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BOOK XXI Odysseus Strings His Bow The time had come. The goddess Athena with her blazing eyes inspired Penelope, Icarius' daughter, wary, poised, to set the bow and the gleaming iron axes out before her suitors waiting in Odysseus' hall- to test their skill and bring their slaughter on. Up the steep stairs to her room she climbed and then with her chamber-women made her way to a hidden storeroom, far in the palace depths, and there lay the royal master's treasures: bronze, gold and his backsprung bow with its quiver bristling arrows. That great weapon- King Odysseus never took it abroad with him when he sailed off to war in his long black ships. Reaching, tiptoe, lifting the bow down off its peg, still secure in the burnished case that held it, she went to the hall to meet her proud admirers. With one of her loyal handmaids stationed either side, Penelope delivered an ultimatum to her suitors: "Listen to me, my overbearing friends! You who plague this palace night and day, to win me as your bride. So, to arms, my gallants! I set before you the great bow of King Odysseus now! The hand that can string this bow with greatest ease, that shoots an arrow clean through all twelve axes- he is the man I follow, yes, forsaking this house where I was once a bride." Antinous, eyeing the bow, crooned, "Leave that bow right here- our crucial test that makes or breaks us all. No easy game, I wager, to string his polished bow. Not a soul in the crowd can match Odysseus- what a man he was ..." Smooth talk, but deep in the suitor's heart his hopes were bent on stringing the bow and shooting through the axes. "Amazing!" Prince Telemachus waded in with a laugh: "My own dear mother, sensible as she is, says she'll marry again, forsake our house. Step up, my friends! Come, let the games begin!"