VII. the FINAL FIGHT Swiftly Through the Town Runs Rumor The
VII. THE FINAL FIGHT Swiftly through the town runs Rumor the Messenger, telling of the suitors' terrible death and fate. A crowd soon gathers at the palace of Odysseus; the bodies of the foreign suitors are dispatched to their several homelands, and the Ithacan corpses are buried by their kinsmen. The Ithacans then gather in assembly. Against the advice of Medon the herald and Halitherses the seer, the majority of the Ithacans rally around Eupeithes the father of Antinoos, and prepare to meet Odysseus in battle. A brief interlude on Olympus follows, in which Zeus encourages Athene to make peace, and sug gests that the gods should overlook Odysseus' blood-guilt. The party of Odysseus goes to meet the enemy; Laertes, with Athene's help, kills Eupeithes. The Ithacans are put to flight, and Odysseus and his allies are in hot pursuit when they are stopped by a thunder bolt from Zeus. Athene, in the guise of Mentor, concludes the treaty of peace, establishing Odysseus in his kingdom at last. The objections to this final episode all, so far as I know, fall into one category only: aesthetic objections. But the critics make up in vehemence for what they lack in concrete evidence: "In extremo deinde libro," says J. G. Schneider,1 "auctorem ingenium et spiritus plane defecisse videtur: ita, ut in rerum multarum satis gravium narratione brevitate inepta, partim etiam obscura de functus, lectoris exspectationem plane fallat." Spohn, who quotes this statement, particularly objects to the brief Olympian council, which he thinks hasty and badly written; Page concurs in this opinion, and adds,2 "From this moment onwards the story rushes spasmodically and deviously to its lame conclusion." "It may be judged," writes Kirk, "a suitably weak or inept conclusion to a final episode, that is ludicrous in its staccato leaps hither and thither, its indigestible concoction of rustics, thunderbolts, feeble old men and a goddess disguised or undisguised." 3 The last episode of the Odyssey, then, is said to be lame, hasty, awkward, abrupt.
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