The bow

Listen to me, you noble suitors who afflict this house with your constant eating and drinking, while the man of the house has been a long time gone. You have not found any better excuse to plead than that you wanted to marry me and make me your wife. Well, then -come on suitors, since this appears to be your prize!

Now it is Penelope's turn to take controle.

Odyssey Book 21 line 1-4 Barry B Powell
Odyssey Book 21 line 60-65 Barry B Powell
Odyssey Book 21 line 65-70 Barry B Powell
Odyssey Book 21 line 80-83 Barry B Powell

I will place before you the great bow of godlike Odysseus. Whoever strings this bow most easily in his hands and shoots through all the twelve axes -I will follow him, leaving this house of my wedded life behind, this very beautiful house, filled with livelihood that I now will see only in my dreams.

The flashing eyes is how you can recognize 'Athena', cleverness, understanding and so on, it is the twinkle in one's eyes. It must have been visible in the eyes of Penelope at this moment.

The goddesse flashing-eyed Athena put it into the mind of the daughter of Ikarios, the judicious Penelope, to set up the bow and the gray iron in the feast-hall of Odysseus, to be a contest and the beginning of death.

And Eumaios set out the bow and the gray iron for the suitors. And one of the suitors said:

... I do not think it will be easy to string this bow. For there is no man among all those here such as Odysseus was. I myself saw him, and I remember him well, although I was just a little boy.

This really is a clever thing Penelope did. Handing over this great weapon of Odysseus that only he can string into the room where Odysseus and his opponents are under cover of a contest. It's daring, but Penelope knows what she is doing.

Come, suitors, since this is your prize, a woman unique in all Achaea, and in holy Pylos, and Argos, and in Mycenae, and in Ithaca itself, and on the dark mainland... But you know this yourselfs! Why do I need to praise my mother?

This is the moment all the suitors waited for. And the moment Penelope never hoped it would be necessary. It is rather embarrassing.

Telemachos said. All now is in stringing the bow.

Penelope in the Serie Odysseus by Frédéric Azemar