Eurycleia hurries upstairs, laughing with joy, to wake Penelope and tell her that Odysseus has come home and killed the suitors. Penelope at first thinks the old woman has gone mad, and scolds her for waking her from the sweetest sleep she has had since Odysseus left. Eurycleia insists that the beggar is Odysseus and that Telemachus has known for some time. Penelope jumps out of bed and hugs her, asking how one man could kill so many. Eurycleia says she did not see it but heard the groans, and then found Odysseus standing among the bodies like a lion. But Penelope still refuses to believe: perhaps a god killed the suitors as punishment for their arrogance, and Odysseus himself is lost far away.
Penelope goes down to the hall and sits across from Odysseus by the fire, saying nothing. Sometimes she looks at his face and thinks she recognizes him; other times she sees only a beggar in rags. Telemachus rebukes her, calling her hard-hearted for keeping her distance from her husband after twenty years. She answers that she is stunned and cannot speak, but if this is truly Odysseus, they have secret signs that only they know. Odysseus smiles and tells Telemachus to let his mother test him. First, he says, they need to consider a practical problem: killing so many young nobles will bring their families' vengeance. He orders that everyone bathe and dress, and that Phemius play music for dancing, so that passersby will think a wedding is being celebrated and the news of the killings will not spread until they can escape to the farm.
While the house fills with music and dancing, Odysseus is bathed, and Athena makes him taller and handsomer, with hair like hyacinth blossoms. He sits down across from Penelope again and complains that the gods have given her a heart harder than any other woman's. He asks Eurycleia to make up a bed for him alone. Penelope seizes the opportunity to test him. She tells Eurycleia to move the bed that Odysseus built out of the bedroom and make it up for him outside.
Odysseus explodes in anger. Who has moved his bed? It could not be done without a god's help, because he built it himself around the trunk of a great olive tree that grew in the courtyard. He built the bedroom around the tree, roofed it, cut off the branches, shaped the trunk into a bedpost, and built the bed from it, inlaying it with gold, silver, and ivory and stretching an oxhide strap dyed crimson across the frame. This is the secret sign: only he, Penelope, and one maid know it. Penelope's knees give way, and she runs to him in tears, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him. She asks him not to be angry that she did not welcome him at once; she has always feared being deceived by a clever liar, as Helen was. Her husband melts and weeps, holding her like shipwrecked sailors who reach land after swimming through the sea, their skin crusted with salt — an image that reverses their roles, making Penelope the survivor reaching shore.
Athena holds back the dawn, keeping the night long for them. Odysseus tells Penelope of Teiresias's prophecy that he must travel again, carrying an oar inland, before he finds a peaceful death in old age. Penelope says that if the gods grant them a happy old age, they will find relief from their troubles. They go to their old bed and make love, then talk. Penelope tells him what she suffered from the suitors, and Odysseus tells her the whole story of his wanderings, from the Cicones to the Phaeacians, and she does not sleep until he finishes. In the morning Odysseus tells her to stay in her room with her maids and speak to no one, since news of the killings will spread. Then he arms himself, Telemachus, Eumaeus, and Philoetius, and Athena hides them in darkness as they go out of the city to the farm of Laertes.
