Odysseus, Telemachus, and two servants kill each of the suitors one by one. When Telemachus goes to get more weapons, he forgets to close the door and Melanthius goes and gets some weapons for the suitors to defend themselves with. Odysseus finds out and orders one of the servants to tie up Melanthius and lock him in the room with all of the weapons. Athena arrives and the suitors mock and insult her, she yells at Odysseus for lacking the courage that he had in Troy and makes most of the suitors’ spears miss Odysseus, Telemachus, and the servants. A few of the suitors beg for their lives, but Odysseus mercilessly slaughters them. However, he does save the bard and another man who raised Telemachus. Later, Odysseus, Telemachus, and the servants clean up with the help of twelve unfaithful female servants. When they finish cleaning, the women are murdered for thier crimes.
Those suitors got what was coming to them. I think that they knew it too, by the look on their faces when I had finally revealed myself to them. My actions were more out of revenge than for justice. The women who slept with the suitors and disobeyed my wife were almost as bad as the suitors themselves! I told the women that “I won’t allow a clean death for these women-/the suitor’s sluts-who have heaped reproaches upon my own head and upon my mother’s”(Book 22 Line 485-488). Those women dishonored me. I suppose that the could have lived, but I thought that my home needed to be purged of all of its wrongdoers. So I killed them all without mercy.
