Entity: 01KCJP3ZNNVBG23V72223H81SA

BOOK XXI


THE TRIAL OF THE AXES, DURING WHICH ULYSSES REVEALS HIMSELF TO EUMAEUS
AND PHILOETIUS


Minerva now put it in Penelope’s mind to make the suitors try their
skill with the bow and with the iron axes, in contest among themselves,
as a means of bringing about their destruction. She went upstairs and
got the store-room key, which was made of bronze and had a handle of
ivory; she then went with her maidens into the store-room at the end of
the house, where her husband’s treasures of gold, bronze, and wrought
iron were kept, and where was also his bow, and the quiver full of
deadly arrows that had been given him by a friend whom he had met in
Lacedaemon—Iphitus the son of Eurytus. The two fell in with one another
in Messene at the house of Ortilochus, where Ulysses was staying in
order to recover a debt that was owing from the whole people; for the
Messenians had carried off three hundred sheep from Ithaca, and had
sailed away with them and with their shepherds. In quest of these
Ulysses took a long journey while still quite young, for his father and
the other chieftains sent him on a mission to recover them. Iphitus had
gone there also to try and get back twelve brood mares that he had
lost, and the mule foals that were running with them. These mares were
the death of him in the end, for when he went to the house of Jove’s
son, mighty Hercules, who performed such prodigies of valour, Hercules
to his shame killed him, though he was his guest, for he feared not
heaven’s vengeance, nor yet respected his own table which he had set
before Iphitus, but killed him in spite of everything, and kept the
mares himself. It was when claiming these that Iphitus met Ulysses, and
gave him the bow which mighty Eurytus had been used to carry, and which
on his death had been left by him to his son. Ulysses gave him in
return a sword and a spear, and this was the beginning of a fast
friendship, although they never visited at one another’s houses, for
Jove’s son Hercules killed Iphitus ere they could do so. This bow,
then, given him by Iphitus, had not been taken with him by Ulysses when
he sailed for Troy; he had used it so long as he had been at home, but
had left it behind as having been a keepsake from a valued friend.

Penelope presently reached the oak threshold of the store-room; the
carpenter had planed this duly, and had drawn a line on it so as to get
it quite straight; he had then set the door posts into it and hung the
doors. She loosed the strap from the handle of the door, put in the
key, and drove it straight home to shoot back the bolts that held the
doors;161 these flew open with a noise like a bull bellowing in a
meadow, and Penelope stepped upon the raised platform, where the chests
stood in which the fair linen and clothes were laid by along with
fragrant herbs: reaching thence, she took down the bow with its bow
case from the peg on which it hung. She sat down with it on her knees,
weeping bitterly as she took the bow out of its case, and when her
tears had relieved her, she went to the cloister where the suitors
were, carrying the bow and the quiver, with the many deadly arrows that
were inside it. Along with her came her maidens, bearing a chest that
contained much iron and bronze which her husband had won as prizes.
When she reached the suitors, she stood by one of the bearing-posts
supporting the roof of the cloister, holding a veil before her face,
and with a maid on either side of her. Then she said:

“Listen to me you suitors, who persist in abusing the hospitality of
this house because its owner has been long absent, and without other
pretext than that you want to marry me; this, then, being the prize
that you are contending for, I will bring out the mighty bow of
Ulysses, and whomsoever of you shall string it most easily and send his
arrow through each one of twelve axes, him will I follow and quit this
house of my lawful husband, so goodly, and so abounding in wealth. But
even so I doubt not that I shall remember it in my dreams.”

As she spoke, she told Eumaeus to set the bow and the pieces of iron
before the suitors, and Eumaeus wept as he took them to do as she had
bidden him. Hard by, the stockman wept also when he saw his master’s
bow, but Antinous scolded them. “You country louts,” said he, “silly
simpletons; why should you add to the sorrows of your mistress by
crying in this way? She has enough to grieve her in the loss of her
husband; sit still, therefore, and eat your dinners in silence, or go
outside if you want to cry, and leave the bow behind you. We suitors
shall have to contend for it with might and main, for we shall find it
no light matter to string such a bow as this is. There is not a man of
us all who is such another as Ulysses; for I have seen him and remember
him, though I was then only a child.”

This was what he said, but all the time he was expecting to be able to
string the bow and shoot through the iron, whereas in fact he was to be
the first that should taste of the arrows from the hands of Ulysses,
whom he was dishonouring in his own house—egging the others on to do so
also.

Then Telemachus spoke. “Great heavens!” he exclaimed, “Jove must have
robbed me of my senses. Here is my dear and excellent mother saying she
will quit this house and marry again, yet I am laughing and enjoying
myself as though there were nothing happening. But, suitors, as the
contest has been agreed upon, let it go forward. It is for a woman
whose peer is not to be found in Pylos, Argos, or Mycene, nor yet in
Ithaca nor on the mainland. You know this as well as I do; what need
have I to speak in praise of my mother? Come on, then, make no excuses
for delay, but let us see whether you can string the bow or no. I too
will make trial of it, for if I can string it and shoot through the
iron, I shall not suffer my mother to quit this house with a stranger,
not if I can win the prizes which my father won before me.”

As he spoke he sprang from his seat, threw his crimson cloak from him,
and took his sword from his shoulder. First he set the axes in a row,
in a long groove which he had dug for them, and had made straight by
line.162 Then he stamped the earth tight round them, and everyone was
surprised when they saw him set them up so orderly, though he had never
seen anything of the kind before. This done, he went on to the pavement
to make trial of the bow; thrice did he tug at it, trying with all his
might to draw the string, and thrice he had to leave off, though he had
hoped to string the bow and shoot through the iron. He was trying for
the fourth time, and would have strung it had not Ulysses made a sign
to check him in spite of all his eagerness. So he said:

“Alas! I shall either be always feeble and of no prowess, or I am too
young, and have not yet reached my full strength so as to be able to
hold my own if any one attacks me. You others, therefore, who are
stronger than I, make trial of the bow and get this contest settled.”

On this he put the bow down, letting it lean against the door [that led
into the house] with the arrow standing against the top of the bow.
Then he sat down on the seat from which he had risen, and Antinous
said:

“Come on each of you in his turn, going towards the right from the
place at which the cupbearer begins when he is handing round the wine.”

The rest agreed, and Leiodes son of Oenops was the first to rise. He
was sacrificial priest to the suitors, and sat in the corner near the
mixing-bowl. 163 He was the only man who hated their evil deeds and was
indignant with the others. He was now the first to take the bow and
arrow, so he went on to the pavement to make his trial, but he could
not string the bow, for his hands were weak and unused to hard work,
they therefore soon grew tired, and he said to the suitors, “My
friends, I cannot string it; let another have it, this bow shall take
the life and soul out of many a chief among us, for it is better to die
than to live after having missed the prize that we have so long striven
for, and which has brought us so long together. Some one of us is even
now hoping and praying that he may marry Penelope, but when he has seen
this bow and tried it, let him woo and make bridal offerings to some
other woman, and let Penelope marry whoever makes her the best offer
and whose lot it is to win her.”

On this he put the bow down, letting it lean against the door,164 with
the arrow standing against the tip of the bow. Then he took his seat
again on the seat from which he had risen; and Antinous rebuked him
saying:

“Leiodes, what are you talking about? Your words are monstrous and
intolerable; it makes me angry to listen to you. Shall, then, this bow
take the life of many a chief among us, merely because you cannot bend
it yourself? True, you were not born to be an archer, but there are
others who will soon string it.”

Then he said to Melanthius the goatherd, “Look sharp, light a fire in
the court, and set a seat hard by with a sheep skin on it; bring us
also a large ball of lard, from what they have in the house. Let us
warm the bow and grease it—we will then make trial of it again, and
bring the contest to an end.”

Melanthius lit the fire, and set a seat covered with sheep skins beside
it. He also brought a great ball of lard from what they had in the
house, and the suitors warmed the bow and again made trial of it, but
they were none of them nearly strong enough to string it. Nevertheless
there still remained Antinous and Eurymachus, who were the ringleaders
among the suitors and much the foremost among them all.

Then the swineherd and the stockman left the cloisters together, and
Ulysses followed them. When they had got outside the gates and the
outer yard, Ulysses said to them quietly:

“Stockman, and you swineherd, I have something in my mind which I am in
doubt whether to say or no; but I think I will say it. What manner of
men would you be to stand by Ulysses, if some god should bring him back
here all of a sudden? Say which you are disposed to do—to side with the
suitors, or with Ulysses?”

“Father Jove,” answered the stockman, “would indeed that you might so
ordain it. If some god were but to bring Ulysses back, you should see
with what might and main I would fight for him.”

In like words Eumaeus prayed to all the gods that Ulysses might return;
when, therefore, he saw for certain what mind they were of, Ulysses
said, “It is I, Ulysses, who am here. I have suffered much, but at
last, in the twentieth year, I am come back to my own country. I find
that you two alone of all my servants are glad that I should do so, for
I have not heard any of the others praying for my return. To you two,
therefore, will I unfold the truth as it shall be. If heaven shall
deliver the suitors into my hands, I will find wives for both of you,
will give you house and holding close to my own, and you shall be to me
as though you were brothers and friends of Telemachus. I will now give
you convincing proofs that you may know me and be assured. See, here is
the scar from the boar’s tooth that ripped me when I was out hunting on
Mt. Parnassus with the sons of Autolycus.”

As he spoke he drew his rags aside from the great scar, and when they
had examined it thoroughly, they both of them wept about Ulysses, threw
their arms round him, and kissed his head and shoulders, while Ulysses
kissed their hands and faces in return. The sun would have gone down
upon their mourning if Ulysses had not checked them and said:

“Cease your weeping, lest some one should come outside and see us, and
tell those who are within. When you go in, do so separately, not both
together; I will go first, and do you follow afterwards; let this
moreover be the token between us; the suitors will all of them try to
prevent me from getting hold of the bow and quiver; do you, therefore,
Eumaeus, place it in my hands when you are carrying it about, and tell
the women to close the doors of their apartment. If they hear any
groaning or uproar as of men fighting about the house, they must not
come out; they must keep quiet, and stay where they are at their work.
And I charge you, Philoetius, to make fast the doors of the outer
court, and to bind them securely at once.”

When he had thus spoken, he went back to the house and took the seat
that he had left. Presently, his two servants followed him inside.

At this moment the bow was in the hands of Eurymachus, who was warming
it by the fire, but even so he could not string it, and he was greatly
grieved. He heaved a deep sigh and said, “I grieve for myself and for
us all; I grieve that I shall have to forgo the marriage, but I do not
care nearly so much about this, for there are plenty of other women in
Ithaca and elsewhere; what I feel most is the fact of our being so
inferior to Ulysses in strength that we cannot string his bow. This
will disgrace us in the eyes of those who are yet unborn.”

“It shall not be so, Eurymachus,” said Antinous, “and you know it
yourself. Today is the feast of Apollo throughout all the land; who can
string a bow on such a day as this? Put it on one side—as for the axes
they can stay where they are, for no one is likely to come to the house
and take them away: let the cupbearer go round with his cups, that we
may make our drink-offerings and drop this matter of the bow; we will
tell Melanthius to bring us in some goats tomorrow—the best he has; we
can then offer thigh bones to Apollo the mighty archer, and again make
trial of the bow, so as to bring the contest to an end.”

The rest approved his words, and thereon men servants poured water over
the hands of the guests, while pages filled the mixing-bowls with wine
and water and handed it round after giving every man his
drink-offering. Then, when they had made their offerings and had drunk
each as much as he desired, Ulysses craftily said:—

“Suitors of the illustrious queen, listen that I may speak even as I am
minded. I appeal more especially to Eurymachus, and to Antinous who has
just spoken with so much reason. Cease shooting for the present and
leave the matter to the gods, but in the morning let heaven give
victory to whom it will. For the moment, however, give me the bow that
I may prove the power of my hands among you all, and see whether I
still have as much strength as I used to have, or whether travel and
neglect have made an end of it.”

This made them all very angry, for they feared he might string the bow,
Antinous therefore rebuked him fiercely saying, “Wretched creature, you
have not so much as a grain of sense in your whole body; you ought to
think yourself lucky in being allowed to dine unharmed among your
betters, without having any smaller portion served you than we others
have had, and in being allowed to hear our conversation. No other
beggar or stranger has been allowed to hear what we say among
ourselves; the wine must have been doing you a mischief, as it does
with all those who drink immoderately. It was wine that inflamed the
Centaur Eurytion when he was staying with Peirithous among the
Lapithae. When the wine had got into his head, he went mad and did ill
deeds about the house of Peirithous; this angered the heroes who were
there assembled, so they rushed at him and cut off his ears and
nostrils; then they dragged him through the doorway out of the house,
so he went away crazed, and bore the burden of his crime, bereft of
understanding. Henceforth, therefore, there was war between mankind and
the centaurs, but he brought it upon himself through his own
drunkenness. In like manner I can tell you that it will go hardly with
you if you string the bow: you will find no mercy from any one here,
for we shall at once ship you off to king Echetus, who kills every one
that comes near him: you will never get away alive, so drink and keep
quiet without getting into a quarrel with men younger than yourself.”

Penelope then spoke to him. “Antinous,” said she, “it is not right that
you should ill-treat any guest of Telemachus who comes to this house.
If the stranger should prove strong enough to string the mighty bow of
Ulysses, can you suppose that he would take me home with him and make
me his wife? Even the man himself can have no such idea in his mind:
none of you need let that disturb his feasting; it would be out of all
reason.”

“Queen Penelope,” answered Eurymachus, “we do not suppose that this man
will take you away with him; it is impossible; but we are afraid lest
some of the baser sort, men or women among the Achaeans, should go
gossiping about and say, ‘These suitors are a feeble folk; they are
paying court to the wife of a brave man whose bow not one of them was
able to string, and yet a beggarly tramp who came to the house strung
it at once and sent an arrow through the iron.’ This is what will be
said, and it will be a scandal against us.”

“Eurymachus,” Penelope answered, “people who persist in eating up the
estate of a great chieftain and dishonouring his house must not expect
others to think well of them. Why then should you mind if men talk as
you think they will? This stranger is strong and well-built, he says
moreover that he is of noble birth. Give him the bow, and let us see
whether he can string it or no. I say—and it shall surely be—that if
Apollo vouchsafes him the glory of stringing it, I will give him a
cloak and shirt of good wear, with a javelin to keep off dogs and
robbers, and a sharp sword. I will also give him sandals, and will see
him sent safely wherever he wants to go.”

Then Telemachus said, “Mother, I am the only man either in Ithaca or in
the islands that are over against Elis who has the right to let any one
have the bow or to refuse it. No one shall force me one way or the
other, not even though I choose to make the stranger a present of the
bow outright, and let him take it away with him. Go, then, within the
house and busy yourself with your daily duties, your loom, your
distaff, and the ordering of your servants. This bow is a man’s matter,
and mine above all others, for it is I who am master here.”

She went wondering back into the house, and laid her son’s saying in
her heart. Then going upstairs with her handmaids into her room, she
mourned her dear husband till Minerva sent sweet sleep over her
eyelids.

The swineherd now took up the bow and was for taking it to Ulysses, but
the suitors clamoured at him from all parts of the cloisters, and one
of them said, “You idiot, where are you taking the bow to? Are you out
of your wits? If Apollo and the other gods will grant our prayer, your
own boarhounds shall get you into some quiet little place, and worry
you to death.”

Eumaeus was frightened at the outcry they all raised, so he put the bow
down then and there, but Telemachus shouted out at him from the other
side of the cloisters, and threatened him saying, “Father Eumaeus,
bring the bow on in spite of them, or young as I am I will pelt you
with stones back to the country, for I am the better man of the two. I
wish I was as much stronger than all the other suitors in the house as
I am than you, I would soon send some of them off sick and sorry, for
they mean mischief.”

Thus did he speak, and they all of them laughed heartily, which put
them in a better humour with Telemachus; so Eumaeus brought the bow on
and placed it in the hands of Ulysses. When he had done this, he called
Euryclea apart and said to her, “Euryclea, Telemachus says you are to
close the doors of the women’s apartments. If they hear any groaning or
uproar as of men fighting about the house, they are not to come out,
but are to keep quiet and stay where they are at their work.”

Euryclea did as she was told and closed the doors of the women’s
apartments.

Meanwhile Philoetius slipped quietly out and made fast the gates of the
outer court. There was a ship’s cable of byblus fibre lying in the
gatehouse, so he made the gates fast with it and then came in again,
resuming the seat that he had left, and keeping an eye on Ulysses, who
had now got the bow in his hands, and was turning it every way about,
and proving it all over to see whether the worms had been eating into
its two horns during his absence. Then would one turn towards his
neighbour saying, “This is some tricky old bow-fancier; either he has
got one like it at home, or he wants to make one, in such workmanlike
style does the old vagabond handle it.”

Another said, “I hope he may be no more successful in other things than
he is likely to be in stringing this bow.”

But Ulysses, when he had taken it up and examined it all over, strung
it as easily as a skilled bard strings a new peg of his lyre and makes
the twisted gut fast at both ends. Then he took it in his right hand to
prove the string, and it sang sweetly under his touch like the
twittering of a swallow. The suitors were dismayed, and turned colour
as they heard it; at that moment, moreover, Jove thundered loudly as a
sign, and the heart of Ulysses rejoiced as he heard the omen that the
son of scheming Saturn had sent him.

He took an arrow that was lying upon the table165—for those which the
Achaeans were so shortly about to taste were all inside the quiver—he
laid it on the centre-piece of the bow, and drew the notch of the arrow
and the string toward him, still seated on his seat. When he had taken
aim he let fly, and his arrow pierced every one of the handle-holes of
the axes from the first onwards till it had gone right through them,
and into the outer courtyard. Then he said to Telemachus:

“Your guest has not disgraced you, Telemachus. I did not miss what I
aimed at, and I was not long in stringing my bow. I am still strong,
and not as the suitors twit me with being. Now, however, it is time for
the Achaeans to prepare supper while there is still daylight, and then
otherwise to disport themselves with song and dance which are the
crowning ornaments of a banquet.”

As he spoke he made a sign with his eyebrows, and Telemachus girded on
his sword, grasped his spear, and stood armed beside his father’s seat.

BOOK XXII


THE KILLING OF THE SUITORS—THE MAIDS WHO HAVE MISCONDUCTED THEMSELVES
ARE MADE TO CLEANSE THE CLOISTERS AND ARE THEN HANGED.


Then Ulysses tore off his rags, and sprang on to the broad pavement
with his bow and his quiver full of arrows. He shed the arrows on to
the ground at his feet and said, “The mighty contest is at an end. I
will now see whether Apollo will vouchsafe it to me to hit another mark
which no man has yet hit.”

On this he aimed a deadly arrow at Antinous, who was about to take up a
two-handled gold cup to drink his wine and already had it in his hands.
He had no thought of death—who amongst all the revellers would think
that one man, however brave, would stand alone among so many and kill
him? The arrow struck Antinous in the throat, and the point went clean
through his neck, so that he fell over and the cup dropped from his
hand, while a thick stream of blood gushed from his nostrils. He kicked
the table from him and upset the things on it, so that the bread and
roasted meats were all soiled as they fell over on to the ground.166
The suitors were in an uproar when they saw that a man had been hit;
they sprang in dismay one and all of them from their seats and looked
everywhere towards the walls, but there was neither shield nor spear,
and they rebuked Ulysses very angrily. “Stranger,” said they, “you
shall pay for shooting people in this way: you shall see no other
contest; you are a doomed man; he whom you have slain was the foremost
youth in Ithaca, and the vultures shall devour you for having killed
him.”

Thus they spoke, for they thought that he had killed Antinous by
mistake, and did not perceive that death was hanging over the head of
every one of them. But Ulysses glared at them and said:

“Dogs, did you think that I should not come back from Troy? You have
wasted my substance,167 have forced my women servants to lie with you,
and have wooed my wife while I was still living. You have feared
neither God nor man, and now you shall die.”

They turned pale with fear as he spoke, and every man looked round
about to see whither he might fly for safety, but Eurymachus alone
spoke.

“If you are Ulysses,” said he, “then what you have said is just. We
have done much wrong on your lands and in your house. But Antinous who
was the head and front of the offending lies low already. It was all
his doing. It was not that he wanted to marry Penelope; he did not so
much care about that; what he wanted was something quite different, and
Jove has not vouchsafed it to him; he wanted to kill your son and to be
chief man in Ithaca. Now, therefore, that he has met the death which
was his due, spare the lives of your people. We will make everything
good among ourselves, and pay you in full for all that we have eaten
and drunk. Each one of us shall pay you a fine worth twenty oxen, and
we will keep on giving you gold and bronze till your heart is softened.
Until we have done this no one can complain of your being enraged
against us.”

Ulysses again glared at him and said, “Though you should give me all
that you have in the world both now and all that you ever shall have, I
will not stay my hand till I have paid all of you in full. You must
fight, or fly for your lives; and fly, not a man of you shall.”

Their hearts sank as they heard him, but Eurymachus again spoke saying:

“My friends, this man will give us no quarter. He will stand where he
is and shoot us down till he has killed every man among us. Let us then
show fight; draw your swords, and hold up the tables to shield you from
his arrows. Let us have at him with a rush, to drive him from the
pavement and doorway: we can then get through into the town, and raise
such an alarm as shall soon stay his shooting.”

As he spoke he drew his keen blade of bronze, sharpened on both sides,
and with a loud cry sprang towards Ulysses, but Ulysses instantly shot
an arrow into his breast that caught him by the nipple and fixed itself
in his liver. He dropped his sword and fell doubled up over his table.
The cup and all the meats went over on to the ground as he smote the
earth with his forehead in the agonies of death, and he kicked the
stool with his feet until his eyes were closed in darkness.

Then Amphinomus drew his sword and made straight at Ulysses to try and
get him away from the door; but Telemachus was too quick for him, and
struck him from behind; the spear caught him between the shoulders and
went right through his chest, so that he fell heavily to the ground and
struck the earth with his forehead. Then Telemachus sprang away from
him, leaving his spear still in the body, for he feared that if he
stayed to draw it out, some one of the Achaeans might come up and hack
at him with his sword, or knock him down, so he set off at a run, and
immediately was at his father’s side. Then he said:

“Father, let me bring you a shield, two spears, and a brass helmet for
your temples. I will arm myself as well, and will bring other armour
for the swineherd and the stockman, for we had better be armed.”

“Run and fetch them,” answered Ulysses, “while my arrows hold out, or
when I am alone they may get me away from the door.”

Telemachus did as his father said, and went off to the store room where
the armour was kept. He chose four shields, eight spears, and four
brass helmets with horse-hair plumes. He brought them with all speed to
his father, and armed himself first, while the stockman and the
swineherd also put on their armour, and took their places near Ulysses.
Meanwhile Ulysses, as long as his arrows lasted, had been shooting the
suitors one by one, and they fell thick on one another: when his arrows
gave out, he set the bow to stand against the end wall of the house by
the door post, and hung a shield four hides thick about his shoulders;
on his comely head he set his helmet, well wrought with a crest of
horse-hair that nodded menacingly above it,168 and he grasped two
redoubtable bronze-shod spears.

Now there was a trap door169 on the wall, while at one end of the
pavement170 there was an exit leading to a narrow passage, and this
exit was closed by a well-made door. Ulysses told Philoetius to stand
by this door and guard it, for only one person could attack it at a
time. But Agelaus shouted out, “Cannot some one go up to the trap door
and tell the people what is going on? Help would come at once, and we
should soon make an end of this man and his shooting.”

“This may not be, Agelaus,” answered Melanthius, “the mouth of the
narrow passage is dangerously near the entrance to the outer court. One
brave man could prevent any number from getting in. But I know what I
will do, I will bring you arms from the store-room, for I am sure it is
there that Ulysses and his son have put them.”

On this the goatherd Melanthius went by back passages to the store-room
of Ulysses’ house. There he chose twelve shields, with as many helmets
and spears, and brought them back as fast as he could to give them to
the suitors. Ulysses’ heart began to fail him when he saw the
suitors171 putting on their armour and brandishing their spears. He saw
the greatness of the danger, and said to Telemachus, “Some one of the
women inside is helping the suitors against us, or it may be
Melanthius.”

Telemachus answered, “The fault, father, is mine, and mine only; I left
the store room door open, and they have kept a sharper look out than I
have. Go, Eumaeus, put the door to, and see whether it is one of the
women who is doing this, or whether, as I suspect, it is Melanthius the
son of Dolius.”

Thus did they converse. Meanwhile Melanthius was again going to the
store room to fetch more armour, but the swineherd saw him and said to
Ulysses who was beside him, “Ulysses, noble son of Laertes, it is that
scoundrel Melanthius, just as we suspected, who is going to the store
room. Say, shall I kill him, if I can get the better of him, or shall I
bring him here that you may take your own revenge for all the many
wrongs that he has done in your house?”

Ulysses answered, “Telemachus and I will hold these suitors in check,
no matter what they do; go back both of you and bind Melanthius’ hands
and feet behind him. Throw him into the store room and make the door
fast behind you; then fasten a noose about his body, and string him
close up to the rafters from a high bearing-post,172 that he may linger
on in an agony.”

Thus did he speak, and they did even as he had said; they went to the
store room, which they entered before Melanthius saw them, for he was
busy searching for arms in the innermost part of the room, so the two
took their stand on either side of the door and waited. By and by
Melanthius came out with a helmet in one hand, and an old dry-rotted
shield in the other, which had been borne by Laertes when he was young,
but which had been long since thrown aside, and the straps had become
unsewn; on this the two seized him, dragged him back by the hair, and
threw him struggling to the ground. They bent his hands and feet well
behind his back, and bound them tight with a painful bond as Ulysses
had told them; then they fastened a noose about his body and strung him
up from a high pillar till he was close up to the rafters, and over him
did you then vaunt, O swineherd Eumaeus saying, “Melanthius, you will
pass the night on a soft bed as you deserve. You will know very well
when morning comes from the streams of Oceanus, and it is time for you
to be driving in your goats for the suitors to feast on.”

There, then, they left him in very cruel bondage, and having put on
their armour they closed the door behind them and went back to take
their places by the side of Ulysses; whereon the four men stood in the
cloister, fierce and full of fury; nevertheless, those who were in the
body of the court were still both brave and many. Then Jove’s daughter
Minerva came up to them, having assumed the voice and form of Mentor.
Ulysses was glad when he saw her and said, “Mentor, lend me your help,
and forget not your old comrade, nor the many good turns he has done
you. Besides, you are my age-mate.”

But all the time he felt sure it was Minerva, and the suitors from the
other side raised an uproar when they saw her. Agelaus was the first to
reproach her. “Mentor,” he cried, “do not let Ulysses beguile you into
siding with him and fighting the suitors. This is what we will do: when
we have killed these people, father and son, we will kill you too. You
shall pay for it with your head, and when we have killed you, we will
take all you have, in doors or out, and bring it into hotch-pot with
Ulysses’ property; we will not let your sons live in your house, nor
your daughters, nor shall your widow continue to live in the city of
Ithaca.”

This made Minerva still more furious, so she scolded Ulysses very
angrily.173 “Ulysses,” said she, “your strength and prowess are no
longer what they were when you fought for nine long years among the
Trojans about the noble lady Helen. You killed many a man in those
days, and it was through your stratagem that Priam’s city was taken.
How comes it that you are so lamentably less valiant now that you are
on your own ground, face to face with the suitors in your own house?
Come on, my good fellow, stand by my side and see how Mentor, son of
Alcimus shall fight your foes and requite your kindnesses conferred
upon him.”

But she would not give him full victory as yet, for she wished still
further to prove his own prowess and that of his brave son, so she flew
up to one of the rafters in the roof of the cloister and sat upon it in
the form of a swallow.

Meanwhile Agelaus son of Damastor, Eurynomus, Amphimedon, Demoptolemus,
Pisander, and Polybus son of Polyctor bore the brunt of the fight upon
the suitors’ side; of all those who were still fighting for their lives
they were by far the most valiant, for the others had already fallen
under the arrows of Ulysses. Agelaus shouted to them and said, “My
friends, he will soon have to leave off, for Mentor has gone away after
having done nothing for him but brag. They are standing at the doors
unsupported. Do not aim at him all at once, but six of you throw your
spears first, and see if you cannot cover yourselves with glory by
killing him. When he has fallen we need not be uneasy about the
others.”

They threw their spears as he bade them, but Minerva made them all of
no effect. One hit the door post; another went against the door; the
pointed shaft of another struck the wall; and as soon as they had
avoided all the spears of the suitors Ulysses said to his own men, “My
friends, I should say we too had better let drive into the middle of
them, or they will crown all the harm they have done us by killing us
outright.”

They therefore aimed straight in front of them and threw their spears.
Ulysses killed Demoptolemus, Telemachus Euryades, Eumaeus Elatus, while
the stockman killed Pisander. These all bit the dust, and as the others
drew back into a corner Ulysses and his men rushed forward and regained
their spears by drawing them from the bodies of the dead.

The suitors now aimed a second time, but again Minerva made their
weapons for the most part without effect. One hit a bearing-post of the
cloister; another went against the door; while the pointed shaft of
another struck the wall. Still, Amphimedon just took a piece of the top
skin from off Telemachus’s wrist, and Ctesippus managed to graze
Eumaeus’s shoulder above his shield; but the spear went on and fell to
the ground. Then Ulysses and his men let drive into the crowd of
suitors. Ulysses hit Eurydamas, Telemachus Amphimedon, and Eumaeus
Polybus. After this the stockman hit Ctesippus in the breast, and
taunted him saying, “Foul-mouthed son of Polytherses, do not be so
foolish as to talk wickedly another time, but let heaven direct your
speech, for the gods are far stronger than men. I make you a present of
this advice to repay you for the foot which you gave Ulysses when he
was begging about in his own house.”

Thus spoke the stockman, and Ulysses struck the son of Damastor with a
spear in close fight, while Telemachus hit Leocritus son of Evenor in
the belly, and the dart went clean through him, so that he fell forward
full on his face upon the ground. Then Minerva from her seat on the
rafter held up her deadly aegis, and the hearts of the suitors quailed.
They fled to the other end of the court like a herd of cattle maddened
by the gadfly in early summer when the days are at their longest. As
eagle-beaked, crook-taloned vultures from the mountains swoop down on
the smaller birds that cower in flocks upon the ground, and kill them,
for they cannot either fight or fly, and lookers on enjoy the
sport—even so did Ulysses and his men fall upon the suitors and smite
them on every side. They made a horrible groaning as their brains were
being battered in, and the ground seethed with their blood.

Leiodes then caught the knees of Ulysses and said, “Ulysses I beseech
you have mercy upon me and spare me. I never wronged any of the women
in your house either in word or deed, and I tried to stop the others. I
saw them, but they would not listen, and now they are paying for their
folly. I was their sacrificing priest; if you kill me, I shall die
without having done anything to deserve it, and shall have got no
thanks for all the good that I did.”

Ulysses looked sternly at him and answered, “If you were their
sacrificing priest, you must have prayed many a time that it might be
long before I got home again, and that you might marry my wife and have
children by her. Therefore you shall die.”

With these words he picked up the sword that Agelaus had dropped when
he was being killed, and which was lying upon the ground. Then he
struck Leiodes on the back of his neck, so that his head fell rolling
in the dust while he was yet speaking.

The minstrel Phemius son of Terpes—he who had been forced by the
suitors to sing to them—now tried to save his life. He was standing
near towards the trap door,174 and held his lyre in his hand. He did
not know whether to fly out of the cloister and sit down by the altar
of Jove that was in the outer court, and on which both Laertes and
Ulysses had offered up the thigh bones of many an ox, or whether to go
straight up to Ulysses and embrace his knees, but in the end he deemed
it best to embrace Ulysses’ knees. So he laid his lyre on the ground
between the mixing bowl 175 and the silver-studded seat; then going up
to Ulysses he caught hold of his knees and said, “Ulysses, I beseech
you have mercy on me and spare me. You will be sorry for it afterwards
if you kill a bard who can sing both for gods and men as I can. I make
all my lays myself, and heaven visits me with every kind of
inspiration. I would sing to you as though you were a god, do not
therefore be in such a hurry to cut my head off. Your own son
Telemachus will tell you that I did not want to frequent your house and
sing to the suitors after their meals, but they were too many and too
strong for me, so they made me.”

Telemachus heard him, and at once went up to his father. “Hold!” he
cried, “the man is guiltless, do him no hurt; and we will spare Medon
too, who was always good to me when I was a boy, unless Philoetius or
Eumaeus has already killed him, or he has fallen in your way when you
were raging about the court.”

Medon caught these words of Telemachus, for he was crouching under a
seat beneath which he had hidden by covering himself up with a freshly
flayed heifer’s hide, so he threw off the hide, went up to Telemachus,
and laid hold of his knees.

“Here I am, my dear sir,” said he, “stay your hand therefore, and tell
your father, or he will kill me in his rage against the suitors for
having wasted his substance and been so foolishly disrespectful to
yourself.”

Ulysses smiled at him and answered, “Fear not; Telemachus has saved
your life, that you may know in future, and tell other people, how
greatly better good deeds prosper than evil ones. Go, therefore,
outside the cloisters into the outer court, and be out of the way of
the slaughter—you and the bard—while I finish my work here inside.”

The pair went into the outer court as fast as they could, and sat down
by Jove’s great altar, looking fearfully round, and still expecting
that they would be killed. Then Ulysses searched the whole court
carefully over, to see if anyone had managed to hide himself and was
still living, but he found them all lying in the dust and weltering in
their blood. They were like fishes which fishermen have netted out of
the sea, and thrown upon the beach to lie gasping for water till the
heat of the sun makes an end of them. Even so were the suitors lying
all huddled up one against the other.

Then Ulysses said to Telemachus, “Call nurse Euryclea; I have something
to say to her.”

Telemachus went and knocked at the door of the women’s room. “Make
haste,” said he, “you old woman who have been set over all the other
women in the house. Come outside; my father wishes to speak to you.”

When Euryclea heard this she unfastened the door of the women’s room
and came out, following Telemachus. She found Ulysses among the corpses
bespattered with blood and filth like a lion that has just been
devouring an ox, and his breast and both his cheeks are all bloody, so
that he is a fearful sight; even so was Ulysses besmirched from head to
foot with gore. When she saw all the corpses and such a quantity of
blood, she was beginning to cry out for joy, for she saw that a great
deed had been done; but Ulysses checked her, “Old woman,” said he,
“rejoice in silence; restrain yourself, and do not make any noise about
it; it is an unholy thing to vaunt over dead men. Heaven’s doom and
their own evil deeds have brought these men to destruction, for they
respected no man in the whole world, neither rich nor poor, who came
near them, and they have come to a bad end as a punishment for their
wickedness and folly. Now, however, tell me which of the women in the
house have misconducted themselves, and who are innocent.”176

“I will tell you the truth, my son,” answered Euryclea. “There are
fifty women in the house whom we teach to do things, such as carding
wool, and all kinds of household work. Of these, twelve in all177 have
misbehaved, and have been wanting in respect to me, and also to
Penelope. They showed no disrespect to Telemachus, for he has only
lately grown and his mother never permitted him to give orders to the
female servants; but let me go upstairs and tell your wife all that has
happened, for some god has been sending her to sleep.”

“Do not wake her yet,” answered Ulysses, “but tell the women who have
misconducted themselves to come to me.”

Euryclea left the cloister to tell the women, and make them come to
Ulysses; in the meantime he called Telemachus, the stockman, and the
swineherd. “Begin,” said he, “to remove the dead, and make the women
help you. Then, get sponges and clean water to swill down the tables
and seats. When you have thoroughly cleansed the whole cloisters, take
the women into the space between the domed room and the wall of the
outer court, and run them through with your swords till they are quite
dead, and have forgotten all about love and the way in which they used
to lie in secret with the suitors.”

On this the women came down in a body, weeping and wailing bitterly.
First they carried the dead bodies out, and propped them up against one
another in the gatehouse. Ulysses ordered them about and made them do
their work quickly, so they had to carry the bodies out. When they had
done this, they cleaned all the tables and seats with sponges and
water, while Telemachus and the two others shovelled up the blood and
dirt from the ground, and the women carried it all away and put it out
of doors. Then when they had made the whole place quite clean and
orderly, they took the women out and hemmed them in the narrow space
between the wall of the domed room and that of the yard, so that they
could not get away: and Telemachus said to the other two, “I shall not
let these women die a clean death, for they were insolent to me and my
mother, and used to sleep with the suitors.”

So saying he made a ship’s cable fast to one of the bearing-posts that
supported the roof of the domed room, and secured it all around the
building, at a good height, lest any of the women’s feet should touch
the ground; and as thrushes or doves beat against a net that has been
set for them in a thicket just as they were getting to their nest, and
a terrible fate awaits them, even so did the women have to put their
heads in nooses one after the other and die most miserably.178 Their
feet moved convulsively for a while, but not for very long.

As for Melanthius, they took him through the cloister into the inner
court. There they cut off his nose and his ears; they drew out his
vitals and gave them to the dogs raw, and then in their fury they cut
off his hands and his feet.

When they had done this they washed their hands and feet and went back
into the house, for all was now over; and Ulysses said to the dear old
nurse Euryclea, “Bring me sulphur, which cleanses all pollution, and
fetch fire also that I may burn it, and purify the cloisters. Go,
moreover, and tell Penelope to come here with her attendants, and also
all the maidservants that are in the house.”

“All that you have said is true,” answered Euryclea, “but let me bring
you some clean clothes—a shirt and cloak. Do not keep these rags on
your back any longer. It is not right.”

“First light me a fire,” replied Ulysses.

She brought the fire and sulphur, as he had bidden her, and Ulysses
thoroughly purified the cloisters and both the inner and outer courts.
Then she went inside to call the women and tell them what had happened;
whereon they came from their apartment with torches in their hands, and
pressed round Ulysses to embrace him, kissing his head and shoulders
and taking hold of his hands. It made him feel as if he should like to
weep, for he remembered every one of them.179

BOOK XXIII


PENELOPE EVENTUALLY RECOGNISES HER HUSBAND—EARLY IN THE MORNING
ULYSSES, TELEMACHUS, EUMAEUS, AND PHILOETIUS LEAVE THE TOWN.


Euryclea now went upstairs laughing to tell her mistress that her dear
husband had come home. Her aged knees became young again and her feet
were nimble for joy as she went up to her mistress and bent over her
head to speak to her. “Wake up Penelope, my dear child,” she exclaimed,
“and see with your own eyes something that you have been wanting this
long time past. Ulysses has at last indeed come home again, and has
killed the suitors who were giving so much trouble in his house, eating
up his estate and ill treating his son.”

“My good nurse,” answered Penelope, “you must be mad. The gods
sometimes send some very sensible people out of their minds, and make
foolish people become sensible. This is what they must have been doing
to you; for you always used to be a reasonable person. Why should you
thus mock me when I have trouble enough already—talking such nonsense,
and waking me up out of a sweet sleep that had taken possession of my
eyes and closed them? I have never slept so soundly from the day my
poor husband went to that city with the ill-omened name. Go back again
into the women’s room; if it had been any one else who had woke me up
to bring me such absurd news I should have sent her away with a severe
scolding. As it is your age shall protect you.”

“My dear child,” answered Euryclea, “I am not mocking you. It is quite
true as I tell you that Ulysses is come home again. He was the stranger
whom they all kept on treating so badly in the cloister. Telemachus
knew all the time that he was come back, but kept his father’s secret
that he might have his revenge on all these wicked people.”

Then Penelope sprang up from her couch, threw her arms round Euryclea,
and wept for joy. “But my dear nurse,” said she, “explain this to me;
if he has really come home as you say, how did he manage to overcome
the wicked suitors single handed, seeing what a number of them there
always were?”

“I was not there,” answered Euryclea, “and do not know; I only heard
them groaning while they were being killed. We sat crouching and
huddled up in a corner of the women’s room with the doors closed, till
your son came to fetch me because his father sent him. Then I found
Ulysses standing over the corpses that were lying on the ground all
round him, one on top of the other. You would have enjoyed it if you
could have seen him standing there all bespattered with blood and
filth, and looking just like a lion. But the corpses are now all piled
up in the gatehouse that is in the outer court, and Ulysses has lit a
great fire to purify the house with sulphur. He has sent me to call
you, so come with me that you may both be happy together after all; for
now at last the desire of your heart has been fulfilled; your husband
is come home to find both wife and son alive and well, and to take his
revenge in his own house on the suitors who behaved so badly to him.”

“My dear nurse,” said Penelope, “do not exult too confidently over all
this. You know how delighted every one would be to see Ulysses come
home—more particularly myself, and the son who has been born to both of
us; but what you tell me cannot be really true. It is some god who is
angry with the suitors for their great wickedness, and has made an end
of them; for they respected no man in the whole world, neither rich nor
poor, who came near them, and they have come to a bad end in
consequence of their iniquity; Ulysses is dead far away from the
Achaean land; he will never return home again.”

Then nurse Euryclea said, “My child, what are you talking about? but
you were all hard of belief and have made up your mind that your
husband is never coming, although he is in the house and by his own
fire side at this very moment. Besides I can give you another proof;
when I was washing him I perceived the scar which the wild boar gave
him, and I wanted to tell you about it, but in his wisdom he would not
let me, and clapped his hands over my mouth; so come with me and I will
make this bargain with you—if I am deceiving you, you may have me
killed by the most cruel death you can think of.”

“My dear nurse,” said Penelope, “however wise you may be you can hardly
fathom the counsels of the gods. Nevertheless, we will go in search of
my son, that I may see the corpses of the suitors, and the man who has
killed them.”

On this she came down from her upper room, and while doing so she
considered whether she should keep at a distance from her husband and
question him, or whether she should at once go up to him and embrace
him. When, however, she had crossed the stone floor of the cloister,
she sat down opposite Ulysses by the fire, against the wall at right
angles180 [to that by which she had entered], while Ulysses sat near
one of the bearing-posts, looking upon the ground, and waiting to see
what his brave wife would say to him when she saw him. For a long time
she sat silent and as one lost in amazement. At one moment she looked
him full in the face, but then again directly, she was misled by his
shabby clothes and failed to recognise him,181 till Telemachus began to
reproach her and said:

“Mother—but you are so hard that I cannot call you by such a name—why
do you keep away from my father in this way? Why do you not sit by his
side and begin talking to him and asking him questions? No other woman
could bear to keep away from her husband when he had come back to her
after twenty years of absence, and after having gone through so much;
but your heart always was as hard as a stone.”

Penelope answered, “My son, I am so lost in astonishment that I can
find no words in which either to ask questions or to answer them. I
cannot even look him straight in the face. Still, if he really is
Ulysses come back to his own home again, we shall get to understand one
another better by and by, for there are tokens with which we two are
alone acquainted, and which are hidden from all others.”

Ulysses smiled at this, and said to Telemachus, “Let your mother put me
to any proof she likes; she will make up her mind about it presently.
She rejects me for the moment and believes me to be somebody else,
because I am covered with dirt and have such bad clothes on; let us,
however, consider what we had better do next. When one man has killed
another—even though he was not one who would leave many friends to take
up his quarrel—the man who has killed him must still say good bye to
his friends and fly the country; whereas we have been killing the stay
of a whole town, and all the picked youth of Ithaca. I would have you
consider this matter.”

“Look to it yourself, father,” answered Telemachus, “for they say you
are the wisest counsellor in the world, and that there is no other
mortal man who can compare with you. We will follow you with right good
will, nor shall you find us fail you in so far as our strength holds
out.”

“I will say what I think will be best,” answered Ulysses. “First wash
and put your shirts on; tell the maids also to go to their own room and
dress; Phemius shall then strike up a dance tune on his lyre, so that
if people outside hear, or any of the neighbours, or some one going
along the street happens to notice it, they may think there is a
wedding in the house, and no rumours about the death of the suitors
will get about in the town, before we can escape to the woods upon my
own land. Once there, we will settle which of the courses heaven
vouchsafes us shall seem wisest.”

Thus did he speak, and they did even as he had said. First they washed
and put their shirts on, while the women got ready. Then Phemius took
his lyre and set them all longing for sweet song and stately dance. The
house re-echoed with the sound of men and women dancing, and the people
outside said, “I suppose the queen has been getting married at last.
She ought to be ashamed of herself for not continuing to protect her
husband’s property until he comes home.”182

This was what they said, but they did not know what it was that had
been happening. The upper servant Eurynome washed and anointed Ulysses
in his own house and gave him a shirt and cloak, while Minerva made him
look taller and stronger than before; she also made the hair grow thick
on the top of his head, and flow down in curls like hyacinth blossoms;
she glorified him about the head and shoulders just as a skilful
workman who has studied art of all kinds under Vulcan or Minerva—and
his work is full of beauty—enriches a piece of silver plate by gilding
it. He came from the bath looking like one of the immortals, and sat
down opposite his wife on the seat he had left. “My dear,” said he,
“heaven has endowed you with a heart more unyielding than woman ever
yet had. No other woman could bear to keep away from her husband when
he had come back to her after twenty years of absence, and after having
gone through so much. But come, nurse, get a bed ready for me; I will
sleep alone, for this woman has a heart as hard as iron.”

“My dear,” answered Penelope, “I have no wish to set myself up, nor to
depreciate you; but I am not struck by your appearance, for I very well
remember what kind of a man you were when you set sail from Ithaca.
Nevertheless, Euryclea, take his bed outside the bed chamber that he
himself built. Bring the bed outside this room, and put bedding upon it
with fleeces, good coverlets, and blankets.”

She said this to try him, but Ulysses was very angry and said, “Wife, I
am much displeased at what you have just been saying. Who has been
taking my bed from the place in which I left it? He must have found it
a hard task, no matter how skilled a workman he was, unless some god
came and helped him to shift it. There is no man living, however strong
and in his prime, who could move it from its place, for it is a
marvellous curiosity which I made with my very own hands. There was a
young olive growing within the precincts of the house, in full vigour,
and about as thick as a bearing-post. I built my room round this with
strong walls of stone and a roof to cover them, and I made the doors
strong and well-fitting. Then I cut off the top boughs of the olive
tree and left the stump standing. This I dressed roughly from the root
upwards and then worked with carpenter’s tools well and skilfully,
straightening my work by drawing a line on the wood, and making it into
a bed-prop. I then bored a hole down the middle, and made it the
centre-post of my bed, at which I worked till I had finished it,
inlaying it with gold and silver; after this I stretched a hide of
crimson leather from one side of it to the other. So you see I know all
about it, and I desire to learn whether it is still there, or whether
any one has been removing it by cutting down the olive tree at its
roots.”

When she heard the sure proofs Ulysses now gave her, she fairly broke
down. She flew weeping to his side, flung her arms about his neck, and
kissed him. “Do not be angry with me Ulysses,” she cried, “you, who are
the wisest of mankind. We have suffered, both of us. Heaven has denied
us the happiness of spending our youth, and of growing old, together;
do not then be aggrieved or take it amiss that I did not embrace you
thus as soon as I saw you. I have been shuddering all the time through
fear that someone might come here and deceive me with a lying story;
for there are many very wicked people going about. Jove’s daughter
Helen would never have yielded herself to a man from a foreign country,
if she had known that the sons of Achaeans would come after her and
bring her back. Heaven put it in her heart to do wrong, and she gave no
thought to that sin, which has been the source of all our sorrows. Now,
however, that you have convinced me by showing that you know all about
our bed (which no human being has ever seen but you and I and a single
maidservant, the daughter of Actor, who was given me by my father on my
marriage, and who keeps the doors of our room) hard of belief though I
have been I can mistrust no longer.”

Then Ulysses in his turn melted, and wept as he clasped his dear and
faithful wife to his bosom. As the sight of land is welcome to men who
are swimming towards the shore, when Neptune has wrecked their ship
with the fury of his winds and waves; a few alone reach the land, and
these, covered with brine, are thankful when they find themselves on
firm ground and out of danger—even so was her husband welcome to her as
she looked upon him, and she could not tear her two fair arms from
about his neck. Indeed they would have gone on indulging their sorrow
till rosy-fingered morn appeared, had not Minerva determined otherwise,
and held night back in the far west, while she would not suffer Dawn to
leave Oceanus, nor to yoke the two steeds Lampus and Phaethon that bear
her onward to break the day upon mankind.

At last, however, Ulysses said, “Wife, we have not yet reached the end
of our troubles. I have an unknown amount of toil still to undergo. It
is long and difficult, but I must go through with it, for thus the
shade of Teiresias prophesied concerning me, on the day when I went
down into Hades to ask about my return and that of my companions. But
now let us go to bed, that we may lie down and enjoy the blessed boon
of sleep.”

“You shall go to bed as soon as you please,” replied Penelope, “now
that the gods have sent you home to your own good house and to your
country. But as heaven has put it in your mind to speak of it, tell me
about the task that lies before you. I shall have to hear about it
later, so it is better that I should be told at once.”

“My dear,” answered Ulysses, “why should you press me to tell you?
Still, I will not conceal it from you, though you will not like it. I
do not like it myself, for Teiresias bade me travel far and wide,
carrying an oar, till I came to a country where the people have never
heard of the sea, and do not even mix salt with their food. They know
nothing about ships, nor oars that are as the wings of a ship. He gave
me this certain token which I will not hide from you. He said that a
wayfarer should meet me and ask me whether it was a winnowing shovel
that I had on my shoulder. On this, I was to fix my oar in the ground
and sacrifice a ram, a bull, and a boar to Neptune; after which I was
to go home and offer hecatombs to all the gods in heaven, one after the
other. As for myself, he said that death should come to me from the
sea, and that my life should ebb away very gently when I was full of
years and peace of mind, and my people should bless me. All this, he
said, should surely come to pass.”

And Penelope said, “If the gods are going to vouchsafe you a happier
time in your old age, you may hope then to have some respite from
misfortune.”

Thus did they converse. Meanwhile Eurynome and the nurse took torches
and made the bed ready with soft coverlets; as soon as they had laid
them, the nurse went back into the house to go to her rest, leaving the
bed chamber woman Eurynome183 to show Ulysses and Penelope to bed by
torch light. When she had conducted them to their room she went back,
and they then came joyfully to the rites of their own old bed.
Telemachus, Philoetius, and the swineherd now left off dancing, and
made the women leave off also. They then laid themselves down to sleep
in the cloisters.

When Ulysses and Penelope had had their fill of love they fell talking
with one another. She told him how much she had had to bear in seeing
the house filled with a crowd of wicked suitors who had killed so many
sheep and oxen on her account, and had drunk so many casks of wine.
Ulysses in his turn told her what he had suffered, and how much trouble
he had himself given to other people. He told her everything, and she
was so delighted to listen that she never went to sleep till he had
ended his whole story.

He began with his victory over the Cicons, and how he thence reached
the fertile land of the Lotus-eaters. He told her all about the Cyclops
and how he had punished him for having so ruthlessly eaten his brave
comrades; how he then went on to Aeolus, who received him hospitably
and furthered him on his way, but even so he was not to reach home, for
to his great grief a hurricane carried him out to sea again; how he
went on to the Laestrygonian city Telepylos, where the people destroyed
all his ships with their crews, save himself and his own ship only.
Then he told of cunning Circe and her craft, and how he sailed to the
chill house of Hades, to consult the ghost of the Theban prophet
Teiresias, and how he saw his old comrades in arms, and his mother who
bore him and brought him up when he was a child; how he then heard the
wondrous singing of the Sirens, and went on to the wandering rocks and
terrible Charybdis and to Scylla, whom no man had ever yet passed in
safety; how his men then ate the cattle of the sun-god, and how Jove
therefore struck the ship with his thunderbolts, so that all his men
perished together, himself alone being left alive; how at last he
reached the Ogygian island and the nymph Calypso, who kept him there in
a cave, and fed him, and wanted him to marry her, in which case she
intended making him immortal so that he should never grow old, but she
could not persuade him to let her do so; and how after much suffering
he had found his way to the Phaeacians, who had treated him as though
he had been a god, and sent him back in a ship to his own country after
having given him gold, bronze, and raiment in great abundance. This was
the last thing about which he told her, for here a deep sleep took hold
upon him and eased the burden of his sorrows.

Then Minerva bethought her of another matter. When she deemed that
Ulysses had had both of his wife and of repose, she bade gold-enthroned
Dawn rise out of Oceanus that she might shed light upon mankind. On
this, Ulysses rose from his comfortable bed and said to Penelope,
“Wife, we have both of us had our full share of troubles, you, here, in
lamenting my absence, and I in being prevented from getting home though
I was longing all the time to do so. Now, however, that we have at last
come together, take care of the property that is in the house. As for
the sheep and goats which the wicked suitors have eaten, I will take
many myself by force from other people, and will compel the Achaeans to
make good the rest till they shall have filled all my yards. I am now
going to the wooded lands out in the country to see my father who has
so long been grieved on my account, and to yourself I will give these
instructions, though you have little need of them. At sunrise it will
at once get abroad that I have been killing the suitors; go upstairs,
therefore,184 and stay there with your women. See nobody and ask no
questions.”185

As he spoke he girded on his armour. Then he roused Telemachus,
Philoetius, and Eumaeus, and told them all to put on their armour also.
This they did, and armed themselves. When they had done so, they opened
the gates and sallied forth, Ulysses leading the way. It was now
daylight, but Minerva nevertheless concealed them in darkness and led
them quickly out of the town.

BOOK XXIV


THE GHOSTS OF THE SUITORS IN HADES—ULYSSES AND HIS MEN GO TO THE HOUSE
OF LAERTES—THE PEOPLE OF ITHACA COME OUT TO ATTACK ULYSSES, BUT MINERVA
CONCLUDES A PEACE.


Then Mercury of Cyllene summoned the ghosts of the suitors, and in his
hand he held the fair golden wand with which he seals men’s eyes in
sleep or wakes them just as he pleases; with this he roused the ghosts
and led them, while they followed whining and gibbering behind him. As
bats fly squealing in the hollow of some great cave, when one of them
has fallen out of the cluster in which they hang, even so did the
ghosts whine and squeal as Mercury the healer of sorrow led them down
into the dark abode of death. When they had passed the waters of
Oceanus and the rock Leucas, they came to the gates of the sun and the
land of dreams, whereon they reached the meadow of asphodel where dwell
the souls and shadows of them that can labour no more.

Here they found the ghost of Achilles son of Peleus, with those of
Patroclus, Antilochus, and Ajax, who was the finest and handsomest man
of all the Danaans after the son of Peleus himself.

They gathered round the ghost of the son of Peleus, and the ghost of
Agamemnon joined them, sorrowing bitterly. Round him were gathered also
the ghosts of those who had perished with him in the house of
Aegisthus; and the ghost of Achilles spoke first.

“Son of Atreus,” it said, “we used to say that Jove had loved you
better from first to last than any other hero, for you were captain
over many and brave men, when we were all fighting together before
Troy; yet the hand of death, which no mortal can escape, was laid upon
you all too early. Better for you had you fallen at Troy in the hey-day
of your renown, for the Achaeans would have built a mound over your
ashes, and your son would have been heir to your good name, whereas it
has now been your lot to come to a most miserable end.”

“Happy son of Peleus,” answered the ghost of Agamemnon, “for having
died at Troy far from Argos, while the bravest of the Trojans and the
Achaeans fell round you fighting for your body. There you lay in the
whirling clouds of dust, all huge and hugely, heedless now of your
chivalry. We fought the whole of the livelong day, nor should we ever
have left off if Jove had not sent a hurricane to stay us. Then, when
we had borne you to the ships out of the fray, we laid you on your bed
and cleansed your fair skin with warm water and with ointments. The
Danaans tore their hair and wept bitterly round about you. Your mother,
when she heard, came with her immortal nymphs from out of the sea, and
the sound of a great wailing went forth over the waters so that the
Achaeans quaked for fear. They would have fled panic-stricken to their
ships had not wise old Nestor whose counsel was ever truest checked
them saying, ‘Hold, Argives, fly not sons of the Achaeans, this is his
mother coming from the sea with her immortal nymphs to view the body of
her son.’

“Thus he spoke, and the Achaeans feared no more. The daughters of the
old man of the sea stood round you weeping bitterly, and clothed you in
immortal raiment. The nine muses also came and lifted up their sweet
voices in lament—calling and answering one another; there was not an
Argive but wept for pity of the dirge they chaunted. Days and nights
seven and ten we mourned you, mortals and immortals, but on the
eighteenth day we gave you to the flames, and many a fat sheep with
many an ox did we slay in sacrifice around you. You were burnt in
raiment of the gods, with rich resins and with honey, while heroes,
horse and foot, clashed their armour round the pile as you were
burning, with the tramp as of a great multitude. But when the flames of
heaven had done their work, we gathered your white bones at daybreak
and laid them in ointments and in pure wine. Your mother brought us a
golden vase to hold them—gift of Bacchus, and work of Vulcan himself;
in this we mingled your bleached bones with those of Patroclus who had
gone before you, and separate we enclosed also those of Antilochus, who
had been closer to you than any other of your comrades now that
Patroclus was no more.

“Over these the host of the Argives built a noble tomb, on a point
jutting out over the open Hellespont, that it might be seen from far
out upon the sea by those now living and by them that shall be born
hereafter. Your mother begged prizes from the gods, and offered them to
be contended for by the noblest of the Achaeans. You must have been
present at the funeral of many a hero, when the young men gird
themselves and make ready to contend for prizes on the death of some
great chieftain, but you never saw such prizes as silver-footed Thetis
offered in your honour; for the gods loved you well. Thus even in death
your fame, Achilles, has not been lost, and your name lives evermore
among all mankind. But as for me, what solace had I when the days of my
fighting were done? For Jove willed my destruction on my return, by the
hands of Aegisthus and those of my wicked wife.”

Thus did they converse, and presently Mercury came up to them with the
ghosts of the suitors who had been killed by Ulysses. The ghosts of
Agamemnon and Achilles were astonished at seeing them, and went up to
them at once. The ghost of Agamemnon recognised Amphimedon son of
Melaneus, who lived in Ithaca and had been his host, so it began to
talk to him.

“Amphimedon,” it said, “what has happened to all you fine young men—all
of an age too—that you are come down here under the ground? One could
pick no finer body of men from any city. Did Neptune raise his winds
and waves against you when you were at sea, or did your enemies make an
end of you on the mainland when you were cattle-lifting or
sheep-stealing, or while fighting in defence of their wives and city?
Answer my question, for I have been your guest. Do you not remember how
I came to your house with Menelaus, to persuade Ulysses to join us with
his ships against Troy? It was a whole month ere we could resume our
voyage, for we had hard work to persuade Ulysses to come with us.”

And the ghost of Amphimedon answered, “Agamemnon, son of Atreus, king
of men, I remember everything that you have said, and will tell you
fully and accurately about the way in which our end was brought about.
Ulysses had been long gone, and we were courting his wife, who did not
say point blank that she would not marry, nor yet bring matters to an
end, for she meant to compass our destruction: this, then, was the
trick she played us. She set up a great tambour frame in her room and
began to work on an enormous piece of fine needlework. ‘Sweethearts,’
said she, ‘Ulysses is indeed dead, still, do not press me to marry
again immediately; wait—for I would not have my skill in needlework
perish unrecorded—till I have completed a pall for the hero Laertes,
against the time when death shall take him. He is very rich, and the
women of the place will talk if he is laid out without a pall.’ This is
what she said, and we assented; whereupon we could see her working upon
her great web all day long, but at night she would unpick the stitches
again by torchlight. She fooled us in this way for three years without
our finding it out, but as time wore on and she was now in her fourth
year, in the waning of moons and many days had been accomplished, one
of her maids who knew what she was doing told us, and we caught her in
the act of undoing her work, so she had to finish it whether she would
or no; and when she showed us the robe she had made, after she had had
it washed,186 its splendour was as that of the sun or moon.

“Then some malicious god conveyed Ulysses to the upland farm where his
swineherd lives. Thither presently came also his son, returning from a
voyage to Pylos, and the two came to the town when they had hatched
their plot for our destruction. Telemachus came first, and then after
him, accompanied by the swineherd, came Ulysses, clad in rags and
leaning on a staff as though he were some miserable old beggar. He came
so unexpectedly that none of us knew him, not even the older ones among
us, and we reviled him and threw things at him. He endured both being
struck and insulted without a word, though he was in his own house; but
when the will of Aegis-bearing Jove inspired him, he and Telemachus
took the armour and hid it in an inner chamber, bolting the doors
behind them. Then he cunningly made his wife offer his bow and a
quantity of iron to be contended for by us ill-fated suitors; and this
was the beginning of our end, for not one of us could string the
bow—nor nearly do so. When it was about to reach the hands of Ulysses,
we all of us shouted out that it should not be given him, no matter
what he might say, but Telemachus insisted on his having it. When he
had got it in his hands he strung it with ease and sent his arrow
through the iron. Then he stood on the floor of the cloister and poured
his arrows on the ground, glaring fiercely about him. First he killed
Antinous, and then, aiming straight before him, he let fly his deadly
darts and they fell thick on one another. It was plain that some one of
the gods was helping them, for they fell upon us with might and main
throughout the cloisters, and there was a hideous sound of groaning as
our brains were being battered in, and the ground seethed with our
blood. This, Agamemnon, is how we came by our end, and our bodies are
lying still uncared for in the house of Ulysses, for our friends at
home do not yet know what has happened, so that they cannot lay us out
and wash the black blood from our wounds, making moan over us according
to the offices due to the departed.”

“Happy Ulysses, son of Laertes,” replied the ghost of Agamemnon, “you
are indeed blessed in the possession of a wife endowed with such rare
excellence of understanding, and so faithful to her wedded lord as
Penelope the daughter of Icarius. The fame, therefore, of her virtue
shall never die, and the immortals shall compose a song that shall be
welcome to all mankind in honour of the constancy of Penelope. How far
otherwise was the wickedness of the daughter of Tyndareus who killed
her lawful husband; her song shall be hateful among men, for she has
brought disgrace on all womankind even on the good ones.”

Thus did they converse in the house of Hades deep down within the
bowels of the earth. Meanwhile Ulysses and the others passed out of the
town and soon reached the fair and well-tilled farm of Laertes, which
he had reclaimed with infinite labour. Here was his house, with a
lean-to running all round it, where the slaves who worked for him slept
and sat and ate, while inside the house there was an old Sicel woman,
who looked after him in this his country-farm. When Ulysses got there,
he said to his son and to the other two:

“Go to the house, and kill the best pig that you can find for dinner.
Meanwhile I want to see whether my father will know me, or fail to
recognise me after so long an absence.”

He then took off his armour and gave it to Eumaeus and Philoetius, who
went straight on to the house, while he turned off into the vineyard to
make trial of his father. As he went down into the great orchard, he
did not see Dolius, nor any of his sons nor of the other bondsmen, for
they were all gathering thorns to make a fence for the vineyard, at the
place where the old man had told them; he therefore found his father
alone, hoeing a vine. He had on a dirty old shirt, patched and very
shabby; his legs were bound round with thongs of oxhide to save him
from the brambles, and he also wore sleeves of leather; he had a goat
skin cap on his head, and was looking very woe-begone. When Ulysses saw
him so worn, so old and full of sorrow, he stood still under a tall
pear tree and began to weep. He doubted whether to embrace him, kiss
him, and tell him all about his having come home, or whether he should
first question him and see what he would say. In the end he deemed it
best to be crafty with him, so in this mind he went up to his father,
who was bending down and digging about a plant.

“I see, sir,” said Ulysses, “that you are an excellent gardener—what
pains you take with it, to be sure. There is not a single plant, not a
fig tree, vine, olive, pear, nor flower bed, but bears the trace of
your attention. I trust, however, that you will not be offended if I
say that you take better care of your garden than of yourself. You are
old, unsavoury, and very meanly clad. It cannot be because you are idle
that your master takes such poor care of you, indeed your face and
figure have nothing of the slave about them, and proclaim you of noble
birth. I should have said that you were one of those who should wash
well, eat well, and lie soft at night as old men have a right to do;
but tell me, and tell me true, whose bondman are you, and in whose
garden are you working? Tell me also about another matter. Is this
place that I have come to really Ithaca? I met a man just now who said
so, but he was a dull fellow, and had not the patience to hear my story
out when I was asking him about an old friend of mine, whether he was
still living, or was already dead and in the house of Hades. Believe me
when I tell you that this man came to my house once when I was in my
own country and never yet did any stranger come to me whom I liked
better. He said that his family came from Ithaca and that his father
was Laertes, son of Arceisius. I received him hospitably, making him
welcome to all the abundance of my house, and when he went away I gave
him all customary presents. I gave him seven talents of fine gold, and
a cup of solid silver with flowers chased upon it. I gave him twelve
light cloaks, and as many pieces of tapestry; I also gave him twelve
cloaks of single fold, twelve rugs, twelve fair mantles, and an equal
number of shirts. To all this I added four good looking women skilled
in all useful arts, and I let him take his choice.”

His father shed tears and answered, “Sir, you have indeed come to the
country that you have named, but it is fallen into the hands of wicked
people. All this wealth of presents has been given to no purpose. If
you could have found your friend here alive in Ithaca, he would have
entertained you hospitably and would have requited your presents amply
when you left him—as would have been only right considering what you
had already given him. But tell me, and tell me true, how many years is
it since you entertained this guest—my unhappy son, as ever was? Alas!
He has perished far from his own country; the fishes of the sea have
eaten him, or he has fallen a prey to the birds and wild beasts of some
continent. Neither his mother, nor I his father, who were his parents,
could throw our arms about him and wrap him in his shroud, nor could
his excellent and richly dowered wife Penelope bewail her husband as
was natural upon his death bed, and close his eyes according to the
offices due to the departed. But now, tell me truly for I want to know.
Who and whence are you—tell me of your town and parents? Where is the
ship lying that has brought you and your men to Ithaca? Or were you a
passenger on some other man’s ship, and those who brought you here have
gone on their way and left you?”

“I will tell you everything,” answered Ulysses, “quite truly. I come
from Alybas, where I have a fine house. I am son of king Apheidas, who
is the son of Polypemon. My own name is Eperitus; heaven drove me off
my course as I was leaving Sicania, and I have been carried here
against my will. As for my ship it is lying over yonder, off the open
country outside the town, and this is the fifth year since Ulysses left
my country. Poor fellow, yet the omens were good for him when he left
me. The birds all flew on our right hands, and both he and I rejoiced
to see them as we parted, for we had every hope that we should have
another friendly meeting and exchange presents.”

A dark cloud of sorrow fell upon Laertes as he listened. He filled both
hands with the dust from off the ground and poured it over his grey
head, groaning heavily as he did so. The heart of Ulysses was touched,
and his nostrils quivered as he looked upon his father; then he sprang
towards him, flung his arms about him and kissed him, saying, “I am he,
father, about whom you are asking—I have returned after having been
away for twenty years. But cease your sighing and lamentation—we have
no time to lose, for I should tell you that I have been killing the
suitors in my house, to punish them for their insolence and crimes.”

“If you really are my son Ulysses,” replied Laertes, “and have come
back again, you must give me such manifest proof of your identity as
shall convince me.”

“First observe this scar,” answered Ulysses, “which I got from a boar’s
tusk when I was hunting on Mt. Parnassus. You and my mother had sent me
to Autolycus, my mother’s father, to receive the presents which when he
was over here he had promised to give me. Furthermore I will point out
to you the trees in the vineyard which you gave me, and I asked you all
about them as I followed you round the garden. We went over them all,
and you told me their names and what they all were. You gave me
thirteen pear trees, ten apple trees, and forty fig trees; you also
said you would give me fifty rows of vines; there was corn planted
between each row, and they yield grapes of every kind when the heat of
heaven has been laid heavy upon them.”

Laertes’ strength failed him when he heard the convincing proofs which
his son had given him. He threw his arms about him, and Ulysses had to
support him, or he would have gone off into a swoon; but as soon as he
came to, and was beginning to recover his senses, he said, “O father
Jove, then you gods are still in Olympus after all, if the suitors have
really been punished for their insolence and folly. Nevertheless, I am
much afraid that I shall have all the townspeople of Ithaca up here
directly, and they will be sending messengers everywhere throughout the
cities of the Cephallenians.”

Ulysses answered, “Take heart and do not trouble yourself about that,
but let us go into the house hard by your garden. I have already told
Telemachus, Philoetius, and Eumaeus to go on there and get dinner ready
as soon as possible.”

Thus conversing the two made their way towards the house. When they got
there they found Telemachus with the stockman and the swineherd cutting
up meat and mixing wine with water. Then the old Sicel woman took
Laertes inside and washed him and anointed him with oil. She put him on
a good cloak, and Minerva came up to him and gave him a more imposing
presence, making him taller and stouter than before. When he came back
his son was surprised to see him looking so like an immortal, and said
to him, “My dear father, some one of the gods has been making you much
taller and better-looking.”

Laertes answered, “Would, by Father Jove, Minerva, and Apollo, that I
were the man I was when I ruled among the Cephallenians, and took
Nericum, that strong fortress on the foreland. If I were still what I
then was and had been in our house yesterday with my armour on, I
should have been able to stand by you and help you against the suitors.
I should have killed a great many of them, and you would have rejoiced
to see it.”

Thus did they converse; but the others, when they had finished their
work and the feast was ready, left off working, and took each his
proper place on the benches and seats. Then they began eating; by and
by old Dolius and his sons left their work and came up, for their
mother, the Sicel woman who looked after Laertes now that he was
growing old, had been to fetch them. When they saw Ulysses and were
certain it was he, they stood there lost in astonishment; but Ulysses
scolded them good naturedly and said, “Sit down to your dinner, old
man, and never mind about your surprise; we have been wanting to begin
for some time and have been waiting for you.”

Then Dolius put out both his hands and went up to Ulysses. “Sir,” said
he, seizing his master’s hand and kissing it at the wrist, “we have
long been wishing you home: and now heaven has restored you to us after
we had given up hoping. All hail, therefore, and may the gods prosper
you.187 But tell me, does Penelope already know of your return, or
shall we send some one to tell her?”

“Old man,” answered Ulysses, “she knows already, so you need not
trouble about that.” On this he took his seat, and the sons of Dolius
gathered round Ulysses to give him greeting and embrace him one after
the other; then they took their seats in due order near Dolius their
father.

While they were thus busy getting their dinner ready, Rumour went round
the town, and noised abroad the terrible fate that had befallen the
suitors; as soon, therefore, as the people heard of it they gathered
from every quarter, groaning and hooting before the house of Ulysses.
They took the dead away, buried every man his own, and put the bodies
of those who came from elsewhere on board the fishing vessels, for the
fishermen to take each of them to his own place. They then met angrily
in the place of assembly, and when they were got together Eupeithes
rose to speak. He was overwhelmed with grief for the death of his son
Antinous, who had been the first man killed by Ulysses, so he said,
weeping bitterly, “My friends, this man has done the Achaeans great
wrong. He took many of our best men away with him in his fleet, and he
has lost both ships and men; now, moreover, on his return he has been
killing all the foremost men among the Cephallenians. Let us be up and
doing before he can get away to Pylos or to Elis where the Epeans rule,
or we shall be ashamed of ourselves for ever afterwards. It will be an
everlasting disgrace to us if we do not avenge the murder of our sons
and brothers. For my own part I should have no more pleasure in life,
but had rather die at once. Let us be up, then, and after them, before
they can cross over to the main land.”

He wept as he spoke and every one pitied him. But Medon and the bard
Phemius had now woke up, and came to them from the house of Ulysses.
Every one was astonished at seeing them, but they stood in the middle
of the assembly, and Medon said, “Hear me, men of Ithaca. Ulysses did
not do these things against the will of heaven. I myself saw an
immortal god take the form of Mentor and stand beside him. This god
appeared, now in front of him encouraging him, and now going furiously
about the court and attacking the suitors whereon they fell thick on
one another.”

On this pale fear laid hold of them, and old Halitherses, son of
Mastor, rose to speak, for he was the only man among them who knew both
past and future; so he spoke to them plainly and in all honesty,
saying,

“Men of Ithaca, it is all your own fault that things have turned out as
they have; you would not listen to me, nor yet to Mentor, when we bade
you check the folly of your sons who were doing much wrong in the
wantonness of their hearts—wasting the substance and dishonouring the
wife of a chieftain who they thought would not return. Now, however,
let it be as I say, and do as I tell you. Do not go out against
Ulysses, or you may find that you have been drawing down evil on your
own heads.”

This was what he said, and more than half raised a loud shout, and at
once left the assembly. But the rest stayed where they were, for the
speech of Halitherses displeased them, and they sided with Eupeithes;
they therefore hurried off for their armour, and when they had armed
themselves, they met together in front of the city, and Eupeithes led
them on in their folly. He thought he was going to avenge the murder of
his son, whereas in truth he was never to return, but was himself to
perish in his attempt.

Then Minerva said to Jove, “Father, son of Saturn, king of kings,
answer me this question—What do you propose to do? Will you set them
fighting still further, or will you make peace between them?”

And Jove answered, “My child, why should you ask me? Was it not by your
own arrangement that Ulysses came home and took his revenge upon the
suitors? Do whatever you like, but I will tell you what I think will be
most reasonable arrangement. Now that Ulysses is revenged, let them
swear to a solemn covenant, in virtue of which he shall continue to
rule, while we cause the others to forgive and forget the massacre of
their sons and brothers. Let them then all become friends as
heretofore, and let peace and plenty reign.”

This was what Minerva was already eager to bring about, so down she
darted from off the topmost summits of Olympus.

Now when Laertes and the others had done dinner, Ulysses began by
saying, “Some of you go out and see if they are not getting close up to
us.” So one of Dolius’s sons went as he was bid. Standing on the
threshold he could see them all quite near, and said to Ulysses, “Here
they are, let us put on our armour at once.”

They put on their armour as fast as they could—that is to say Ulysses,
his three men, and the six sons of Dolius. Laertes also and Dolius did
the same—warriors by necessity in spite of their grey hair. When they
had all put on their armour, they opened the gate and sallied forth,
Ulysses leading the way.

Then Jove’s daughter Minerva came up to them, having assumed the form
and voice of Mentor. Ulysses was glad when he saw her, and said to his
son Telemachus, “Telemachus, now that you are about to fight in an
engagement, which will show every man’s mettle, be sure not to disgrace
your ancestors, who were eminent for their strength and courage all the
world over.”

“You say truly, my dear father,” answered Telemachus, “and you shall
see, if you will, that I am in no mind to disgrace your family.”

Laertes was delighted when he heard this. “Good heavens,” he exclaimed,
“what a day I am enjoying: I do indeed rejoice at it. My son and
grandson are vying with one another in the matter of valour.”

On this Minerva came close up to him and said, “Son of Arceisius—-best
friend I have in the world—pray to the blue-eyed damsel, and to Jove
her father; then poise your spear and hurl it.”

As she spoke she infused fresh vigour into him, and when he had prayed
to her he poised his spear and hurled it. He hit Eupeithes’ helmet, and
the spear went right through it, for the helmet stayed it not, and his
armour rang rattling round him as he fell heavily to the ground.
Meantime Ulysses and his son fell upon the front line of the foe and
smote them with their swords and spears; indeed, they would have killed
every one of them, and prevented them from ever getting home again,
only Minerva raised her voice aloud, and made every one pause. “Men of
Ithaca,” she cried, “cease this dreadful war, and settle the matter at
once without further bloodshed.”

On this pale fear seized every one; they were so frightened that their
arms dropped from their hands and fell upon the ground at the sound of
the goddess’ voice, and they fled back to the city for their lives. But
Ulysses gave a great cry, and gathering himself together swooped down
like a soaring eagle. Then the son of Saturn sent a thunderbolt of fire
that fell just in front of Minerva, so she said to Ulysses, “Ulysses,
noble son of Laertes, stop this warful strife, or Jove will be angry
with you.”

Thus spoke Minerva, and Ulysses obeyed her gladly. Then Minerva assumed
the form and voice of Mentor, and presently made a covenant of peace
between the two contending parties.




FOOTNOTES:

[1] [ Black races are evidently known to the writer as stretching all
across Africa, one half looking West on to the Atlantic, and the other
East on to the Indian Ocean.]

[2] [ The original use of the footstool was probably less to rest the
feet than to keep them (especially when bare) from a floor which was
often wet and dirty.]

[3] [ The θρόνος or seat, is occasionally called “high,” as being
higher than the θρῆνυς or low footstool. It was probably no higher than
an ordinary chair is now, and seems to have had no back.]

[4] [ Temesa was on the West Coast of the toe of Italy, in what is now
the gulf of Sta Eufemia. It was famous in remote times for its copper
mines, which, however, were worked out when Strabo wrote.]

[5] [ i.e. “with a current in it”—see illustrations and map near the
end of bks. v. and vi. respectively.]

[6] [ Reading Νηρίτῳ for Νηίῳ, cf. “Od.” iii. 81 where the same mistake
is made, and xiii. 351 where the mountain is called Neritum, the same
place being intended both here and in book xiii.]

[7] [ It is never plausibly explained why Penelope cannot do this, and
from bk. ii. it is clear that she kept on deliberately encouraging the
suitors, though we are asked to believe that she was only fooling
them.]

[8] [ See note on “Od.” i. 365.]

[9] [ Middle Argos means the Peleponnese which, however, is never so
called in the “Iliad”. I presume “middle” means “middle between the two
Greek-speaking countries of Asia Minor and Sicily, with South Italy”;
for that parts of Sicily and also large parts, though not the whole of
South Italy, were inhabited by Greek-speaking races centuries before
the Dorian colonisations can hardly be doubted. The Sicians, and also
the Sicels, both of them probably spoke Greek.]

[10] [ cf. “Il.” vi. 490-495. In the “Iliad” it is “war,” not “speech,”
that is a man’s matter. It argues a certain hardness, or at any rate
dislike of the “Iliad” on the part of the writer of the “Odyssey,” that
she should have adopted Hector’s farewell to Andromache here, as
elsewhere in the poem, for a scene of such inferior pathos.]

[11] [ μέγαρα σκιοέντα The whole open court with the covered cloister
running round it was called μέγαρον, or μέγαρα, but the covered part
was distinguished by being called “shady” or “shadow-giving”. It was in
this part that the tables for the suitors were laid. The Fountain Court
at Hampton Court may serve as an illustration (save as regards the use
of arches instead of wooden supports and rafters) and the arrangement
is still common in Sicily. The usual translation “shadowy” or “dusky”
halls, gives a false idea of the scene.]

[12] [ The reader will note the extreme care which the writer takes to
make it clear that none of the suitors were allowed to sleep in
Ulysses’ house.]

[13] [ See Appendix; g, in plan of Ulysses’ house.]

[14] [ I imagine this passage to be a rejoinder to “Il.” xxiii. 702-705
in which a tripod is valued at twelve oxen, and a good useful maid of
all work at only four. The scrupulous regard of Laertes for his wife’s
feelings is of a piece with the extreme jealousy for the honour of
woman, which is manifest throughout the “Odyssey”.]

[15] [ χιτῶνα “The χιτών, or _tunica_, was a shirt or shift, and served
as the chief under garment of the Greeks and Romans, whether men or
women.” Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, under
“Tunica”.]

[16] [ Doors fastened to all intents and purposes as here described may
be seen in the older houses at Trapani. There is a slot on the outer
side of the door by means of which a person who has left the room can
shoot the bolt. My bedroom at the Albergo Centrale was fastened in this
way.]

[17] [ πύματον δ’ ὡπλίσσατο δόρπον. So we vulgarly say “had cooked his
goose,” or “had settled his hash.” Ægyptius cannot of course know of
the fate Antiphus had met with, for there had as yet been no news of or
from Ulysses.]

[18] [ “Il.” xxii. 416. σχέσθε φίλοι, καὶ μ’ οἷον ἐάσατε...... The
authoress has bungled by borrowing these words verbatim from the
“Iliad”, without prefixing the necessary “do not,” which I have
supplied.]

[19] [ i.e. you have money, and could pay when I got judgment, whereas
the suitors are men of straw.]

[20] [ cf. “Il.” ii. 76. ἦ τοι ὄ γ’ ὦς εὶπὼν κατ’ ἄρ’ ἔζετο τοῖσι δ’
ἀνέστη
Νέστωρ, ὄς ῥα.......................................
ὄ σφιν ἐὺ φρονέων ἀγορήσατο καὶ μετέειπεν.
The Odyssean passage runs—
“ἦ τοι ὄ γ’ ὦς εὶπὼν κατ’ ἄρ’ ἔζετο τοῖσι δ’ ἀνέστη
Μεντορ ὄς ῥ’.......................................
ὄ σφιν ἐὺ φρονέων ἀγορήσατο καὶ μετέειπεν.
Is it possible not to suspect that the name Mentor was coined upon that
of Nestor?]

[21] [ i.e. in the outer court, and in the uncovered part of the inner
house.]

[22] [ This would be fair from Sicily, which was doing duty for Ithaca
in the mind of the writer, but a North wind would have been preferable
for a voyage from the real Ithaca to Pylos.]

[23] [ κελάδοντ’ ἐπὶ οὶνοπα πόντον The wind does not whistle over
waves. It only whistles through rigging or some other obstacle that
cuts it.]

[24] [ cf. “Il.” v.20. Ἰδαῖος δ’ ἀπόρουσε λιπὼν περικαλλέα δίφρον, the
Odyssean line is ἠέλιος δ’ ἀνόρουσε λιπὼν περικαλλέα λίμνην. There can
be no doubt that the Odyssean line was suggested by the Iliadic, but
nothing can explain why Idæus jumping from his chariot should suggest
to the writer of the “Odyssey” the sun jumping from the sea. The
probability is that she never gave the matter a thought, but took the
line in question as an effect of saturation with the “Iliad,” and of
unconscious cerebration. The “Odyssey” contains many such examples.]

[25] [ The heart, liver, lights, kidneys, etc. were taken out from the
inside and eaten first as being more readily cooked; the {Greek}, or
bone meat, was cooking while the {Greek} or inward parts were being
eaten. I imagine that the thigh bones made a kind of gridiron, while at
the same time the marrow inside them got cooked.]

[26] [ i.e. skewers, either single, double, or even five pronged. The
meat would be pierced with the skewer, and laid over the ashes to
grill—the two ends of the skewer being supported in whatever way
convenient. Meat so cooking may be seen in any eating house in Smyrna,
or any Eastern town. When I rode across the Troad from the Dardanelles
to Hissarlik and Mount Ida, I noticed that my dragoman and his men did
all our outdoor cooking exactly in the Odyssean and Iliadic fashion.]

[27] [ cf. “Il.” xvii. 567. {Greek} The Odyssean lines are—{Greek}]

[28] [ Reading {Greek} for {Greek}, cf. “Od.” i. 186.]

29[] [ The geography of the Ægean as above described is correct, but is
probably taken from the lost poem, the Nosti, the existence of which is
referred to “Od.” i. 326, 327 and 350, &c. A glance at the map will
show that heaven advised its supplicants quite correctly.]

[30] [ The writer—ever jealous for the honour of women—extenuates
Clytemnestra’s guilt as far as possible, and explains it as due to her
having been left unprotected, and fallen into the hands of a wicked
man.]

[31] [ The Greek is {Greek} cf. “Iliad” ii. 408 {Greek} Surely the
{Greek} of the Odyssean passage was due to the {Greek} of the “Iliad.”
No other reason suggests itself for the making Menelaus return on the
very day of the feast given by Orestes. The fact that in the “Iliad”
Menelaus came to a banquet without waiting for an invitation,
determines the writer of the “Odyssey” to make him come to a banquet,
also uninvited, but as circumstances did not permit of his having been
invited, his coming uninvited is shown to have been due to chance. I do
not think the authoress thought all this out, but attribute the
strangeness of the coincidence to unconscious cerebration and
saturation.]

[32] [ cf. “Il.” I. 458, II. 421. The writer here interrupts an Iliadic
passage (to which she returns immediately) for the double purpose of
dwelling upon the slaughter of the heifer, and of letting Nestor’s wife
and daughter enjoy it also. A male writer, if he was borrowing from the
“Iliad,” would have stuck to his borrowing.]

[33] [ cf. “Il.” xxiv. 587, 588 where the lines refer to the washing
the dead body of Hector.]

[34] [ See illustration on opposite page. The yard is typical of many
that may be seen in Sicily. The existing ground-plan is probably
unmodified from Odyssean, and indeed long pre-Odyssean times, but the
earlier buildings would have no arches, and would, one would suppose,
be mainly timber. The Odyssean {Greek} were the sheds that ran round
the yard as the arches do now. The {Greek} was the one through which
the main entrance passed, and which was hence “noisy,” or
reverberating. It had an upper story in which visitors were often
lodged.]

[35] [ This journey is an impossible one. Telemachus and Pisistratus
would have been obliged to drive over the Taygetus range, over which
there has never yet been a road for wheeled vehicles. It is plain
therefore that the audience for whom the “Odyssey” was written was one
that would be unlikely to know anything about the topography of the
Peloponnese, so that the writer might take what liberties she chose.]

[36] [ The lines which I have enclosed in brackets are evidently an
afterthought—added probably by the writer herself—for they evince the
same instinctively greater interest in anything that may concern a
woman, which is so noticeable throughout the poem. There is no further
sign of any special festivities nor of any other guests than Telemachus
and Pisistratus, until lines 621-624 (ordinarily enclosed in brackets)
are abruptly introduced, probably with a view of trying to carry off
the introduction of the lines now in question.

The addition was, I imagine, suggested by a desire to excuse and
explain the non-appearance of Hermione in bk. xv., as also of both
Hermione and Megapenthes in the rest of bk. iv. Megapenthes in bk. xv.
seems to be still a bachelor: the presumption therefore is that bk. xv.
was written before the story of his marriage here given. I take it he
is only married here because his sister is being married. She having
been properly attended to, Megapenthes might as well be married at the
same time. Hermione could not now be less than thirty.

I have dealt with this passage somewhat more fully in my “Authoress of
the Odyssey”, p. 136-138. See also p. 256 of the same book.]

[37] [ Sparta and Lacedaemon are here treated as two different places,
though in other parts of the poem it is clear that the writer
understands them as one. The catalogue in the “Iliad,” which the writer
is here presumably following, makes the same mistake (“Il.” ii. 581,
582)]

[38] [ These last three lines are identical with “Il.” vxiii. 604-606.]

[39] [ From the Greek {Greek} it is plain that Menelaus took up the
piece of meat with his fingers.]

[40] [ Amber is never mentioned in the “Iliad.” Sicily, where I suppose
the “Odyssey” to have been written, has always been, and still is, one
of the principal amber producing countries. It was probably the only
one known in the Odyssean age. See “The Authoress of the Odyssey,”
Longmans 1898, p. 186.]

[41] [ This no doubt refers to the story told in the last poem of the
Cypria about Paris and Helen robbing Menelaus of the greater part of
his treasures, when they sailed together for Troy.]

[42] [ It is inconceivable that Helen should enter thus, in the middle
of supper, intending to work with her distaff, if great festivities
were going on. Telemachus and Pisistratus are evidently dining en
famille.]

[43] [ In the Italian insurrection of 1848, eight young men who were
being hotly pursued by the Austrian police hid themselves inside
Donatello’s colossal wooden horse in the Salone at Padua, and remained
there for a week being fed by their confederates. In 1898 the last
survivor was carried round Padua in triumph.]

[44] [ The Greek is {Greek}. Is it unfair to argue that the writer is a
person of somewhat delicate sensibility, to whom a strong smell of fish
is distasteful?]

[45] [ The Greek is {Greek}. I believe this to be a hit at the writer’s
own countrymen who were of Phocaean descent, and the next following
line to be a rejoinder to complaints made against her in bk. vi.
273-288, to the effect that she gave herself airs and would marry none
of her own people. For that the writer of the “Odyssey” was the person
who has been introduced into the poem under the name of Nausicaa, I
cannot bring myself to question. I may remind English readers that
{Greek} (i.e. phoca) means “seal.” Seals almost always appear on
Phocaean coins.]

[46] [ Surely here again we are in the hands of a writer of delicate
sensibility. It is not as though the seals were stale; they had only
just been killed. The writer, however is obviously laughing at her own
countrymen, and insulting them as openly as she dares.]

[47] [ We were told above (lines 356, 357) that it was only one day’s
sail.]

[48] [ I give the usual translation, but I do not believe the Greek
will warrant it. The Greek reads {Greek}.

This is usually held to mean that Ithaca is an island fit for breeding
goats, and on that account more delectable to the speaker than it would
have been if it were fit for breeding horses. I find little authority
for such a translation; the most equitable translation of the text as
it stands is, “Ithaca is an island fit for breeding goats, and
delectable rather than fit for breeding horses; for not one of the
islands is good driving ground, nor well meadowed.” Surely the writer
does not mean that a pleasant or delectable island would not be fit for
breeding horses? The most equitable translation, therefore, of the
present text being thus halt and impotent, we may suspect corruption,
and I hazard the following emendation, though I have not adopted it in
my translation, as fearing that it would be deemed too fanciful. I
would read:—{Greek}.

As far as scanning goes the {Greek} is not necessary; {Greek} iv. 72,
(Footnote Greek) iv. 233, to go no further afield than earlier lines of
the same book, give sufficient authority for {Greek}, but the {Greek}
would not be redundant; it would emphasise the surprise of the
contrast, and I should prefer to have it, though it is not very
important either way. This reading of course should be translated
“Ithaca is an island fit for breeding goats, and (by your leave) itself
a horseman rather than fit for breeding horses—for not one of the
islands is good and well meadowed ground.”

This would be sure to baffle the Alexandrian editors. “How,” they would
ask themselves, “could an island be a horseman?” and they would cast
about for an emendation. A visit to the top of Mt. Eryx might perhaps
make the meaning intelligible, and suggest my proposed restoration of
the text to the reader as readily as it did to myself.

I have elsewhere stated my conviction that the writer of the “Odyssey”
was familiar with the old Sican city at the top of Mt. Eryx, and that
the Aegadean islands which are so striking when seen thence did duty
with her for the Ionian islands—Marettimo, the highest and most
westerly of the group, standing for Ithaca. When seen from the top of
Mt. Eryx Marettimo shows as it should do according to “Od.” ix. 25, 26,
“on the horizon, all highest up in the sea towards the West,” while the
other islands lie “some way off it to the East.” As we descend to
Trapani, Marettimo appears to sink on to the top of the island of
Levanzo, behind which it disappears. My friend, the late Signor E.
Biaggini, pointed to it once as it was just standing on the top of
Levanzo, and said to me “Come cavalca bene” (“How well it rides”), and
this immediately suggested my emendation to me. Later on I found in the
hymn to the Pythian Apollo (which abounds with tags taken from the
“Odyssey”) a line ending {Greek} which strengthened my suspicion that
this was the original ending of the second of the two lines above under
consideration.]

[49] [ See note on line 3 of this book. The reader will observe that
the writer has been unable to keep the women out of an interpolation
consisting only of four lines.]

[50] [ Scheria means a piece of land jutting out into the sea. In my
“Authoress of the Odyssey” I thought “Jutland” would be a suitable
translation, but it has been pointed out to me that “Jutland” only
means the land of the Jutes.]

[51] [ Irrigation as here described is common in gardens near Trapani.
The water that supplies the ducts is drawn from wells by a mule who
turns a wheel with buckets on it.]

[52] [ There is not a word here about the cattle of the sun-god.]

[53] [ The writer evidently thought that green, growing wood might also
be well seasoned.]

[54] [ The reader will note that the river was flowing with salt water
i.e. that it was tidal.]

[55] [ Then the Ogygian island was not so far off, but that Nausicaa
might be assumed to know where it was.]

[56] [ Greek {Greek}]

[57] [ I suspect a family joke, or sly allusion to some thing of which
we know nothing, in this story of Eurymedusa’s having been brought from
Apeira. The Greek word “apeiros” means “inexperienced,” “ignorant.” Is
it possible that Eurymedusa was notoriously incompetent?]

[58] [ Polyphemus was also son to Neptune, see “Od.” ix. 412, 529. he
was therefore half brother to Nausithous, half uncle to King Alcinous,
and half great uncle to Nausicaa.]

[59] [ It would seem as though the writer thought that Marathon was
close to Athens.]

[60] [ Here the writer, knowing that she is drawing (with
embellishments) from things actually existing, becomes impatient of
past tenses and slides into the present.]

[61] [ This is hidden malice, implying that the Phaeacian magnates were
no better than they should be. The final drink-offering should have
been made to Jove or Neptune, not to the god of thievishness and
rascality of all kinds. In line 164 we do indeed find Echeneus
proposing that a drink-offering should be made to Jove, but Mercury is
evidently, according to our authoress, the god who was most likely to
be of use to them.]

[62] [ The fact of Alcinous knowing anything about the Cyclopes
suggests that in the writer’s mind Scheria and the country of the
Cyclopes were not very far from one another. I take the Cyclopes and
the giants to be one and the same people.]

[63] [ “My property, etc.” The authoress is here adopting an Iliadic
line (xix. 333), and this must account for the absence of all reference
to Penelope. If she had happened to remember “Il.” v. 213, she would
doubtless have appropriated it by preference, for that line reads “my
country, _my wife_, and all the greatness of my house.”]

[64] [ The at first inexplicable sleep of Ulysses (bk. xiii. 79, etc.)
is here, as also in viii. 445, being obviously prepared. The writer
evidently attached the utmost importance to it. Those who know that the
harbour which did duty with the writer of the “Odyssey” for the one in
which Ulysses landed in Ithaca, was only about 2 miles from the place
in which Ulysses is now talking with Alcinous, will understand why the
sleep was so necessary.]

[65] [ There were two classes—the lower who were found in provisions
which they had to cook for themselves in the yards and outer precincts,
where they would also eat—and the upper who would eat in the cloisters
of the inner court, and have their cooking done for them.]

[66] [ Translation very dubious. I suppose the {Greek} here to be the
covered sheds that ran round the outer courtyard. See illustrations at
the end of bk. iii.]

[67] [ The writer apparently deems that the words “as compared with
what oxen can plough in the same time” go without saying. Not so the
writer of the “Iliad” from which the Odyssean passage is probably
taken. He explains that mules can plough quicker than oxen (“Il.” x.
351-353)]

[68] [ It was very fortunate that such a disc happened to be there,
seeing that none like it were in common use.]

[69] [ “Il.” xiii. 37. Here, as so often elsewhere in the “Odyssey,”
the appropriation of an Iliadic line which is not quite appropriate
puzzles the reader. The “they” is not the chains, nor yet Mars and
Venus. It is an overflow from the Iliadic passage in which Neptune
hobbles his horses in bonds “which none could either unloose or break
so that they might stay there in that place.” If the line would have
scanned without the addition of the words “so that they might stay
there in that place,” they would have been omitted in the “Odyssey.”]

[70] [ The reader will note that Alcinous never goes beyond saying that
he is going to give the goblet; he never gives it. Elsewhere in both
“Iliad” and “Odyssey” the offer of a present is immediately followed by
the statement that it was given and received gladly—Alcinous actually
does give a chest and a cloak and shirt—probably also some of the corn
and wine for the long two-mile voyage was provided by him—but it is
quite plain that he gave no talent and no cup.]

[71] [ “Il.” xviii. 344-349. These lines in the “Iliad” tell of the
preparation for washing the body of Patroclus, and I am not pleased
that the writer of the “Odyssey” should have adopted them here.]

[72] [ see note [64] : ]

[73] [ see note [43] : ]

[74] [ The reader will find this threat fulfilled in bk. xiii]

[75] [ If the other islands lay some distance away from Ithaca (which
the word {Greek} suggests), what becomes of the πόρθμος or gut between
Ithaca and Samos which we hear of in Bks. iv. and xv.? I suspect that
the authoress in her mind makes Telemachus come back from Pylos to the
Lilybaean promontory and thence to Trapani through the strait between
the _Isola Grande_ and the mainland—the island of Asteria being the one
on which Motya afterwards stood.]

[76] [ “Il.” xviii. 533-534. The sudden lapse into the third person
here for a couple of lines is due to the fact that the two Iliadic
lines taken are in the third person.]

[77] [ cf. “Il.” ii. 776. The words in both “Iliad” and “Odyssey” are
[Footnote Greek]. In the “Iliad” they are used of the horses of
Achilles’ followers as they stood idle, “champing lotus.”]

[78] [ I take all this passage about the Cyclopes having no ships to be
sarcastic—meaning, “You people of Drepanum have no excuse for not
colonising the island of Favognana, which you could easily do, for you
have plenty of ships, and the island is a very good one.” For that the
island so fully described here is the Aegadean or “goat” island of
Favognana, and that the Cyclopes are the old Sican inhabitants of Mt.
Eryx should not be doubted.]

[79] [ For the reasons why it was necessary that the night should be so
exceptionally dark see “The Authoress of the Odyssey” pp. 188-189.]

[80] [ None but such lambs as would suck if they were with their
mothers would be left in the yard. The older lambs should have been out
feeding. The authoress has got it all wrong, but it does not matter.
See “The Authoress of the Odyssey” p. 148.]

[81] [ This line is enclosed in brackets in the received text, and is
omitted (with note) by Messrs. Butcher & Lang. But lines enclosed in
brackets are almost always genuine; all that brackets mean is that the
bracketed passage puzzled some early editor, who nevertheless found it
too well established in the text to venture on omitting it. In the
present case the line bracketed is the very last which a full-grown
male editor would be likely to interpolate. It is safer to infer that
the writer, a young woman, not knowing or caring at which end of the
ship the rudder should be, determined to make sure by placing it at
both ends, which we shall find she presently does by repeating it (line
340) at the stern of the ship. As for the two rocks thrown, the first I
take to be the Asinelli, see map facing p. 80. The second I see as the
two contiguous islands of the Formiche, which are treated as one, see
map facing p. 108. The Asinelli is an island shaped like a boat, and
pointing to the island of Favognana. I think the authoress’s
compatriots, who probably did not like her much better that she did
them, jeered at the absurdity of Ulysses’ conduct, and saw the Asinelli
or “donkeys,” not as the rock thrown by Polyphemus, but as the boat
itself containing Ulysses and his men.]

[82] [ This line exists in the text here but not in the corresponding
passage xii. 141. I am inclined to think it is interpolated (probably
by the poetess herself) from the first of lines xi. 115-137, which I
can hardly doubt were added by the writer when the scheme of the work
was enlarged and altered. See “The Authoress of the Odyssey” pp.
254-255.]

[83] [ “Floating” (πλωτῇ) is not to be taken literally. The island
itself, as apart from its inhabitants, was quite normal. There is no
indication of its moving during the month that Ulysses stayed with
Aeolus, and on his return from his unfortunate voyage, he seems to have
found it in the same place. The πλωτῇ in fact should no more be pressed
than θοῇσι as applied to islands, “Odyssey” xv. 299—where they are
called “flying” because the ship would fly past them. So also the
“Wanderers,” as explained by Buttmann; see note on “Odyssey” xii. 57.]

[84] [ Literally “for the ways of the night and of the day are near.” I
have seen what Mr. Andrew Lang says (“Homer and the Epic,” p. 236, and
“Longman’s Magazine” for January, 1898, p. 277) about the “amber route”
and the “Sacred Way” in this connection; but until he gives his grounds
for holding that the Mediterranean peoples in the Odyssean age used to
go far North for their amber instead of getting it in Sicily, where it
is still found in considerable quantities, I do not know what weight I
ought to attach to his opinion. I have been unable to find grounds for
asserting that B.C. 1000 there was any commerce between the
Mediterranean and the “Far North,” but I shall be very ready to learn
if Mr. Lang will enlighten me. See “The Authoress of the Odyssey” pp.
185-186.]

[85] [ One would have thought that when the sun was driving the stag
down to the water, Ulysses might have observed its whereabouts.]

[86] [ See Hobbes of Malmesbury’s translation.]

[87] [ “Il.” vxiii. 349. Again the writer draws from the washing the
body of Patroclus—which offends.]

[88] [ This visit is wholly without topographical significance.]

[89] [ Brides presented themselves instinctively to the imagination of
the writer, as the phase of humanity which she found most interesting.]

[90] [ Ulysses was, in fact, to become a missionary and preach Neptune
to people who knew not his name. I was fortunate enough to meet in
Sicily a woman carrying one of these winnowing shovels; it was not much
shorter than an oar, and I was able at once to see what the writer of
the “Odyssey” intended.]

[91] [ I suppose the lines I have enclosed in brackets to have been
added by the author when she enlarged her original scheme by the
addition of books i.-iv. and xiii. (from line 187)-xxiv. The reader
will observe that in the corresponding passage (xii. 137-141) the
prophecy ends with “after losing all your comrades,” and that there is
no allusion to the suitors. For fuller explanation see “The Authoress
of the Odyssey” pp. 254-255.]

[92] [ The reader will remember that we are in the first year of
Ulysses’ wanderings, Telemachus therefore was only eleven years old.
The same anachronism is made later on in this book. See “The Authoress
of the Odyssey” pp. 132-133.]

[93] [ Tradition says that she had hanged herself. Cf. “Odyssey” xv.
355, etc.]

[94] [ Not to be confounded with Aeolus king of the winds.]

[95] [ Melampus, vide book xv. 223, etc.]

[96] [ I have already said in a note on bk. xi. 186 that at this point
of Ulysses’ voyage Telemachus could only be between eleven and twelve
years old.]

[97] [ Is the writer a man or a woman?]

[98] [ Cf. “Il.” iv. 521, {Greek}. The Odyssean line reads, {Greek}.
The famous dactylism, therefore, of the Odyssean line was probably
suggested by that of the Ileadic rather than by a desire to accommodate
sound to sense. At any rate the double coincidence of a dactylic line,
and an ending {Greek}, seems conclusive as to the familiarity of the
writer of the “Odyssey” with the Iliadic line.]

[99] [ Off the coast of Sicily and South Italy, in the month of May, I
have seen men fastened half way up a boat’s mast with their feet
resting on a crosspiece, just large enough to support them. From this
point of vantage they spear sword-fish. When I saw men thus employed I
could hardly doubt that the writer of the “Odyssey” had seen others
like them, and had them in her mind when describing the binding of
Ulysses. I have therefore with some diffidence ventured to depart from
the received translation of ἰστοπέδη (cf. Alcaeus frag. 18, where,
however, it is very hard to say what ἰστοπέδαν means). In Sophocles’
Lexicon I find a reference to Chrysostom (l, 242, A. Ed. Benedictine
Paris 1834-1839) for the word ἰστοπόδη, which is probably the same as
ἰστοπέδη, but I have looked for the passage in vain.]

[100] [ The writer is at fault here and tries to put it off on Circe.
When Ulysses comes to take the route prescribed by Circe, he ought to
pass either the Wanderers or some other difficulty of which we are not
told, but he does not do so. The Planctae, or Wanderers, merge into
Scylla and Charybdis, and the alternative between them and something
untold merges into the alternative whether Ulysses had better choose
Scylla or Charybdis. Yet from line 260, it seems we are to consider the
Wanderers as having been passed by Ulysses; this appears even more
plainly from xxiii. 327, in which Ulysses expressly mentions the
Wandering rocks as having been between the Sirens and Scylla and
Charybdis. The writer, however, is evidently unaware that she does not
quite understand her own story; her difficulty was perhaps due to the
fact that though Trapanese sailors had given her a fair idea as to
where all her other localities really were, no one in those days more
than in our own could localise the Planctae, which in fact, as Buttmann
has argued, were derived not from any particular spot, but from
sailors’ tales about the difficulties of navigating the group of the
Aeolian islands as a whole (see note on “Od.” x. 3). Still the matter
of the poor doves caught her fancy, so she would not forgo them. The
whirlwinds of fire and the smoke that hangs on Scylla suggests allusion
to Stromboli and perhaps even Etna. Scylla is on the Italian side, and
therefore may be said to look West. It is about 8 miles thence to the
Sicilian coast, so Ulysses may be perfectly well told that after
passing Scylla he will come to the Thrinacian island or Sicily.
Charybdis is transposed to a site some few miles to the north of its
actual position.]

[101] [ I suppose this line to have been intercalated by the author
when lines 426-446 were added.]

[102] [ For the reasons which enable us to identify the island of the
two Sirens with the Lipari island now Salinas—the ancient Didyme, or
“twin” island—see The Authoress of the Odyssey, pp. 195, 196. The two
Sirens doubtless were, as their name suggests, the whistling gusts, or
avalanches of air that at times descend without a moment’s warning from
the two lofty mountains of Salinas—as also from all high points in the
neighbourhood.]

[103] [ See Admiral Smyth on the currents in the Straits of Messina,
quoted in “The Authoress of the Odyssey,” p. 197.]

[104] [ In the islands of Favognana and Marettimo off Trapani I have
seen men fish exactly as here described. They chew bread into a paste
and throw it into the sea to attract the fish, which they then spear.
No line is used.]

[105] [ The writer evidently regards Ulysses as on a coast that looked
East at no great distance south of the Straits of Messina somewhere,
say, near Tauromenium, now Taormina.]

[106] [ Surely there must be a line missing here to tell us that the
keel and mast were carried down into Charybdis. Besides, the aorist
{Greek} in its present surrounding is perplexing. I have translated it
as though it were an imperfect; I see Messrs. Butcher and Lang
translate it as a pluperfect, but surely Charybdis was in the act of
sucking down the water when Ulysses arrived.]

[107] [ I suppose the passage within brackets to have been an
afterthought but to have been written by the same hand as the rest of
the poem. I suppose xii. 103 to have been also added by the writer when
she decided on sending Ulysses back to Charybdis. The simile suggests
the hand of the wife or daughter of a magistrate who had often seen her
father come in cross and tired.]

[108] [ Gr. πολυδαίδαλος. This puts coined money out of the question,
but nevertheless implies that the gold had been worked into ornaments
of some kind.]

[109] [ I suppose Teiresias’ prophecy of bk. xi. 114-120 had made no
impression on Ulysses. More probably the prophecy was an afterthought,
intercalated, as I have already said, by the authoress when she changed
her scheme.]

[110] [ A male writer would have made Ulysses say, not “may you give
satisfaction to your wives,” but “may your wives give satisfaction to
you.”]

[111] [ See note [64].]

[112] [ The land was in reality the shallow inlet, now the salt works
of S. Cusumano—the neighbourhood of Trapani and Mt. Eryx being made to
do double duty, both as Scheria and Ithaca. Hence the necessity for
making Ulysses set out after dark, fall instantly into a profound
sleep, and wake up on a morning so foggy that he could not see anything
till the interviews between Neptune and Jove and between Ulysses and
Minerva should have given the audience time to accept the situation.
See illustrations and map near the end of bks. v. and vi.
respectively.]

[113] [ This cave, which is identifiable with singular completeness, is
now called the “grotta del toro,” probably a corruption of “tesoro,”
for it is held to contain a treasure. See The Authoress of the Odyssey,
pp. 167-170.]

[114] [ Probably they would.]

[115] [ Then it had a shallow shelving bottom.]

[116] [ Doubtless the road would pass the harbour in Odyssean times as
it passes the salt works now; indeed, if there is to be a road at all
there is no other level ground which it could take. See map above
referred to.]

[117] [ The rock at the end of the Northern harbour of Trapani, to
which I suppose the writer of the “Odyssey” to be here referring, still
bears the name Malconsiglio—“the rock of evil counsel.” There is a
legend that it was a ship of Turkish pirates who were intending to
attack Trapani, but the “Madonna di Trapani” crushed them under this
rock just as they were coming into port. My friend Cavaliere
Giannitrapani of Trapani told me that his father used to tell him when
he was a boy that if he would drop exactly three drops of oil on to the
water near the rock, he would see the ship still at the bottom. The
legend is evidently a Christianised version of the Odyssean story,
while the name supplies the additional detail that the disaster
happened in consequence of an evil counsel.]

[118] [ It would seem then that the ship had got all the way back from
Ithaca in about a quarter of an hour.]

[119] [ And may we not add “and also to prevent his recognising that he
was only in the place where he had met Nausicaa two days earlier.”]

[120] [ All this is to excuse the entire absence of Minerva from books
ix.-xii., which I suppose had been written already, before the
authoress had determined on making Minerva so prominent a character.]

[121] [ We have met with this somewhat lame attempt to cover the
writer’s change of scheme at the end of bk. vi.]

[122] [ I take the following from The Authoress of the Odyssey, p. 167.
“It is clear from the text that there were two [caves] not one, but
some one has enclosed in brackets the two lines in which the second
cave is mentioned, I presume because he found himself puzzled by having
a second cave sprung upon him when up to this point he had only been
told of one.

“I venture to think that if he had known the ground he would not have
been puzzled, for there are two caves, distant about 80 or 100 yards
from one another.” The cave in which Ulysses hid his treasure is, as I
have already said, identifiable with singular completeness. The other
cave presents no special features, neither in the poem nor in nature.]

[123] [ There is no attempt to disguise the fact that Penelope had long
given encouragement to the suitors. The only defence set up is that she
did not really mean to encourage them. Would it not have been wiser to
have tried a little discouragement?]

[124] [ See map near the end of bk. vi. _Ruccazzù dei corvi_ of course
means “the rock of the ravens.” Both name and ravens still exist.]

[125] [ See The Authoress of the Odyssey, pp. 140, 141. The real reason
for sending Telemachus to Pylos and Lacedaemon was that the authoress
might get Helen of Troy into her poem. He was sent at the only point in
the story at which he could be sent, so he must have gone then or not
at all.]

[126] [ The site I assign to Eumaeus’s hut, close to the _Ruccazzù dei
corvi_, is about 2,000 feet above the sea, and commands an extensive
view.]

[127] [ Sandals such as Eumaeus was making are still worn in the
Abruzzi and elsewhere. An oblong piece of leather forms the sole: holes
are cut at the four corners, and through these holes leathern straps
are passed, which are bound round the foot and cross-gartered up the
calf.]

[128] [ See note [75] : ]

[129] [ Telemachus like many another good young man seems to expect
every one to fetch and carry for him.]

[130] [ “Il.” vi. 288. The store room was fragrant because it was made
of cedar wood. See “Il.” xxiv. 192.]

[131] [ cf. “Il.” vi. 289 and 293-296. The dress was kept at the bottom
of the chest as one that would only be wanted on the greatest
occasions; but surely the marriage of Hermione and of Megapenthes (bk,
iv. _ad init_.) might have induced Helen to wear it on the preceding
evening, in which case it could hardly have got back. We find no hint
here of Megapenthes’ recent marriage.]

[132] [ See note [83].]

[133] [ cf. “Od.” xi. 196, etc.]

[134] [ The names Syra and Ortygia, on which island a great part of the
Doric Syracuse was originally built, suggest that even in Odyssean
times there was a prehistoric Syracuse, the existence of which was
known to the writer of the poem.]

[135] [ Literally “where are the turnings of the sun.” Assuming, as we
may safely do, that the Syra and Ortygia of the “Odyssey” refer to
Syracuse, it is the fact that not far to the South of these places the
land turns sharply round, so that mariners following the coast would
find the sun upon the other side of their ship to that on which they’d
had it hitherto.

Mr. A. S. Griffith has kindly called my attention to Herod iv. 42,
where, speaking of the circumnavigation of Africa by Phoenician
mariners under Necos, he writes:

“On their return they declared—I for my part do not believe them, but
perhaps others may—that in sailing round Libya [i.e. Africa] they had
the sun upon their right hand. In this way was the extent of Libya
first discovered.

“I take it that Eumaeus was made to have come from Syracuse because the
writer thought she rather ought to have made something happen at
Syracuse during her account of the voyages of Ulysses. She could not,
however, break his long drift from Charybdis to the island of
Pantellaria; she therefore resolved to make it up to Syracuse in
another way.”

Modern excavations establish the existence of two and only two
pre-Dorian communities at Syracuse; they were, so Dr. Orsi informed me,
at Plemmirio and Cozzo Pantano. See The Authoress of the Odyssey, pp.
211-213.]

[136] [ This harbour is again evidently the harbour in which Ulysses
had landed, i.e. the harbour that is now the salt works of S.
Cusumano.]

[137] [ This never can have been anything but very niggardly pay for
some eight or nine days’ service. I suppose the crew were to consider
the pleasure of having had a trip to Pylos as a set off. There is no
trace of the dinner as having been actually given, either on the
following or any other morning.]

[138] [ No hawk can tear its prey while it is on the wing.]

[139] [ The text is here apparently corrupt, and will not make sense as
it stands. I follow Messrs. Butcher & Lang in omitting line 101.]

[140] [ i.e. to be milked, as in South Italian and Sicilian towns at
the present day.]

[141] [ The butchering and making ready the carcases took place partly
in the outer yard and partly in the open part of the inner court.]

[142] [ These words cannot mean that it would be afternoon soon after
they were spoken. Ulysses and Eumaeus reached the town which was “some
way off” (xvii. 25) in time for the suitor’s early meal (xvii. 170 and
176) say at ten or eleven o’ clock. The context of the rest of the book
shows this. Eumaeus and Ulysses, therefore, cannot have started later
than eight or nine, and Eumaeus’s words must be taken as an
exaggeration for the purpose of making Ulysses bestir himself.]

[143] [ I imagine the fountain to have been somewhere about where the
church of the _Madonna di Trapani_ now stands, and to have been fed
with water from what is now called the Fontana Diffali on Mt. Eryx.]

[144] [ From this and other passages in the “Odyssey” it appears that
we are in an age anterior to the use of coined money—an age when
cauldrons, tripods, swords, cattle, chattels of all kinds, measures of
corn, wine, or oil, etc. etc., not to say pieces of gold, silver,
bronze, or even iron, wrought more or less, but unstamped, were the
nearest approach to a currency that had as yet been reached.]

[145] [ Gr. ἐς μέσσον.]

[146] [ I correct these proofs abroad and am not within reach of
Hesiod, but surely this passage suggests acquaintance with the Works
and Ways, though it by no means compels it.]

[147] [ It would seem as though Eurynome and Euryclea were the same
person. See note 156]

[148] [ It is plain, therefore, that Iris was commonly accepted as the
messenger of the gods, though our authoress will never permit her to
fetch or carry for any one.]

[149] [ i.e. the doorway leading from the inner to the outer court.]

[150] [See note 156]

[151] [ These, I imagine, must have been in the open part of the inner
courtyard, where the maids also stood, and threw the light of their
torches into the covered cloister that ran all round it. The smoke
would otherwise have been intolerable.]

[152] [ Translation very uncertain; vide Liddell and Scott, under
{Greek}]

[153] [ See photo on opposite page.]

[154] [ cf. “Il.” ii. 184, and 217, 218. An additional and well-marked
feature being wanted to convince Penelope, the writer has taken the
hunched shoulders of Thersites (who is mentioned immediately after
Eurybates in the “Iliad”) and put them on to Eurybates’ back.]

[155] [ This is how geese are now fed in Sicily, at any rate in summer,
when the grass is all burnt up. I have never seen them grazing.]

[156] [ Lower down (line 143) Euryclea says it was herself that had
thrown the cloak over Ulysses—for the plural should not be taken as
implying more than one person. The writer is evidently still
fluctuating between Euryclea and Eurynome as the name for the old
nurse. She probably originally meant to call her Euryclea, but finding
it not immediately easy to make Euryclea scan in xvii. 495, she hastily
called her Eurynome, intending either to alter this name later or to
change the earlier Euryclea’s into Eurynome. She then drifted in to
Eurynome as convenience further directed, still nevertheless hankering
after Euryclea, till at last she found that the path of least
resistance would lie in the direction of making Eurynome and Euryclea
two persons. Therefore in xxiii. 289-292 both Eurynome and “the nurse”
(who can be none other than Euryclea) come on together. I do not say
that this is feminine, but it is not unfeminine.]

[157] [ See note [156]]

[158] [ This, I take it, was immediately in front of the main entrance
of the inner courtyard into the body of the house.]

[159] [ This is the only allusion to Sardinia in either “Iliad” or
“Odyssey.”]

[160] [ The normal translation of the Greek word would be “holding
back,” “curbing,” “restraining,” but I cannot think that the writer
meant this—she must have been using the word in its other sense of
“having,” “holding,” “keeping,” “maintaining.”]

[161] [ I have vainly tried to realise the construction of the
fastening here described.]

[162] [ See plan of Ulysses’ house in the appendix. It is evident that
the open part of the court had no flooring but the natural soil.]

[163] [ See plan of Ulysses’ house, and note [175].]

[164] [ i.e. the door that led into the body of the house.]

[165] [ This was, no doubt, the little table that was set for Ulysses,
“Od.” xx. 259.

Surely the difficulty of this passage has been overrated. I suppose the
iron part of the axe to have been wedged into the handle, or bound
securely to it—the handle being half buried in the ground. The axe
would be placed edgeways towards the archer, and he would have to shoot
his arrow through the hole into which the handle was fitted when the
axe was in use. Twelve axes were placed in a row all at the same
height, all exactly in front of one another, all edgeways to Ulysses
whose arrow passed through all the holes from the first onward. I
cannot see how the Greek can bear any other interpretation, the words
being, {Greek}

“He did not miss a single hole from the first onwards.” {Greek}
according to Liddell and Scott being “the hole for the handle of an
axe, etc.,” while {Greek} (“Od.” v. 236) is, according to the same
authorities, the handle itself. The feat is absurdly impossible, but
our authoress sometimes has a soul above impossibilities.]

[166] [ The reader will note how the spoiling of good food distresses
the writer even in such a supreme moment as this.]

[167] [ Here we have it again. Waste of substance comes first.]

[168] [ cf. “Il.” iii. 337 and three other places. It is strange that
the author of the “Iliad” should find a little horse-hair so alarming.
Possibly enough she was merely borrowing a common form line from some
earlier poet—or poetess—for this is a woman’s line rather than a
man’s.]

[169] [ Or perhaps simply “window.” See plan in the appendix.]

[170] [ i.e. the pavement on which Ulysses was standing.]

[171] [ The interpretation of lines 126-143 is most dubious, and at
best we are in a region of melodrama: cf., however, i. 425, etc. from
which it appears that there was a tower in the outer court, and that
Telemachus used to sleep in it. The ὀρσοθύρα I take to be a door, or
trap door, leading on to the roof above Telemachus’s bed room, which we
are told was in a place that could be seen from all round—or it might
be simply a window in Telemachus’s room looking out into the street.
From the top of the tower the outer world was to be told what was going
on, but people could not get in by the ὀρσοθύρα: they would have to
come in by the main entrance, and Melanthius explains that the mouth of
the narrow passage (which was in the lands of Ulysses and his friends)
commanded the only entrance by which help could come, so that there
would be nothing gained by raising an alarm.
    As for the ῥῶγες of line 143, no commentator ancient or modern has
    been able to say what was intended—but whatever they were,
    Melanthius could never carry twelve shields, twelve helmets, and
    twelve spears. Moreover, where he could go the others could go
    also. If a dozen suitors had followed Melanthius into the house
    they could have attacked Ulysses in the rear, in which case, unless
    Minerva had intervened promptly, the “Odyssey” would have had a
    different ending. But throughout the scene we are in a region of
    extravagance rather than of true fiction—it cannot be taken
    seriously by any but the very serious, until we come to the episode
    of Phemius and Medon, where the writer begins to be at home again.]

[172] [ I presume it was intended that there should be a hook driven
into the bearing-post.]

[173] [ What for?]

[174] [ Gr: {Greek}. This is not {Greek}.]

[175] [ From lines 333 and 341 of this book, and lines 145 and 146 of
bk. xxi we can locate the approach to the {Greek} with some certainty.]

[176] [ But in xix. 500-502 Ulysses scolded Euryclea for offering
information on this very point, and declared himself quite able to
settle it for himself.]

[177] [ There were a hundred and eight Suitors.]

[178] [ Lord Grimthorpe, whose understanding does not lend itself to
easy imposition, has been good enough to write to me about my
conviction that the “Odyssey” was written by a woman, and to send me
remarks upon the gross absurdity of the incident here recorded. It is
plain that all the authoress cared about was that the women should be
hanged: as for attempting to realise, or to make her readers realise,
how the hanging was done, this was of no consequence. The reader must
take her word for it and ask no questions. Lord Grimthorpe wrote:

“I had better send you my ideas about Nausicaa’s hanging of the maids
(not ‘maidens,’ of whom Froude wrote so well in his ‘Science of
History’) before I forget it all. Luckily for me Liddell & Scott have
specially translated most of the doubtful words, referring to this very
place.

“A ship’s cable. I don’t know how big a ship she meant, but it must
have been a very small one indeed if its ‘cable’ could be used to tie
tightly round a woman’s neck, and still more round a dozen of them ‘in
a row,’ besides being strong enough to hold them and pull them all up.

“A dozen average women would need the weight and strength of more than
a dozen strong heavy men even over the best pulley hung to the roof
over them; and the idea of pulling them up by a rope hung anyhow round
a pillar {Greek} is absurdly impossible; and how a dozen of them could
be hung dangling round one post is a problem which a senior wrangler
would be puzzled to answer... She had better have let Telemachus use
his sword as he had intended till she changed his mind for him.”]

[179] [ Then they had all been in Ulysses’ service over twenty years;
perhaps the twelve guilty ones had been engaged more recently.]

[180] [ Translation very doubtful—cf. “It.” xxiv. 598.]

[181] [ But why could she not at once ask to see the scar, of which
Euryclea had told her, or why could not Ulysses have shown it to her?]

[182] [ The people of Ithaca seem to have been as fond of carping as
the Phaeacians were in vi. 273, etc.]

[183] [ See note [156]. Ulysses’s bed room does not appear to have been
upstairs, nor yet quite within the house. Is it possible that it was
“the domed room” round the outside of which the erring maids were, for
aught we have heard to the contrary, still hanging?]

[184] [ Ulysses bedroom in the mind of the writer is here too
apparently down stairs.]

[185] [ Penelope having been now sufficiently whitewashed, disappears
from the poem.]

[186] [ So practised a washerwoman as our authoress doubtless knew that
by this time the web must have become such a wreck that it would have
gone to pieces in the wash.]

A lady points out to me, just as these sheets are leaving my hands,
that no really good needlewoman—no one, indeed, whose work or character
was worth consideration—could have endured, no matter for what reason,
the unpicking of her day’s work, day after day for between three and
four years.]

[187] [ We must suppose Dolius not yet to know that his son Melanthius
had been tortured, mutilated, and left to die by Ulysses’ orders on the
preceding day, and that his daughter Melantho had been hanged. Dolius
was probably exceptionally simple-minded, and his name was ironical. So
on Mt. Eryx I was shown a man who was always called Sonza Malizia or
“Guileless”—he being held exceptionally cunning.]