The Beggar's Rags / Disguise

Not a costume. A working disguise made by a goddess. Athena puts age in his shoulders and grey in his beard and rags on his back, and the man who built the wooden horse becomes another beggar at the door. The suitors barely look up. One flicks a crust at his feet. Another laughs. The rags are the long, deliberate silence — every meal where he could announce himself and doesn’t, every insult he eats, every loyal servant he can’t yet tell, every look from his son he can’t return. [SPOILER: He keeps the disguise on through Eumaeus’s hut, through the foot-washing where Eurycleia finds the scar and he silences her with a hand at her throat, through the bow contest, all the way to the first arrow. The disguise is the patience of metis made into clothing. He takes it off only when the room is locked and there is nowhere left for the suitors to run.]