The fight with Irus; a warning to Amphinomus

Another beggar, named Irus — a fat, lazy local known for his mooching and his loud mouth — arrives at the palace and tries to drive Odysseus from the door. This is his territory, he says, and the suitors back him up for the entertainment, promising the winner a goat sausage and free meals in the hall. Odysseus quietly strips for the fight, and the suitors are surprised to see the body of an old soldier under the rags — broad shoulders, scarred legs. He breaks Irus's jaw with one careful punch and drags him outside by the foot.

Penelope, prompted by Athena, comes down into the great hall — for the first time in many chapters — radiant in a way the poem describes carefully. She stands before the suitors and extracts gifts from each of them, scolding them for taking from a household instead of bringing to it. The disguised Odysseus, watching from his corner, smiles at her cleverness. The suitors send for jewelry, a robe with gold pins, a necklace of amber beads. She accepts the gifts politely and goes back upstairs.

Odysseus then does something the poem has been quietly leading up to: he speaks to Amphinomus, one of the better-mannered suitors, and warns him. He does not say who he is. He says only that there are many strange beggars in the world, and that a wise man, when he sees the master of the house returning, leaves it before the master arrives. Amphinomus is troubled. He goes back to his seat. He does not leave. The poem notes, gently, that Athena has already marked him for death.