Eurymachus's Punishment
For years I'd been sitting around Odysseus's house. I'd been eating his food, drinking his wine, and being served by his servants. According to Greek customs, they had to let me stay here (good hospitality, you know?), so I was set until Penelope decided to marry one of us. I thought it would be Antinous, the "leader" of the suitors, that she married, just because he'd probably kill anyone else she chose.
One night, an old beggar (new to us, but you know what I mean) showed up on Penelope's doorstep. We had fun with him for a few minutes, but then Penelope showed up and saved him. At the time I was too drunk to care, but it later turned out that we were to pay dearly for our cruel jokes.
The next day, Penelope finally came up with a test to choose her new husband with. All he had to do was string a bow and shoot an arrow through some rings. Not that hard, right? Well, none of us could string the bow, so we didn't even get a chance to try the shot.
Then, the old beggar from the night before asked us if he could give it a try. Of course, we thought it was a tremendous joke, and were just about ready to throw him out. Once again, Penelope saved the old man and allowed him to try.
I couldn't believe my eyes when the old man strung the bow! I was even more amazed when the beggar took aim and got the arrow through all four rings. But the surprises, unfortunately, didn't end there.
The old man threw off his cloak and revealed himself to be Odysseus, alive and returned from his wanderings to find his house over-run with suitors! He whipped out an arrow and shot Antinous right in the throat.
Our leader went down spewing blood, and was dead before he knew what had hit him. None of the rest of us wanted to meet the same end, so we tried to high tail it out of there. Unfortunately, Odysseus's loyal servants and his stupid son, Telemachus, had locked the doors of the palace.
Finally, Odysseus chased us down and rounded trapped us in a corner. He threatened us once more, and no one said anything. I knew it was up to me to try to save our lives. I quickly came up with a story that seemed reasonable.
I told him that all of our actions were Antinous's fault. I told him that Antinous was to blame for all of this trouble. Unfortunately, Odysseus didn't believe the story I'd spun. So, he shot me. In my last moments, I remember Odysseus's men rounding up the suitors and slaughtering them. Then, I died.
So, here I am in Hades, telling my story to anyone that will listen. That's my punishment for misusing the hospitality of an innocent Greek man (Hades himself gave the verdict for me and my suitor buddies). If you ever want to hear my story again, feel free to stop by anytime you're in the neighborhood.