◆The Barbaric Yawp Project

I Did Not Recognize My Own Home I am Odysseus, son of Laertes. Your Romans called me Ulysses. I was king of Ithaca, husband of Penelope, father of Telemachus. I was the man who, when the Greeks could not breach the walls of Troy after ten years of siege, proposed the wooden horse and the deception that ended the war. I am not a saint. I am the man of many turns — polytropos, in our tongue — and I won what I won by cunning. Remember that. The Greeks who returned home from Troy did so because I tricked the Trojans into opening their gates. I tell you about deception because I will tell you about the deceptions in your own moment, and I will not pretend that I have clean hands. I left Troy. It took me ten years to come home — a journey of one or two seasons by ordinary sailing. I lost every man who came with me. I sat for seven years on the island of Calypso, weeping each morning for the home I could not reach. I went down into the house of the dead. I spoke with the ghost of my mother, who had died of grief while I was away. I spoke with Achilles, who told me he would rather be a slave to a poor man above the earth than king of all the dead. The dead taught me what the living cannot teach. When at last I returned to Ithaca, I came in the form of a beggar. The goddess Athena had aged me, dressed me in rags, made me unrecognizable. I came to my own house and was not known. My dog Argos was the first to recognize me. He had been a young pup when I left for Troy. He was now an old dog lying on a pile of dung in the courtyard, ignored by the household. He raised his head. He recognized his master. He could not rise. He died there, having lived only to see me once more. The first recognition of my homecoming cost the recognizer his life. In the great hall of my house were one hundred and eight men. They had come to court my wife. They had been eating my herds, drinking my wine, sleeping with my serving women for years. They had decided that I was dead, that my son Telemachus was inconsequential, that the kingdom of Ithaca was theirs to consume. They sat at my tables and ate what was mine. I will tell you what I noticed first. They did not look like men eating in someone else's house. They looked like men who had forgotten there was anyone else's house. The longer one consumes what is not one's own, the more one believes it was always one's own. I killed all one hundred and eight of them. Before I did, I tested them. I produced my old bow — the bow that only I could string. The suitors tried, one after another. None of them could bend it. None could put the string on it. They wept with the effort. The bow refused to be used by men who had not earned the right to use it. When my turn came, I strung it without effort. The bow remembered me. Then I killed them. Penelope did not recognize me. She had been wooed for years by liars and would not be tricked again. She tested me. She told her servants to move our bed out of our bedchamber. I told her the bed could not be moved — it was built into a living olive tree that ran from the floor through the chamber roof. Only the rightful husband knew this. She wept and embraced me. The secret of the bed was the proof. I have told you these stories because your country is now what Ithaca was when I returned. You do not recognize your own home. Suitors are consuming what is not theirs. They have been consuming so long that they have forgotten there was anyone else's house. They sit at your tables. They eat what is yours. They sleep with your institutions. Your strongman cannot string the bow. He has tried to look as if he can. He has not earned the right. The bow remembers who its owner was. Your strongman cannot pass the test of the bed. He does not know the secret only the rightful know. He will try to pretend. He will not succeed with anyone who tests him as Penelope tested me. I am Odysseus. I came home after twenty years and found my house full of usurpers. I did not recognize my own home. I knew what to do anyway. Find your bow. String it.