Character

Eurymachus

The smoothest of the suitors · son of Polybus

Eurymachus with his palms turned out in reasonable negotiation while his body twists toward the door and a sword hangs half-drawn at his hip.
Eurymachus with his palms turned out in reasonable negotiation while his body twists toward the door and a sword hangs half-drawn at his hip.

The smoothest of the suitors, son of Polybus, who says the right thing to Penelope's face and behaves no better than Antinous behind it. The moment Odysseus reveals himself, Eurymachus does the arithmetic, lays the whole business on the dead Antinous, and offers to pay back everything they have eaten and more. It buys him nothing: he is the second man killed, cut down as he rushes in with his sword drawn.

His offer to repay everything is the poem's clearest statement that the suitors' crime was never really about the food.

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