Does the Film Include Homer's Enslaved Women's Hanging?

The film does not show the collective hanging described in Book 22. It transfers the moral pressure of betrayal onto Melantho and leaves her fate within the violence of the hall.

That is an observed adaptation change. Why Nolan made it has not been established in the cited reporting, so the responsible analysis begins with effect, not invented intention.

What happens in Homer's Book 22

After Odysseus, Telemachus, Eumaeus, and Philoetius kill the suitors, Eurycleia is asked to identify women in the household who slept with them. She names twelve out of the palace's fifty enslaved women.

Odysseus orders those women to remove the bodies, wash the furniture, and clean the blood. He then tells Telemachus to kill them with the sword.

Telemachus chooses hanging instead. His stated reasoning is punitive and shaming: he does not want to grant what he considers an honorable death to women he believes dishonored the household.

The text gives them almost no individual speech in this sequence. Their collective death is narrated through a famously compressed image of birds caught in a snare.

What the film changes

The film does not stage that mass execution. Post-release comparisons instead describe Melantho as a named palace figure aligned with Antinous and involved in the betrayal of Penelope's household.

During the final violence, Melantho attempts to escape. Penelope closes off that escape and sends her back toward the danger. The reporting describes her death as presumed or implied rather than presenting a clear execution equivalent to Homer's twelve-woman hanging.

This smaller dramatic unit is easier for a film to individualize, but it remains ethically severe. Penelope is no longer merely absent from a punishment ordered by returning men. The adaptation gives her agency in Melantho's fate.

The broader inventory of alterations belongs in what Nolan changed. This page stays with the one omitted execution.

Why "disloyal servant" is incomplete

Calling the women servants can hide the social reality of the poem. They are enslaved members of an elite household. Their sexual relationships with the suitors exist inside a system where consent, survival, coercion, and ownership cannot be treated as equal choices between free adults.

Homer's characters judge them according to household loyalty. A modern reader can describe that judgment accurately without accepting it as ethically sufficient.

The text also does not investigate each woman's circumstances. Eurycleia sorts the women into loyal and disloyal groups, and punishment follows. The collective framing removes distinctions that contemporary readers would want to ask about.

That tension is explored more broadly in women in the Odyssey.

What the omission changes

First, it changes scale. Twelve largely unnamed deaths become one named character's possible death.

Second, it changes responsibility. In Homer, Odysseus orders death and Telemachus selects the method. In the film, Penelope's act becomes central to Melantho's end.

Third, it changes the emotional rhythm. Homer's execution occurs after victory as part of deliberate household cleansing. The film folds Melantho's punishment into the chaos of the battle.

Fourth, it changes what the audience must confront. The poem forces readers to encounter a restored household built partly through the killing of enslaved women. The film avoids reproducing that exact spectacle but creates a more individualized act of exclusion.

What cannot be claimed

The omission does not prove that the film "fixes" Homer. Melantho still appears trapped by violence and hierarchy.

It also does not prove that Nolan removed the scene for one particular political, commercial, or rating-related reason. Without a direct, reliable statement, those explanations remain guesses.

Finally, the change should not be used to pretend the Homeric passage does not exist. It is part of the poem's ending and part of the debate over what restoration costs.

How to read the passage responsibly

Read Book 22 in sequence. Notice who owns the household, who is permitted to speak, who identifies guilt, who orders punishment, and who controls its form.

Then compare the film's allocation of agency. Ask why Melantho becomes individualized and why Penelope is brought into the mechanism of judgment.

The point is not to reach a quick verdict that one version is morally clean. Neither is. The useful comparison shows how adaptation can remove an ancient scene while relocating its discomfort.

The free guide supplies the character relationships and return sequence needed to place this difficult passage in the larger story.