The Odyssey by Homer (best novels in english txt) 📕

have done
Wrong in his anger to the gallant Greeks,
Which ye, by prompting men to acts like these,
Seek to avenge on me. Far better ’twere,
Should ye yourselves destroy our goods and slay
Our herds, since, were it so, there might in time
Be some requital. We, from street to street,
Would plead continually for recompense,
Till all should be restored. But now ye heap
Upon me wrongs for which is no redress.”

Thus angrily he spake, and clashed to earth
The sceptre, shedding tears. The people felt
Compassion; all were silent for a space,
And there was none who dared with railing words
Answer Telemachus, save one alone,
Antinoüs, who arose and thus replied:⁠—

“Telemachus, thou youth of braggart speech
And boundless in abuse, what hast thou said
To our dishonor? Thou wouldst fix on us
A brand of shame. The blame is not with us,
The Achaian suitors; ’tis thy mother’s fault,
Skilled as she is in crafty shifts. ’Tis now
Already the third year, and soon will be
The fourth, since she began to cozen us.
She gives us all to hope, and sends fair words
To each by message, yet in her own mind
Has other purposes. This shrewd device
She planned; she laid upon the loom a web,
Delicate, wide, and vast in length, and said
Thus to us all: ‘Young princes, who are come
To woo me, since Ulysses is no more⁠—
My noble husband⁠—urge me not, I pray,
To marriage, till I finish in the loom⁠—
That so my threads may not be spun in vain⁠—
A funeral vesture for the hero-chief
Laertes, when his fatal hour shall come
With death’s long sleep. Else some Achaian dame
Might blame me, should I leave without a shroud
Him who in life possessed such ample wealth!’
Such were her words, and easily they wrought
Upon our generous minds. So went she on,
Weaving that ample web, and every night
Unravelled it by torchlight. Three full years
She practised thus, and by the fraud deceived
The Grecian youths; but when the hours had brought
The fourth year round, a woman who knew all
Revealed the mystery, and we ourselves
Saw her unravelling the ample web.
Thenceforth, constrained, and with unwilling hands,
She finished it. Now let the suitors make
Their answer to thy words, that thou mayst know
Our purpose fully, and the Achaians all
May know it likewise. Send thy mother hence,
Requiring that she wed the suitor whom
Her father chooses and herself prefers.
But if she still go on to treat the sons
Of Greece with such despite, too confident
In gifts which Pallas has bestowed on her
So richly, noble arts, and faculties
Of mind, and crafty shifts, beyond all those
Of whom we ever heard that lived of yore,
The bright-haired ladies of the Achaian race,
Tyro, Alcmena, and Mycenè, famed
For glossy tresses, none of them endowed
As is Penelope, though this last shift
Be ill devised⁠—so long will we consume
Thy substance and estate as she shall hold
Her present mood, the purpose which the gods
Have planted in her breast. She to herself
Gains great renown, but surely brings on thee
Loss of much goods. And now we go not hence
To our affairs nor elsewhere, till she wed
Whichever of the Greeks may please her most.”

And then rejoined discreet Telemachus:⁠—
“Antinoüs, grievous wrong it were to send
Unwilling from this palace her who bore
And nursed me. Whether he be living yet
Or dead, my father is in distant lands;
And should I, of my own accord and will,
Dismiss my mother, I must make perforce
Icarius large amends, and that were hard.
And he would do me mischief, and the gods
Would send yet other evils on my head.
For then my mother, going forth, would call
On the grim Furies, and the general curse
Of all men would be on me. Think not I
Will ever speak that word. But if ye bear
A sense of injury for what is past,
Go from these halls; provide for other feasts,
Consuming what is yours, and visiting
Each other’s homes in turn. But if it seem
To you the wiser and the better way
To plunder one man’s goods, go on to waste
My substance. I shall call the eternal gods
To aid me, and, if Jupiter allow
Fit retribution for your crimes, ye die
Within this very palace unavenged.”

So spake Telemachus. The Thunderer, Jove,
Sent flying from a lofty mountain-top
Two eagles. First they floated on the wind
Close to each other, and with wings outspread;
But as they came to where the murmuring crowd
Was gathered just beneath their flight, they turned
And clapped their heavy pinions, looking down
With deadly omen on the heads below,
And with their talons tore each other’s cheeks
And necks, and then they darted to the right
Away through Ithaca among its roofs.
All who beheld the eagles were amazed,
And wondered what event was near at hand.
Among the rest an aged hero spake,
Named Halitherses, Mastor’s son. He knew
More truly than the others of his age,
To augur from the flight of birds, and read
The will of fate⁠—and wisely thus he spake:⁠—

“Hear, men of Ithaca, what I shall say.
I speak of what most narrowly concerns
The suitors, over whom already hangs
Great peril, for Ulysses will not be
Long at a distance from his home and friends.
Even now he is not far, and meditates
Slaughter and death to all the suitor train;
And evil will ensue to many more
Of us, who dwell in sunny Ithaca.
Now let us think what measures may restrain
These men⁠—or let them of their own accord
Desist⁠—the soonest were for them the best.
For not as one untaught do I foretell
Events to come, but speak of what I know.
All things that I predicted to our chief,
What time the Argive troops embarked for Troy,
And sage Ulysses with them, are fulfilled;
I said that after many hardships borne,
And all his comrades lost, the twentieth year
Would bring him back, a stranger to us all⁠—
And all that then I spake of comes to pass.”

Eurymachus, the son of Polybus,
Answered the seer: “Go to thy house, old man,
And to thy boys, and prophesy to them,
Lest evil come upon them. I can act,
In matters such as these, a prophet’s part
Better than thou. True, there are many birds
That fly about in sunshine, but not all
Are ominous. Ulysses far away
Has perished; well it would have been if thou
Hadst perished with him; then thou wouldst not prate
Idly of things to come, nor wouldst thou stir
Telemachus to anger, in the hope
Of bearing to thy house some gift from him.
Now let me