Odysseus s Trick

Introductory.
Among adventurers of all times, one stands far above the rest. That is of course …  Odysseus the King of Ithaca. The learned reader may object at this point that while the main character of Odyssey narrative is indeed the arch-adventurer second to none, but the character by the name Odysseus as known from Iliad is not at all an adventurer, but rather a respectable level minded strategist. If you see the conundrum between the characters of Iliad and Odyssey, read on … for this book is for your exclusive delight.

Any statement of a position may be expressed in just a few words. There is no reason why I should not at this point reveal in the nutshell what I have to say. Here it comes – the main character of Odyssey that came to the Odysseus’ wife’s home and killed her suiters is a fraudster. This fraudster is a professional archer. That was in the nutshell. Now let us begin to unravel this archeological detective story slowly and with enjoyment at every twist of so many twists.
As I approached eighteen and for the first time since my boyhood took to shooting a bow, I came to realize the inherent incredulity of the story about the slaughter of the Penelope’s suiters. Having firsthand shot a powerful English bow – and missed at remarkably short distances within my backyard - I came to suspect that the slayer of the Penelope’s suiters was a professional archer and may not possibly have been the intellectual that left Ithaca twenty years prior bearing the name Odysseus. Upon inquiry in the sources, I confirmed my initial suspicion of the identity theft. It is now my considered opinion that Philoctetes son of Poeas, the rightful owner of the Heracles’s mightiest bow, a clever deserter and a certified nymph lover, stole the identity of the Ithaca’s king … and sailed in history under the guise of Odysseus. The old fraud shall be exposed, and the truth shall be restored.

Very few things are truly new when it comes to ideas. I do not purport to be the first discoverer of this historical mishap relating to Odysseus but having searched for support of my theory I did not stumble upon anyone claiming that Philoctetes – or anyone else for that matter - impersonated Odysseus at his homecoming slaughter of the suitors of the Odysseus’s wife. I may be the first to realize this simply because unusually for the bookworms I made an attempt at archery. When archers still existed in appreciable numbers, they were illiterate as most people of those days. By the time masses mastered reading, the art of archery went out of fashion. In the modern day those who shoot bows do not read Greek classics, and those that read Greek classics certainly do not shoot bows.
As the events we are about to examine took place circa thirty-three hundred years ago, we now have the advantage of the filter of time that separated the firm facts from the background noise of that day.
Many events of interest transpired in the antebellum Maecenas Greece at the time of the Argonauts adventure.

Method of archeological detection.
I invite my dear reader to partake in the detective work and separate the credible reports of that long passed day from deception. The task is not as difficult as it may appear at the first site.

We must observe that Trojans lost the Trojan War. They got defeated, concurred or scattered. The war stories were told for the victorious Achaean audience. The genre of the war stories has its rules. Our boys are always on the right side of the conflict, they are brave, honest, their hearts are pure and full of valor. Sadly, our boys are always outnumbered by enemy. Enemy is evil-hearted, and cowardly, yet cruel. If enemy is victorious, it is because the gods (capricious and unjust) intervened in their favor. Having taken a note that Achaeans won and Trojans lost, we shall assign no weight to any assertion resembling a war propaganda. To the separate truth from lies, we must utterly reject any assertion mentioning divine interventions. Whenever the literary source speaks of a divine intervention, we shall override it with our own version relying only on natural forces. Whenever the source text mentions a deity interfering in the affairs of mortals, we will treat it as a cross marking the spot to dig at.
Whenever the motive is at issue, we shall use common sense.
The Mega-Jumbo-Super-Agent of King of Kings.

Now, using the imaginary time machine, we travel back some thirty-four hundred years. The hegemon city-state of that day was Mycenae. The King of Mycenae held the position of the King of Kings. The King of Kings employed agents to propagate his will. For the particularly serious missions he used super-agents. At certain time King of Mycenae was lucky to have had a mega-jumbo-super-agent at his service: the warrior, diplomat, traveler, envoy and influencer. This agent of the King of Kings was strong in body and mind, and was an alpha-male of extraordinary virility. His deeds we know, his true identity we do not.

The mega-jumbo-super-agent’s legend is double folded, it is a combination of the royal and divine tales of his ancestry, both false. According to the royal part of his cover legend, his name at birth was Alcides son of Amphitryon. Amphitryon was a King of Tiryns, a fortress close to Mycenae. His mother was the King Amphitryon’s wife, Alcmene. The regal ancestry makes the mega-jumbo-super-agent to which it is attributed eligible to hold high governmental positions and be accepted as a diplomatic envoy by the royal crowds around, as he is a prince. The divine part of the mega-jumbo-super-agent sports the story, that … change to the whispering tone … his real father was Zeus. Zeus, having propensity for leud acts, this time cunningly shapeshifted to assume the likes of Amphitryon. As we now learned from Bad from the immortal western The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly it is not wise to use your own name, hey! So, the ever-amorous Zeus, pretending to be Amphitryon, impregnated Quinn Alcmene, who was under impression of having marital sex with her lawful wedded husband Amphitryon. When the Zeus’ offspring entered service of the King of Mycenae, he was assigned the pseudo name, Heracles, which means Glory of Hera. The pseudo name was cleverly chosen to make Hera less mad about her Zeus’s bastard at the King of Mycenae’s employ. This is the tall story of divine lineage, not uncommon for those times. Handful of argonauts claimed being sons of gods. Being a demigod was advantageous for diplomatic agents, as provided their hosts with excuses to treat them better than foreign vagabonds. At those days many kings claimed to be descendants of gods. For example, king Aeetes of Colchis claimed to be a son of the son-god Helios. A diplomatic envoy to such a deity connected king needed to be at least a prince, and better be a son of some god. 

This mega-jumbo-super-agent operating under the name Heracles partakes in all special operations of his day: he is an Argonaut, he re-installs Tyndareus as a King of Sparta, he installs Priam as a King of Troy, he leads the anti-terrorist expedition against Amazons, he travels to establish presence at Gibraltar and Suez, and leads the most secret expedition to Caucasia’s mountains under the cover of setting free Prometheus. When outlived his usefulness, he was poisoned.
Who he really was? He was an anomalously strong dude. He first appeared near the city of Thebes, where he worked as a shepherd. He used a club as his weapon of choice for the close encounters. He was an archer. He used the untainted hide of a lion as a cloak … which made people to assume that he had slain that lion. Anywhere he went to, he was dressed in the lion’s hide and carried his club, bow and arrows. For example, while a member of Argo crew, he broke his oar and went to the woods to find a tree suitable to become the new oar. “Wandering about he found a pine that was not burdened with many branches nor had reached its full stature but was like a slender young poplar I height and girth. He promptly laid his bow and quiver down, took off his lion-skin and began by loosening the pine’s hold in the ground with blows of his bronze -studded club. Then he trusted his own strength. With his legs wide apart and one broad shoulder pressed against the tree, he seized it low down with both hands and gripping hard he tore it out.” (Argonautica, I 1191-1193.) “Thus Heracles tore out the pine; then he picked it up, with his bow and arrows, lion-skin and club, and started to go back.” (Argonautica, I 1199-1201.) So, citizens of Thebes took a notice of a large shepherd wearing a lion-skin and walking armed with a bow. He claimed to be a prince of Tiryns exiled for killing his music teacher.

. He was recruited for the King of Kings service. He had a twin brother, Iphicles. The son of his twin brother, Iolaus.  ( also  spelled Hylas), as a teenager joined Argonauts as Heracles’ aid. “Hylas, his noble squire, in the first bloom of youth, went with him to carry his arrows and serve as a keeper of the bow.” (Argonautica, I 130-132.)  From this mentioning of the Heracles’ nephew we may estimate the Heracles’ age at the time of Argo voyage.
At the time of the Argo departure,
The Mighty Bow of Heracles.

The aged and retired King of King’s agent, Heracles, travels with his new trophy wife. The traveling party arrives to the river shore. There is a ferry, but the ferry can only take one passenger. The ferry is operated by a centaur. (The inclusion of centaur does not entirely ruin the veracity of the report on what is about to take place.)  The centaur takes the Heracles’ wife by the ferry to the opposite side of the river and gives the impression that the next thing he would do be to cross Heracles. Instead of returning to take Heracles across, the centaur hops the Heracles’ wife and begins raping her. The half-stallion scoundrel takes comfort in the assumption that the river is way too wide for the bow shot.  Heracles takes out his mighty bow, the bow that is far more powerful than the mainstream bows of that day, and shoots the poisoned arrow across the river and straight into the no-good rapist. The mark is hit. The poison applied to the tip of the arrow is that of Hydra. The centaur is fatally poisoned. There is no antidote known to mortals. (Heron, the other centaur, the Heracles’ former couch and sensei and an accomplished physician, committed suicide after the friendly fire resulted in the Hydra-poisoned arrow in his extremity.) The horse-man is dying. With his last breath, he confines in the Heracles’s half-raped wife that his blood has a magical property to prevent spousal infidelities. Why would she even listen to the horse-assed rapist that just tried to force his stallion dick in her? Why? Why? … She bought that pile horseshit! The gullible woman goes on and collects the dying centaur’s blood and keeps this safety hazard stashed until Heracles presents her with an opportunity to suspect him of infidelity: being away from home, he sent a messenger to pick up a change of clothes. In the mind of the jealous wife her accomplished husband needed the change of freshly washed clothes for none other purpose then some adulterous endeavor. High on jealousy, she sent him the clothes smeared in the centaur’s blood. Heracles wears the clothes, and the Hydra venom poisons infiltrates through his skin and poisons him. The centaur scored the posthumous prank on the son of Zeus, hey!  Now, Heracles is doomed. His suffering is intolerable. He piles up some combustible materials and mounts on top. He is in need of a helping hand to set fire to his burial pyre, as he may not be his own executioner.  A passer-by, who happened to be King Poeas, the fellow Argonaut, obliges to set fire to his fellow Argonaut’s pyre. (Back then, any direction you spit in, there is some king. On this occasion it happened to be king Poeas.) For such a huge favor Heracles gifts him his mighty bow and the poisoned arrows. (The significance of the favor of setting the still alive Heracles on fire is that fire separated the immortal portion from the mortal bounds and was instrumental for the Heracles apotheosis (divination), hence, a handsome reward.)

What we take from this is that Heracles had a super-bow in his possession just before he was poisoned by his new wife and gifted the super-bow to the fellow Argonaut by name Poeas, who in turn gave the super-bow it to his son, Philoctetes.

Philoctetes The Archer.
King Poeas, the sudden Heracles’ heir, gives the Heracles’ mighty bow and well-poisoned arrows to his son, Philoctetes. Philoctetes son of Poeas masters the art of archery to such a level, that combined with unique quality of the Heracles bow, he becomes The Archer of the day.
The Philoctetes’ prominence in that day’s society – accomplished through archery and having a royal daddy who was an Argonaut - allowed him to seek the hand of Helen of Sparta in marriage when the contest was announced. Later, Philoctetes and his super-bow will become essential in the war on Troy. Using his super-bow, Philoctetes will kill the other renown archer of that day, Paris, the younger Prince of Troy.

The younger Prince of Troy Paris son of Priam.
 “Evil-hearted Paris, fair to see, but woman-mad and false of tongue, would that you had never been born or that you had died unwed.” (Iliad at Book III, p.40) This is how the older brother Hector, trolled his younger brother Paris. The part “false of tongue” has a very special meaning in relation to Paris, who owes his very life to the false tongue … literally.

Paris was a true albeit misfortunate Prince of Troy. He was born to the King father and the Quinn mother.  But his royal family status was both fresh and shaky. His prince hood was restored after many years, much like in modern days a felon gets his civil rights restored. At his birth, on orders of his kingly father Priam, newborn Paris was to be killed, just because of some bad omens – the birds in the sky were on the left of the fortune teller at the time of the prophesy or other such junk science of that day. Priam had circa fifty sons and did not hesitate to kill another son on advice of the respectable fortune teller, who predicted doom to the City of Troy from the new prince Paris. Newborn Paris was given to the wild mountain man for killing. The mountain man (a rough redneck, no doubt) agreed to kill the baby prince and to bring the veritable proof of the killing – the baby’s little tongue. Low classes have a propensity for fraud. The redneck did not kill the baby, but forged the evidence of having the “wet” job completed and went on to illegally withhold custody of the baby-prince. The sly commoner adopted the unwanted prince and brough to the king a dog’s tongue. The element “false of tongue” is certainly attributable to Paris as brotherly trolling. The wild mountain man entrusted to kill the baby prince ordinarily made living by watching the herds of cattle, he was a heard shepherd. He was not as rich on sons as his king, and could not produce a prince on his own, so it should not be a surprise that he decided to have himself an adopted prince son. That is how the prince Paris got adopted by the mountain shepherd and got raised as a shepherd himself. As required for his profession, Paris mastered archery as means of guarding his herds from predators – beasts or men. Shepherds and bows are like cowboys and guns: it is darn hard to protect your flock from predators or thieves without an ability to strike them form the distance. (Note, that at about the same time in the other corner of Asia a teenager by the name David, also a shepherd, used a sling to throw stones at lions to discourage them from devouring his sheep, and on occasion killed ein grosse Krieger Goliah.)
Through the war at Troy, prince Paris proved himself a worthy archer. To the mano a mano fight against Menelaus (who’s wife he stole) he came out with his bow. “Paris came forward as champion on the Trojan side. On his shoulders he bore the skin of a panther, his bow, and his sword …” Iliad Book III, p.40.  The duel concluded with Menelaus bleeding from the arrow that pierced his armor and inflicted a wound. “The arrow has not struck me in the mortal part, for my outer belt of burnished metal first stayed it, and under this my cuirass and belt of mail, which bronze-smiths made me.” Iliad Book III, p.55.  Homer tells a tall story of Aphrodite teleporting Paris from the heat of the fight with Menelaus straight to the Helen’s bed chamber, and Athena contemporaneously shapeshifting to take form of Laodocus to encourage his archers to shoot arrows at Menelaus. Iliad, Book IV, p.53. As detectives we must separate the dubious assertions about the double divine intervention, from the apparent facts. The facts are these: a trained archer Paris went in the mano-a-mano fight armed with a bow, and his opponent Menelaus was struck by an arrow, and was tended by the medical professional. The leader of the Achaeans, the King of Kings Agamemnon (an elder brother of Menelaus) summoned his surgeon-general to treat the arrow wound. “Tell Machaon, son of the great physician Asclepius, to come to see Menelaus immediately.” Iliad, Book IV, p.56. The medical procedure was as follows. “
 Prince Paris proved himself a worthy archer indeed by killing Achilles with the poisoned arrow to his foot.

But those glorious deeds came after the prince hood was restored. In his humble life of a mountain man Paris first became known as Alexander, which means  the protector of people, for helping the neighbors to fend off the cattle thieves. His prince hood was restored when he became a local hero with connection to gods.
In his shepherd life, Paris staged bull fights. The god of war, Ares, just for LOLs, shapeshifted in a bull and participated in the bull fight. Ares - who could have imagined - won against the mortal bull. He defeated the Paris’ bull. Paris, who judged the fights, fairly and squarely pronounced the best bull (Ares-in-disguise) the winner. Ares made a note to himself, that Paris is a just judge. A straight arrow, so to speak. Soon the godly crowd found their immortal behinds in a need of a just judge.
Helen the daughter of Zeus.

The story of the Troy War is well remembered, but the antebellum intrigue that led to that war is remembered much less. To understand about Helen, we must start examination with her mortal step-father, King of Sparta, Tyndareus. Tyndareus was one of three brothers, all kings of Sparta. One of the brothers, Hippocoon, had overthrown Tyndareus and drove him away. The King of Kings sitting in Mycenae dispatched his super-agent operating under the name of Heracles to restore Tyndareus to the throne. Heracles came, killed Hippocoon and his sons, and reinstated Tyndareus as a king of Sparta. Tyndareus was married to Leda, the mother of Helen. In addition to the bunch of his own children, Tyndareus reared his brother Icarios’ daughter, Penelope. He was an experienced foster dad to young ladies, daughters of VIP fathers. His other foster-daughter was Penelope daughter of Icarius. She was in fact a hostage, so that Icarius was deterred from attempting to overthrow Tyndareus, - a precaution usual at tat time and in light of the other brother’s recent stunt.

Zeus had a daughter by a mortal called Leda. This daughter’s name was Helen. Helen was the most beautiful woman on Earth, and she was destined to join immortals at the time her earthly days will have passed. Helen was raised a foster child of the Tyndareus the king of Sparta.
In her adolescence, Helen eloped with the hero Theseus, but was promptly returned to her foster father’s care. She was a little pregnant when she came back … Who was Theseus, the father of the Helen’s love child? According to Tyndareus, his foster daughter had a love child by the son of king Agey … now in whisper … but his real daddio was Poseidon. Again, the regal and divine ancestry. Theseus got promptly employed by the King of Kings, which was sort of like a gun slinger being given the Marshall’s star to make his acts of violence all legal.
At certain point Zeus resolved to marry off his naughty daughter. In the custom of that day, he offered after her the dowry worth of the Zeus’s daughter. The Helen’s dowry was immortality to her husband. All prominent men gathered in court of the king of Sparta in hope of winning the contest for the most beautiful woman, Helen Zeusdottir, and the immortality that came alone. The archer Philoctetes, the owner of the Heracles bow, was one of those numerous suiters.
One other suitor in the crowd of those aspiring the Helen’s beauty and the immortality was Odysseus the kind of Ithaca.
Odysseus, the King of Ithaca.

The status of a king is proportional to the number of ships he brough to the beaches of Troy. Odysseus son of Laertes brought seven ships.
Odysseus observed that contestants to Helen’s hand in marriage and her riches are many, that they possess fine personal qualities, that some have political connections, that some are rich and powerful. Odysseus concluded that his chances of making the best impression on the old king of Sparta, the judge of that contest, were slim on the side of none. Upon that realization Odysseus asked the king of Sparta for his mortal brother’s biological daughter’s hand in marriage. The name of the Sparta’s king’s step-daughter he sought was Penelope. The king of Sparta married Penelope to Odysseus on the condition that Odysseus withdraws from the contest for Helen.

When Odysseus married Penelope he gained the ear of the king of Sparta as that now was his father-in-law.  Odysseus raised a concern that the numerous losers of the contest for the coveted Helen-immortality package are likely to hold a grudge against the sole winner of the beautiful Helen and her hefty dowry. Wild bunch of not so smart brutes was bound to riot against the winner and the judge. Having removed himself from the contest, Odysseus suggested to commit all remaining contestants to the oath of allegiance to the winner-to-come, to prevent any foul play by any loosing contestant. The king of Sparta heard his son-in-law and made all contestants to swear allegiance to the winner of the contest before he announced his verdict.

Menelaus won and the fact that he was the brother of the Kind of Kings, Aga Memnon, might have had something to do with it. (The literature refers to the king Memnon as Agamemnon, but the Aga is just the additional word signifying the person’s position. Johnson is still a Johnson and not Honjohnson, even if he is a judge and his seal says Hon. Johnson.) That Menelaus got Helen as if he was entitled. Let us look at the circumstances. Some years before the Helen’s marriage to Menelaus, the regal brothers (Aga) Memnon and Menelaus were asylum seekers at the court of the Sparta’s king Tyndareus. The wise kind Tyndareus married his daughter Clytemnestra to the older rother, Agamemnon. Now he married his other daughter to the younger brother, Menelaus. So, he made himself the father-in-law of the two most powerful kings of that time, - true dynastical marriage.

As a bonus from the foster father-in-law this younger brother of the King of Kings got to become the king of Sparta, as the old king Tyndareus abdicated in favor of the Helen’s husband. (Zeus gave him the Sparta kingship, he gave it back as dowry to the Zeus’s daughter as he got close to parting with this world. All is fair and square.) Menelaus had immortality coming to him as long as he remained the Helen’s husband. As a precaution against Helen’s eloping with some other stud, her love child from the roll in the hay with Theseus was sent as a foster child to the brother Aga Memnon. But the woman cannot change what she is … Helen eloped again … this time with Paris, the younger prince of Troy.
The king of kings declared mobilization of all other former Helen’s suiters for War on Troy. I say all other, because one suitor, Paris that was, stole the trophy wife and the immortality dowry too. The prince Paris had a royal for godly things originating from Zeus: Helen, immortality … The Sparta kingdom was from the Helen’s foster father, not from Zeus, so it was left to Menelaus to enjoy his forced divorce. As all contestants, Paris was bound by the oath of allegiance to Menelaus to restore Helen to her rightful husband if such need arises, but by all appearances had a conflict of interest in that matter.

The former Helen’s suitors faced a prospect of going to war to grab the beautiful naughty Helen from the gutsy prince of mighty Troy only to restore Helen and immortality to Menelaus now the king of Sparta. Menelaus got Helen because his brother was the King of K ings. As they did not have a brother in high places they got zilch. Paris got Hellen because he had balls to steal her. Had they had balls, they might have done the same, accept they didn’t.
Kingly prize to kingly kings,
Lesser men will hold their dick.

It became apparent to all of them that they were just a bunch of losers doomed to loosing. Not just losers. Worse. The eternal losers, as they conceded their defeat and voluntarily enslaved themselves to restore the husband’s rights of that entitled prick Menelaus. Who’s idea was that to swear them to be guardians of the Menelaus’ marital bed? Odysseus!!

Odysseus was not among those swearing allegiance to the winner of the contest. The so-called king of Ithaca, when that Ithaca is smaller then some farm, married into the family of the king of Sparta. His wife is certainly of a good pedigree. Free from the baggage of bastard children too. This Odysseus withdrew from the contest under the good pretends of marriage to the other princess of Sparta. Unlike the rest of the suitors, he owed no duty to Menelaus. Come think of who owed whom, Menelaus owed Odysseus the pleasure of mobilizing the horde of former suiters to get his runaway wife (and immortality) back. Menelaus would do right by Odysseus if he left him alone and did not mobilize him for war. But the mob of unhappy vassals insisted that Odysseus must go to war despite of not having sworn to do so, and Menelaus sided with them. Odysseus – as is common among intellectuals everywhere - pretended insanity to evade forced recruitment, but his bluff was called, and he was conscripted.

At those times - and at all times since then and until very recently - men went to war with their own weapons. Had Odysseus been an archer, had he had a powerful bow, he would take that bow alone as he marched on Troy. Importantly, the sources have no indication of him being an archer, nor of him having an unusually powerful bow, nor of taking any bow to the war, nor of shooting a bow in time of hostilities at Troy or any time for that matter. Keep this in mind.

Philoctetes certainly did have a bow, the Heracles’s bow.  Philoctetes was a bona fide archer. Philoctetes took the Heracles’ bow with him when mobilized to wage a war on Troy. It happened that Odysseus and Philoctetes sailed to Troy in the same boat. En route to Troy they had an opportunity to converse. That was an opportunity for Philoctetes to learn a thing or two about the Odysseus. Alone the way Philoctetes scratched his leg with the tip of the poisoned arrow. The wound infected and smelled foul. Odysseus convinced the crew to maroon Philoctetes on the island, so that his suffering would not diminish the morale … and before the infection spread to the shipmates. Who could tell if Philoctetes had decency of scratching himself with an arrow poisoned with Hydra’s venom. What if he pricked his hairy Achaean leg with the ordinary arrow soaked in feces of the plaque bearing rat mixed with the body liquids of the small pox corps and rabid dog’s blood. What Philoctetes got in his rooting leg really could be contiguous. Importantly, Philoctetes went ashore with the Heracles’ bow. Ten years after the besiegers of Troy will send envoy to this island to recover and bring to Troy the Heracles’ bow. They find Philoctetes in good health. He would join them at Troy and use the Heracles’ bow to kill Paris. In mean time Philoctetes would enjoy embrace of the island’s nymph … as the rest of the recruits spilled blood and guts and died of plaque while entrenched under Troy.  The lovely nymph, by the way, healed his festering wound. Could it be that Philoctetes had a scar on his leg from that healed wound?

Twenty years passed since king of Ithaca went to war … Penelope is a lone Quinn of Ithaca. She is now in her mid-thirties. Odysseus have not been heard from for twenty years. The Odysseus’s son is now twenty and endeavors to search for his father. He has been to Sparta, his mother’s kingdom that went to Helen, but did not pick up his father’s track. Bunch of men camped out at the Penelope’s estate and pressured her to marry one of them. She fends them off. A stranger appears. He is taller than Odysseus. He is younger than Odysseus must be. He has a scar on his leg. None recognizes him, but the Odysseus’s aged nurse. She recognizes him by the scar on his leg. (Why does not his wife Penelope recognize that scar?) He plots with the Odysseus’s son and Penelope to hold the archery contest. Penelope announces to the suitors that she would be the wife to one who shoots the arrow out of the Odysseus’s marvelous bow through twelve axe rings. For the purpose of this contest she provides the marvelous bow made out of deer horn and sinew. She says that the bow is of Odysseus.

It is the time to ask the questions. Where was that marvelous horn and sinew bow before? Why did Penelope not come up with the idea of the bow contest at any earlier time? Why Odysseus did not take his marvelous bow to war?
The answers that stand to reason are that there was no bow prior to arrival of the stranger. Could it be that the stranger brought the bow? Penelope did not wish to marry any of the suitors, but now wanted to marry the one that is the best archer, hence the archery contest. Odysseus did not take the bow to war, because he had no bow. Had he had the bow, he would have taken it to Troy. The marvelous bow left behind as it’s owner went to war is a tall story. It is a good place at war to be an archer, as archers shoot at enemy from afar, and are unlikely to go mano a mano with the enemy soldiers unlike the rest of the sandals on the ground.

Then, the story goes, none of the Penelope’s suiters could even string the bow, so stiff the bow was. How strong must be a bow that an ordinary man cannot string it? This did not even occur to me to inquire until I strung a bow. I am six feet tall two hundred sixty pound healthy dude. I can string the 130 pounds bow with just my legs and shoulders (without any clever contraptions) but just barely.   The story tells of the hundred Penelope’s suitors, and none possessed the skill and strength to sting the bow. Some of those men were in their thirties as they pursued the mid-thirties year old Quinn. Some of them must have been considerably stronger than me. Therefore, the bow they failed to string was stronger, and probably a lot stronger, then hundred pounds. As we discuss the bows here, keep in mind that the modern-day compound “bow” is by far not the same as the traditional bow. The regular modern bow-hunter shoots the seventy-five pound “bow” with use of the rolling blocks and a string drawing device and never has a need to string that “bow”. As one goes from the compound “bow” to the traditional bow and from the drawing device to fingers, the bow poundage drops good fifteen pounds. So, those shooting the 75 pounds compound bow would be capable of shooting the 60 pounds traditional bow.

The stranger at the court of the Quinn of Ithaca strung the bow quickly and proceeded to exterminate the rest of the Penelope’s suitors with the arrows he shot quickly until he killed them all, the entire hundred. Having the hands-on experience with the traditional bow I am convinced that the executioner of the Penelope’s suitors was an experienced archer. That is because the bow he shot appears stronger then hundred pounds and he was shooting quickly. I can string the hundred pounds bow, but cannot shoot it at full draw ... yet alone quickly. The shooter at the Quinn Penelope’s court was definitely a pro archer.
When he shot the competitors, he declared himself Odysseus. Penelope tested him some more: she told him that she moved their bed to another room. He screamed in disbelief and said that their bed is impossible to move because it is made of the tree stump rooted in the ground. At that point Penelope accepted him to be Odysseus and went to bed with him, that same bed of the tree stump. Soon he left and traveled away from Ithaca for another ten years. When he came to Ithaca again, he was killed by the Odysseus’s grandson on the beach being mistaken for a pirat.