Eurymachus (Εὐρύμαχος)

The Diplomat of the Suitors

Eurymachus is the son of Polybus and the number-two man among the suitors — where Antinous is an open tyrant, he is a smooth diplomat. The two are mirror images of evil in the Odyssey: one sins with arrogance, the other with courtesy. Eurymachus almost never loses his composure; every wrong he does comes wrapped in decent words. That is exactly what makes him dangerous.

His first appearance shows the whole technique. In Book 1, after Telemachus' outburst, Antinous answers with mockery, and Eurymachus takes over — first soothing the prince (kingship "lies on the knees of the gods"; no one will rob him of his goods), then sliding, as if by the way, into the real question: who was that stranger who just left? Where was he from? Did he bring news of your father? Beneath the polite phrasing there is an interrogation. The suitors need to know where the information comes from, and Eurymachus is the one who asks.

The Man Who Dismissed the Omen

In the assembly of Book 2, Eurymachus goes one step further. When the seer Halitherses reads the omen of the two eagles as a sign that Odysseus is coming home, it is Eurymachus who waves the omen away. "Old man," he says, "go home and prophesy to your children. There are plenty of birds under the sun, and not every one is fateful."

The speech is the ideological manifesto of the suitor band: they have not failed to hear the warning — they have declared the warning not to exist. To dismiss the seer is to dismiss the divine will. Eurymachus' smooth tongue accomplishes what Antinous' arrogance cannot: it makes the refusal of the sign sound reasonable.

The Man Who Threw the Stool

But the mask of courtesy does not hold to the end. In Book 18, as the disguised Odysseus stands in his own hall, Eurymachus taunts him: instead of begging, go work for me. Odysseus answers with something sharper: in a contest of mowing and plowing, he would gladly match him — and when Odysseus returns to this house, "these doors, wide as they are, will prove too narrow for you."

Eurymachus flies into a rage, seizes a footstool, and hurls it at Odysseus — and misses, striking the cupbearer. It is the first public crack in his hypocrisy: Antinous' stool in Book 17 hit Odysseus on the shoulder, but Eurymachus' stool hits his own servant. Once evil crosses the border of words, the diplomat's polish becomes a joke.

The Bow That Would Not Bend

At the contest of the bow in Book 21, the suitors fail one after another. Eurymachus takes the bow and speaks the suitor band's single clearest moment of self-knowledge:

“

Here is a scandal for all time: that we suitors could not string the bow of godlike Odysseus — that we are so much weaker than the man we seek to marry.

The lament is Homer's verdict on the suitors, spoken through an enemy's mouth: they know they are inferior to the man they want to replace. Antinous then proposes postponing the contest until after the feast of Apollo — the duo's working pattern on display once more: Eurymachus speaks the truth, and Antinous buries it.

The Parley, the Sword, and the Second Arrow

When the slaughter of Book 22 begins, Antinous falls to the first arrow. Eurymachus, as the number-two man, steps forward — not to fight, but to negotiate. He lays all the blame on the dead man: "Antinous was the ringleader — and he is dead now. Spare your own people, and we will repay you: twenty oxen from each of us, bronze and gold besides, until your heart is satisfied."

Odysseus' answer leaves no room: not for all your wealth would he hold his hands from the slaughter until the suitors have paid in full for their crimes. The parley fails, and Eurymachus switches faces in an instant — "He will never spare us. Draw your swords and use the tables for shields!" — and is the first to charge Odysseus with blade drawn. The second arrow pierces his chest, and the shaft sinks into his liver.

Eurymachus' death is the most ironic moment of the whole massacre: the most eloquent of the suitors leaves his last words as a shout of drawn steel; the man who wore a mask of courtesy all his life dies with the mask finally off — but too late. Restitution can be priced; the crime cannot. That is why Odysseus refused him.