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THE SLAUGHTER OF GOATS IN ODYSSEY BOOK 9 AS AN ANTICIPATORY DOUBLET

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2026

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Abstract

The account in Odyssey Book 9 of Odysseus’ safe arrival by ship on ‘Goat Island’ off the coast of the land of the Cyclopes, the elaborate description of the geography of the island itself, and even the specific detail of Odysseus and his shipmates slaughtering with bows and spears 108 + 1 wild goats all work together to serve as an ‘anticipatory doublet’ of the account in the second half of the epic of Odysseus’ safe arrival by ship on the island of Ithaca, the elaborate description of the geography of the island itself, and even the specific detail of Odysseus and his comrades slaughtering with bow and spears the 108 arrogant suitors + 1 treacherous goatherd.

Keywords

HomerOdyssey‘Goat Island’Ithacaslaughter of the suitorsanticipatory doublets

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Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , First View , pp. 1 - 5
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

At the beginning of Book 9 of Homer’s Odyssey, at the request of Alcinous, king of the Phaeacians, the recently arrived stranger finally identifies himself—Odysseus, son of Laertes, from Ithaca—and begins to regale his audience with tales of his adventures since leaving Troy. The first major event that he relates, after brief accounts of the Cicones and the Lotus-Eaters, is his encounter with Polyphemus the Cyclops, which takes up the bulk of Book 9. But before venturing to the land of the Cyclopes Odysseus beaches his twelve ships on an island just off the coast. This island remains nameless but is described in great detail (9.116–69): small,Footnote 1 wooded, full of wild goats, but uninhabited by men—hence pathless, unsown, unploughed and without domesticated flocks of animals (just the wild, bleating goats). The island is blessed with well-watered meadows, and the soil is fertile, so it has the potential to produce grain and vines, but this potential is unmet for lack of human inhabitants. The island has a harbour so well sheltered that a ship has no need for anchors or mooring ropes and can simply be beached on the shore. At the head of the harbour is a fresh-water spring under a cave around which poplars grow. A benign deity guides Odysseus’ ships through the murky night safely to the beach, where he and his men fall asleep and await the dawn, and in the morning some nymphs, daughters of Zeus, rouse up the wild goats so that Odysseus and his men can hunt them down with bows and spears. The hunt is hugely successful—nine goats for each of eleven of the ships and ten goats for the ship of Odysseus (an extra goat designated, presumably, to honour the chief of the expedition)Footnote 2 —and the men spend the entire day eating the meat from the hunt and drinking the wine seized earlier from the Cicones. Later, after their escape from the cave of Polyphemus, Odysseus and his shipmates return to this island to rejoin the other eleven ships that had been left harboured there, and a similar scene ensues (9.542–59): they divide into equal shares the sheep stolen from the Cyclops, but Odysseus is granted the honour of the favourite ram of Polyphemus. He, in turn, sacrifices the ram to Zeus, whose refusal of the sacrifice bodes ill for the rest of Odysseus’ voyage.

Many readers have been puzzled by the prominence in Odysseus’ tales of this nameless island, sometimes referred to by commentators as ‘Goat Island’. It serves a practical function, to be sure, as a place for eleven of Odysseus’ ships to harbour in safety while a small contingent ventures on to explore the land of the Cyclopes.Footnote 3 But the elaborate description of the island suggests that it holds a deeper significance. Some have proposed that the details of the description of the island serve to depict the Cyclopes negatively by highlighting their inability to exploit—or lack of interest in exploiting—the island’s many resources.Footnote 4 Some have noted the contrast between this undeveloped—or previously developed, or yet to be developed—island and the highly cultivated land of the Phaeacians, to whom Odysseus is of course relating this story.Footnote 5 Many have observed the island’s attractiveness from the viewpoint of Ionian colonizers of Homer’s own time, who would have seen and relished the island’s potential for settlement.Footnote 6 Be that as it may, I concentrate here on the significance of the island from a literary perspective, albeit one informed by the techniques and aesthetics of oral poetry. I propose that Odysseus’ arrival on ‘Goat Island’ and his experiences there serve as an anticipation, even premonition, of his arrival on his home island of Ithaca and the challenges that await him there.

The descriptions of Odysseus’ arrival with his twelve ships at ‘Goat Island’ (9.116–69) and his arrival on the ship of the Phaeacians at his home on the island of Ithaca (13.73–124, 187–249, 344–60) are remarkably similar in several specific details. With miraculous speed the Phaeacians convey the sleeping Odysseus on their ship to his home on the island of Ithaca. They reach the island still in the dark of night and enter a harbour so well sheltered that ships can remain at rest there without mooring ropes. At the head of the harbour is an olive tree, a cave sacred to the nymphs and a fresh-water spring. The Phaeacian crew beach the ship and place Odysseus, still sleeping, along with their many gifts on the sand before making their return voyage. When Odysseus awakens he does not recognize the land, but the disguised goddess Athena greets him and assures him that it is not some nameless island but the famous island of Ithaca. She describes it as a bit rough but fertile, with much rain and dew, and a good pasture for goats and cows. It is wooded and provides year-round watering places. Odysseus prays to the nymphs and with the help of Athena stores his possessions in their cave. Then he and the goddess sit down to plot the destruction of the suitors (13.372–403).

Among the notable parallels in the accounts of Odysseus’ arrival at ‘Goat Island’ and his arrival at Ithaca are the divine guidance of the ship (9.142; 13.121), the arrival at the island in the dark of night (9.143–5; 13.93–5), a harbour so well sheltered that there is no need for mooring ropes (9.136–9; 13.96–101), at the head of the harbour a cave, a spring and specific kinds of trees (9.140–1; 13.102–3, 109), the beaching of the ship and the disembarkation of the crew onto the shore (9.146–50; 13.113–19), sleeping on the beach (9.150–1; 13.117–19), the presence of beneficent nymphs (9.154–5; 13.103–8, 349–60), and several common features in the descriptions of the islands: not a bad place (9.131; 13.243), but a fertile land capable of growing grain and vines (9.131–5; 13.244–5), well-watered (9.133; 13.245–7), wooded (9.118; 13.246–7) and a good place for goats (9.118–19; 13.246). Some of these parallels may simply be attributed to the formulaic language and stock themes commonly used in Homeric scenes of arriving by ship at an island. A few similar details can be found, for example, in the descriptions of Odysseus’ arrival on the island of Aeaea (10.135–209), of Menelaus’ arrival on the island of Pharos (4.354–81) and of Eumaeus’ experience on the island of Syria (15.403–84). But the language and themes of most of the parallels in the two scenes under consideration are distinctive rather than generic, unusual rather than typical, and remarkable rather than formulaic. And most distinctive and unusual and remarkable of all is what happens next on the two islands: on ‘Goat Island’ Odysseus and his men hunt and kill with bow and spear 108 + 1 wild goats; on Ithaca Odysseus and a few faithful comrades kill with bow and spear 108 arrogant suitors + 1 treacherous goatherd named Melanthius.

What I am suggesting is that the slaughter of the 108 + 1 wild goats on ‘Goat Island’ in Book 9 is an anticipation and premonition of the slaughter of the 108 suitors + 1 goatherd on Ithaca in Book 22. The poet of the Odyssey is quite specific about the numbers. In Book 9, as we have seen, after a successful hunt nine goats are distributed to each of the twelve ships with one additional goat for Odysseus (108 + 1). In Book 16, when Odysseus and his son Telemachus begin to plot the slaughter of the suitors, Telemachus catalogues their number (16.241–57): fifty-two suitors from Doulichion, along with six servants; twenty-four suitors from Same; twenty suitors from Zacynthos; and twelve suitors from Ithaca itself, along with two attendants, the herald Medon and the singer (earlier introduced as Phemius). Odysseus explicitly spares these last two, and, presumably, the servants and attendants, but he slays all 108 suitors along with the goatherd Melanthius (108 + 1). This appears to be an innovation of the poet of our inherited Odyssey, who knew an earlier version of the tale in which the suitors consisted of only the twelve Ithacan noblemen.Footnote 7 This earlier version has left several vestiges in our inherited Odyssey: the detail of the suitors coming to Odysseus’ palace every day (2.55; 17.534) and returning to their own homes to sleep each night (1.424; 2.397; 18.428), a likely scenario only for suitors from Ithaca itself;Footnote 8 Telemachus’ reference to the suitors as the sons of the noblemen gathered in the assembly of Ithacans (2.51);Footnote 9 Mentor’s reference in the same assembly to the suitors as παῦροι ‘few’ in comparison to the large number of those assembled (2.241); the many coincidences of the number twelve, as in the twelve ships of Odysseus that convey his men from Troy (9.159; cf. Il. 2.637), the twelve axes through which Odysseus shoots his arrow, presaging the imminent death of the suitors by the same fate (19.572–81; 21.73–9, 419–23), the twelve shields, spears and helmets that the goatherd Melanthius fetches from Odysseus’ storeroom for the suitors to defend themselves (22.142–6), and the twelve unfaithful handmaids reported to have been sleeping with the suitors (22.420–43).Footnote 10 The poet of our inherited Odyssey, however, has increased the number of suitors to 108, perhaps to make Odysseus’ feat of slaying them all the more heroic, perhaps to accommodate the involvement of Odysseus’ son Telemachus, as well as the two loyal herdsmen, and perhaps to magnify the status of Penelope as a widely-sought bride.Footnote 11 Whatever the reason for the poet’s increase in the number of suitors, it appears that he has anticipated this greater number, and prefigured their slaughter at the hands of Odysseus, by inventing the account of the hunt of 108 + 1 goats on ‘Goat Island’.

Such anticipation is a favourite device of the poet of our Odyssey, which he uses to great dramatic effect throughout long stretches of his narrative, with specific details as well as more general motifs narrated in the earlier books about Odysseus’ various adventures anticipating similar details and motifs that occur upon Odysseus’ arrival in Ithaca. For example, the detail of the god Hermes, disguised as a young man, meeting Odysseus on his way to Circe’s palace and instructing him about how to overcome the sorceress (10.274–306) anticipates the detail of the goddess Athena, disguised as a young man, meeting the newly arrived Odysseus on Ithaca and instructing him about how to overcome the suitors and regain his wife (13.221–440). Likewise, the incidences of the reversal and abuse of proper hospitality committed by hosts against Odysseus and his men during their return from Troy—for example the Cyclops Polyphemus and the Laestrygonian Antiphates make a meal of their guests rather than offering a meal to them (9.288–98; 10.114–24)—foreshadow similar violations by the suitors against Odysseus upon his arrival home; for example, they turn implements of hospitality (footstools, the contents of a basket of meat) into weapons to hurl at their guest (17.230–2, 462–5; 18.394–8; 20.299–302). Similarly, the reiterated theme of the ‘marriages’ of Odysseus to the goddesses Circe and Calypso during his return from Troy, and especially the ‘potential marriage’ to the princess Nausicaa in Scheria (6.15–40, 158–61, 180–4, 240–6, 276–84; 7.311–15), prefigures his ‘remarriage’ to Penelope in Ithaca. The latter two episodes even share the motif of an unknown stranger distinguishing himself with a show of strength in what amounts to a contest for a bride: the athletic games in Scheria (8.145–234); the contest of the bow in Ithaca (21.1–434).

‘Anticipatory doublets’ are a feature of Homeric epic and appear to be a feature of oral poetry generally, having been developed as a practical aid to composition but also serving as a feature aesthetically pleasing to a listening audience.Footnote 12 The account in Book 9 of Odysseus’ safe arrival by ship on ‘Goat Island’, the elaborate description of the geography of the island itself, and even the specific detail of Odysseus and his shipmates slaughtering with bows and spears 108 + 1 wild goats, all work together to serve as an ‘anticipatory doublet’ of the account in the second half of the epic of Odysseus’ safe arrival by ship on the island of Ithaca, the elaborate description of the geography of the island itself, and even the specific detail of Odysseus and his comrades slaughtering with bow and spears the 108 arrogant suitors + 1 treacherous goatherd. Thus the portrayal of Odysseus as a hunter and the goats, serving as a symbol of the suitors, as his prey on ‘Goat Island’ anticipates the repeated depictions in the second half of the Odyssey, in portents, symbols and similes, of Odysseus as an animal on the hunt—an eagle, a vulture, a hunting dog, a lion—and the suitors as his prey—geese, doves, other birds, fawns, domesticated cattle (15.160–78; 17.124–31; 19.225–31, 535–58; 20.232–46; 22.302–9, 401–6).

References

1 The adjective λάχεια has been variously understood since antiquity. I take it as a metanalyzed form of ἐλάχεια ‘small’. So the Alexandrian librarian Zenodotus, according to a scholium to Od. 9.116 (F. Pontani, Scholia Graeca in Odysseam, Volume V [Rome, 2022], 43); M. Leumann, Homerische Wörter (Basel, 1950), 54; S. Reece, Homer’s Winged Words: The Evolution of Early Greek Epic Diction in the Light of Oral Theory (Leiden, 2009), 95–101.

2 Some modern translations understand this passage νῆες μέν μοι ἕποντο δυώδεκα, ἐς δὲ ἑκάστην | ἐννέα λάγχανον αἶγες· ἐμοὶ δὲ δέκ’ ἔξελον οἴῳ (9.159–60) to mean that nine goats were allotted to each of the twelve ships but that the men selected ten goats exclusively for Odysseus. In isolation the phrase ἐμοὶ δὲ δέκ’ ἔξελον οἴῳ (9.160) can mean exactly that; however, the passage is better understood to mean that while nine goats were allotted to each of the other eleven ships, ten goats were selected for Odysseus’ ship. That is to say, Odysseus was honoured with an extra goat all to himself, just as later he is honoured by receiving the Cyclops’ ram all to himself (9.549–51). The larger context of the passage supports this understanding: after all, the hunt was intended to provide food for immediate consumption, not booty to be stored up, and Odysseus and his men spend the entire day consuming the victims of their hunt (9.161–2). Even with his Homeric appetite, Odysseus is not to be understood here to be devouring by himself more goats than the crew of an entire ship!

3 So, more or less, an ancient scholium to Od. 9.142: ἵνα μὴ τῇ τῶν Κυκλώπων προσορμίσαντες γῇ τὰς ναῦς ἀπολέσωμεν (Pontani [n. 1], 50). More recently, W.B. Stanford, The Odyssey of Homer, Volume I (London, 19582), 353, on Od. 9.116: ‘a device for putting O.’s other eleven ships safely out of the Cyclops’ reach’. K. Reinhardt, ‘Die Abenteuer der Odyssee’, in C. Becker (ed.), Tradition und Geist: Gesammelte Essays zur Dichtung (Göttingen, 1960), 47–124, at 62–3: ‘Und doch ist es die Not gewesen, die der Küste diese Insel vorzulagern dem Dichter gebot. Durch sie entledigt er sich für das Abenteuer der von ihm hinzuerfundenen Flottille.’ A. Heubeck, A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, Volume II (Oxford, 1989), 21: ‘This island represents a necessary invention by the poet: Odysseus can come to Polyphemus with only one ship, and the rest must be kept at a distance.’

4 So G.W. Nitzsch, Erklärende Anmerkungen zu Homer’s Odyssee, Volume III (Hannover, 1840), 31; H. Eisenberger, Studien zur Odyssee (Wiesbaden, 1973), 133; N. Austin, Archery at the Dark of the Moon: Poetic Problems in Homer’s Odyssey (Berkeley, 1975), 144–5.

5 So J.S. Clay, ‘Goat Island: Od. 9.116–141’, CQ 30 (1980), 261–4, who even suggests that this island was the former home of the Phaeacians from which they emigrated to Scheria; C.S. Byre, ‘The rhetoric of description in Odyssey 9.116–41: Odysseus and Goat Island’, CJ 89 (1994), 357–67; R. Xian, ‘Der Chronotopos der Ziegeninsel (Hom. Od. 9.116–141)’, Mnemosyne 70 (2017), 899–919.

6 So L.H. Jeffery, Archaic Greece: The City States, c. 700–500 B.C. (New York, 1976), 50–1; P.W. Rose, Sons of the Gods, Children of Earth: Ideology and Literary Form in Ancient Greece (Ithaca, 1992), 137–8; J.M. Redfield, ‘The economic man’, in C.A. Rubino and C.W. Shelmerdine (edd.), Approaches to Homer (Austin, 1983), 218–47, at 232–5; J. Griffin, Homer: The Odyssey (Cambridge, 1987), 89; I. Malkin, The Returns of Odysseus: Colonization and Ethnicity (Berkeley, 1998), 5, 14, 160; C. Dougherty, The Raft of Odysseus: The Ethnographic Imagination of Homer’s Odyssey (Oxford, 2001), 127–30; Y. Rinon, ‘The pivotal scene: narration, colonial focalization, and transition in Odyssey 9’, AJP 128 (2007), 301–34, at 308–11.

7 One of several mid nineteenth- to early twentieth-century analysts to propose this, J. van Leeuwen, Odyssea (Leiden, 1917), 17–18, explains the increase to 108 suitors as motivated by the poet’s fondness of significant numbers: 108 is twelve, the original number of suitors, and a significant number in the Odyssey, times nine, a significant number in the Iliad. Indeed, it is true that nine and twelve are among the most common numbers in the Homeric epics. Here Homer has increased the number twelve to a much larger number simply by multiplying it by nine. The use of nine as a multiplicative in order to express a large number appears to be a Homeric device: Patroclus heroically slaughters nine men in each of three successive charges (Il. 16.785); the enormous sacrifice to Poseidon in Pylos consists of nine groups of nine bulls (Od. 3.4–8); by the age of nine the giants Otus and Ephialtes are said to have grown nine cubits wide by nine fathoms tall (11.305–14). That is to say, Homer uses the number nine just as we in modern times, more accustomed to a decimal system, regularly use the number ten or, less regularly, the number twelve (a dozen). On the significance of the number nine both in the Iliad and Odyssey, see H. Erbse, Beiträge zum Verständnis der Odyssee (Berlin, 1972), 194–7; on its significance in early Greek thought and culture generally, see W.H. Roscher, Enneadische Studien (Leipzig, 1907).

8 A scholium to Od. 1.424 δὴ τότε κακκείοντες ἔβαν οἶκόνδε ἕκαστος (F. Pontani, Scholia Graeca in Odysseam, Volume I [Rome, 2007], 202) records an ancient alternative that was probably intended to avoid the question of where the suitors from abroad spent the night: δὴ τότε κοιμήσαντο καὶ ὕπνου δῶρον ἕλοντο (= Od. 19.427); i.e. they spent the night in the same place as they spent the day—in Odysseus’ palace. The question apparently troubled ancient commentators: a scholium to Od. 2.397 (Pontani, this note, page 370) explains that the suitors from abroad slept at the houses of friends on Ithaca.

9 This apparent contradiction with the reference to suitors from the other islands in Od. 1.245–8 also troubled ancient commentators. A scholium to Od. 2.51 mentions that Aristophanes’ text included two additional verses here: ἄλλοι θ’ οἳ νήσοισιν ἐπικρατέουσιν ἄριστοι | Δουλιχίῳ τε Σάμῃ τε καὶ ὑλήεντι Ζακύνθῳ (Pontani [n. 8], 239).

10 R.D. Dawe, The Odyssey: Translation and Analysis (Lewes, 1993), 607–8 mentions several of these indications in the text of the Odyssey that an earlier version of the tale had what he considers a more reasonable number of suitors, namely twelve, but he also notes that the Odyssey provides fifteen different names of suitors and that Penelope dreams of an eagle killing twenty ‘geese’ (i.e. suitors) that are eating the grain from her house (19.536–53). Probably the number of suitors was a fluid detail that changed at various stages in the evolution of the tale.

11 M.L. West, The Making of the Odyssey (Oxford, 2014), 3–4, 104, 138–9 has attributed the increase of suitors from twelve to 108 generally to the ‘carefree inflation’ of numbers by the poet of our Odyssey, but, more specifically, to this poet’s desire to give Telemachus a heroic role in the action.

12 The term was coined by B. Fenik, Typical Battle Scenes in the Iliad (Wiesbaden, 1968), 86, 213–15 and B. Fenik, Studies in the Odyssey (Wiesbaden, 1974), 100–4, and it continues to be used regularly as a label for this pervasive Homeric device: e.g. M.W. Edwards, ‘Topos and transformation in Homer’, in J.M. Bremer, I.J.F. de Jong and J. Kalff (edd.), Homer: Beyond Oral Poetry (Amsterdam, 1987), 47–60, at 50–1; M.W. Edwards, The Iliad: A Commentary, Volume V (Cambridge, 1991), 19–23; S. Reece, The Stranger’s Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene (Ann Arbor, 1993), 189–206.