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Case file s629 · Greece and Rome · 1180 BCE

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1180 BCE

Odysseus slays the suitors of his wife Penelope (Skyphos pot): Scanned B&W Images. Both vessels are fully scanned and include an Attic red-figure skyphos ca. 440 BCE from Tarqu — Odysseus slays the suitors of his wife Penelope (Skyphos pot). Unknown Red-Figure Vase Painter. CC0, Wikimedia Commons.

Died: c. 1180 BC (12th century BC, traditional dating of the Trojan War; Odysseus was presumed dead, not dead)
Place: Ithaca, Greece
Field: king's household and herds · Royalty and nobility on the timeline
Legal tradition: Homeric household (oikos) and remarriage of a presumed widow
Historical event: The return of Odysseus from the Trojan War

Greece and Rome Crowns and succession Ancient world Europe Greece

Legend: this account comes from tradition, an epic or an old chronicle. Records do not prove it happened as told.

The Odyssey says 108 suitors ate through Odysseus's estate while he was away, and planned to kill his son and divide his property

The Odyssey, composed around the 8th or 7th century BC and attributed to Homer, tells what happened to a king's property when he did not come home. Odysseus spent ten years at Troy and about ten more getting back. Men courted his wife Penelope as a widow and lived off his house while they waited. In Samuel Butler's translation, his son Telemachus says they "are eating up my house" and that "no estate can stand such recklessness." Penelope delayed them by weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus's father Laertes and unpicking it at night. Telemachus counts the suitors: 52 from Dulichium, 24 from Same, 20 from Zacynthus and 12 from Ithaca, 108 in all. Their leader Antinous proposes to ambush Telemachus and then "divide up his property amongst us." Odysseus returns in disguise. In Book 22 the suitor Eurymachus offers each suitor's fine of twenty oxen plus gold and bronze. Odysseus refuses and kills them. Twelve maids named as disloyal are hanged. In Book 23 he tells Penelope he will replace his lost flocks by taking many "by force from other people."

What the law took from it

A household with no declared heir and no proof of death invites claimants to spend the estate while the question stays open.

Sources

Project GutenbergScholarship
perseus.tufts.eduScholarship
Wikipedia (English)Encyclopedia

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “The Odyssey says 108 suitors ate through Odysseus's estate while he was away, and planned to kill his son and divide his property,” story s629, https://www.celebrity.estate/odysseus-1180-bc, updated 30 October 2026.

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Greece and Rome Crowns and succession Ancient world Europe Greece