Eurymachus

Eurymachus, son of Polybus, is one of the two leaders of Penelope's suitors in the Odyssey, with Antinous, and the smoothest talker of them all. Penelope's family presses her to marry him, and he is the second suitor Odysseus kills.

In Book 1 he questions Telemachus about the stranger who has just left, never guessing that it was Athena in disguise. When the young man calls the assembly, Eurymachus dismisses the bird omen read by the old seer Halitherses, threatens him with a fine and tells Telemachus to send his mother back to her father, Icarius, to be married. According to Athena, Penelope's father and brothers urge her to choose him, because he outbids every rival in gifts. When the suitors' ambush fails, he swears to Penelope that no one will harm her son while he lives, though he is himself plotting the young man's death. The disloyal maid Melantho is his lover.

With Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, he is all mockery. He jokes that the torchlight seems to shine from the stranger's bald head, offers him work as a farmhand and, when Odysseus answers him back, hurls a footstool that strikes the wine steward instead. He laughs off the visions of the seer Theoclymenus, and in the contest of the bow he warms the weapon by the fire and still cannot string it, more ashamed of what people will say than of losing Penelope.

When Antinous falls, Eurymachus tries to bargain: Antinous alone was to blame, and the suitors will repay everything they consumed, each with twenty oxen's worth of bronze and gold. Odysseus refuses. Eurymachus draws his sword and charges with a war cry, and an arrow strikes him in the chest beside the nipple and pierces his liver; he crashes over a table, spilling food and wine, and his forehead hits the floor. Telemachus then kills Amphinomus.