What’s Up With the Ending?

For a long time, some readers have felt that the ending of the Odyssey smells a little fishy. In fact, two scholars from ancient Alexandria (Aristarchus and Aristophanes – a different Aristophanes than the one who wrote comedic plays) claimed that the “ending" of the Odyssey came in line 296 – of Book XXIII! According to these wise guys, everything after Odysseus and Penelope go to bed together – including all of Book XXIV – was added later by somebody other than Homer. Why would they think that? Your guess is as good as ours, though plenty of later scholars have tried to back them up, arguing that Book XXIV isn’t of the same quality as the rest of the Odyssey, and so on. Now, it may be true that the ending is a bit abrupt – just when a big battle is about to pit Odysseus, Telemachos, and Laertes against the families of the dead suitors, Athena steps in and tells everybody to be friends. (Thundering from Zeus drives the point home)

That said, there’s a lot of important stuff in Book XXIV that you can’t really do without. Most important of all is Odysseus’s reunion with his father Laertes. We’ve been hearing about Laertes throughout the whole book – remember, the shroud Penelope is weaving is going to be for him when he dies – and it wouldn’t make sense for Homer just to forget about him. Also, in Ancient Greek culture, where honor and revenge were very important (check out the Iliad for further examples of this), it simply wouldn’t make sense to end the poem with a bunch of guys still out to get Odysseus. This is especially true given that, in lines 113-140 of Book XXIII – before the line that Aristarchus and Aristophanes claim is the end of the poem – Odysseus and Telemachos discuss the problem of the suitors’ families and decide to go hide out in the country with Laertes. Was Homer just going to leave that thread hanging? We at Shmoop think it’s more likely that any ending would have seemed abrupt after a poem as awesome as the Odyssey. What was most important for the poet was wrapping everything up peacefully, even if it did require divine intervention.