle-holes."

Another reading is that the axes had a ring or loop at the end of the handle, and the arrow had to pass through the rings. A third idea is that the arrow went through the line of axes some other way, for example between the handles, or over and past the blades.

Why the scene matters

The bow contest is the high point of the whole poem. It is where Odysseus stops hiding and begins to take back what is his: his house, his family and his place as king of Ithaca. Only he can string the bow, because only he is the true owner of it, and that is the point of the test.

It is also a story about recognition. The people close to Odysseus have to see past his beggar's disguise, and the contest is the moment the truth starts to come out. For Penelope, it opens the door to the end of twenty years of waiting.

The other 12 axes

This website has nothing to do with Odysseus, though it shares the number. The 12 Axes political test on this site measures your views on twelve separate scales, such as how you think about the economy, liberty and authority. If the ancient bow sparked your curiosity, you can see where you land on those twelve axes with the free test below.