Odysseus has twelve maidservants hanged for disloyalty.
The episode occurs near the end of Homer’s Odyssey, after Odysseus has slaughtered Penelope’s suitors. He asks the loyal nurse Eurycleia to identify the household women who have dishonored the palace by consorting with the suitors. Eurycleia names twelve of the palace’s serving women.
Odysseus orders the women to clean the hall and remove the blood and bodies left after the battle. Once that work is finished, Telemachus carries out the punishment with help from the loyal servants Eumaeus and Philoetius. The poem describes the women being hanged together in the palace courtyard. Thus Odysseus commands the punishment, while Telemachus performs it.
This scene is often remembered as a simple act of revenge, but its wording has prompted modern readers to question the women’s degree of choice, since they were enslaved and the suitors had power over them. The poem also distinguishes them from loyal servants such as Eurycleia. The number is specifically twelve, not the twelve axe heads used in Penelope’s bow contest.