Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Melanthius son of Dolius, goatherd loyal to the suitors, insults Odysseus on the road with Eumaeus, kicks him, and later laughs with the wooers. When the slaughter begins and the suitors lack weapons, Melanthius slips to the storeroom and brings out shields and spears. Eumaeus and Philoetius catch him on a second trip; on Odysseus’s order they bind him, hoist him to a pillar, and leave him dangling. After the suitors are dead, they drag him to the courtyard, cut off his nose, ears, hands, and feet, and tear out his genitals for the dogs—an extreme mutilation the poem reports without pity. Melanthius’s end is the poem’s harshest domestic justice: the servant who armed the enemy and mocked the master receives not a clean spear-thrust but exemplary butchery.