Kim Todd on the hanging of the maids in Odyssey, Book 22. The Paris Review.
"The humiliation of scrubbing blood off the tables and carting out the gore, the way they bring their own necks to the rope, the transformation of their hopes—nesting, dancing—into death metaphors. In my ten-year-old mind, those feet, which should be used for sprinting through a field or exploring strange islands, became the birds seeking shelter. They flutter in a panic, then the awful stillness.
"But what particularly disturbs me now, what disturbed me even at ten, is the way that this is all just part of Telemachus’s training."
See Homer in Great Books of the Western World (first edition, 52 Vol., 1952) volume 4, and (second edition, 60 Vol., 1990) volume 3.
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