on the stone threshold, just inside the timbered hall,
and set a rickety stool and cramped table there.
He gave him a share of innards, poured his wine
in a golden cup and added a bracing invitation:
290 “Now sit right there. Drink your wine with the crowd.
I’ll defend you from all their taunts and blows,
these young bucks. This is no public place,
this is Odysseus’ house —
my father won it for me, so it’s mine.
You suitors, control yourselves. No insults now,
no brawling, no, or it’s war between us all.”
So he declared. And they all bit their lips,
amazed the prince could speak with so much daring.
Only Eupithes’ son Antinous ventured,
300 “Fighting words, but do let’s knuckle under —
to our prince. Such abuse, such naked threats!
But clearly Zeus has foiled us. Or long before
we would have shut his mouth for him in the halls,
fluent and flowing as he is.”
So he mocked.
Telemachus paid no heed.
And now through the streets
the heralds passed, leading the beasts marked out
307 for sacrifice on Apollo’s grand festal day,
and the islanders with their long hair were filing
into the god’s shady grove —the distant deadly Archer.
310 Those in the palace, once they’d roasted the prime cuts,
pulled them off the spits and, sharing out the portions,
fell to the royal feast . . .
The men who served them gave Odysseus his share,
as fair as the helping they received themselves.
So Telemachus ordered, the king’s own son.
But Athena had no mind to let the brazen suitors
hold back now from their heart-rending insults —
she meant to make the anguish cut still deeper
into the core of Laertes’ son Odysseus.
320 There was one among them, a lawless boor —
321 Ctesippus was his name, he made his home in Same,
a fellow so impressed with his own astounding wealth
he courted the wife of Odysseus, gone for years.
Now the man harangued his swaggering comrades:
“Listen to me, my fine friends, here’s what I say!
From the start our guest has had his fair share —
it’s only right, you know.
How impolite it would be, how wrong to scant
whatever guest Telemachus welcomes to his house.
330 Look here, I’ll give him a proper guest-gift too,
a prize he can hand the crone who bathes his feet
or a tip for another slave who haunts the halls
of our great king Odysseus!”
On that note,
grabbing an oxhoof out of a basket where it lay,
with a brawny hand he flung it straight at the king —
but Odysseus ducked his head a little, dodging the blow,
and seething just as the oxhoof hit the solid wall
he clenched his teeth in a wry sardonic grin.
Telemachus dressed Ctesippus down at once:
340 “Ctesippus, you can thank your lucky stars
you missed our guest —he ducked your blow, by god!
Else I would have planted my sharp spear in your bowels —
your father would have been busy with your funeral,
not your wedding here. Enough.
Don’t let me see more offenses in my house,
not from anyone! I’m alive to it all, now,
the good and the bad —the boy you knew is gone.
But I still must bear with this, this lovely sight . . .
sheepflocks butchered, wine swilled, food squandered —
350 how can a man fight off so many single-handed?
But no more of your crimes against me, please!
Unless you’re bent on cutting me down, now,
and I’d rather die, yes, better that by far
than have to look on at your outrage day by day:
guests treated to blows, men dragging the serving-women
through our noble house, exploiting them all, no shame!”
Dead quiet. The suitors all fell silent, hushed.
358 At last Damastor’s son Agelaus rose and said,
“Fair enough, my friends; when a man speaks well
360 we have no grounds for wrangling, no cause for abuse.
Hands off this stranger! Or any other servant
in King Odysseus’ palace. But now a word
of friendly advice for Telemachus and his mother —
here’s hoping it proves congenial to them both.
So long as your hearts still kept a spark alive
that Odysseus would return —that great, deep man —
who could blame you, playing the waiting game at home
and holding off the suitors? The better course, it’s true.
What if Odysseus had returned, had made it home at last?
370 But now it’s clear as day —the man will come no more.
So go, Telemachus, sit with your mother, coax her
to wed the best man here, the one who offers most,
so you can have and hold your father’s estate,
eating and drinking here, your mind at peace
while mother plays the wife in another’s house.”
The young prince, keeping his poise, replied,
“I swear by Zeus, Agelaus, by all my father suffered —
dead, no doubt, or wandering far from Ithaca these days —
I don’t delay my mother’s marriage, not a moment,
380 I press her to wed the man who takes her heart.
I’ll shower her myself with boundless gifts.
But I shrink from driving mother from our house,
issuing harsh commands against her will.
God forbid it ever comes to that!”
So he vowed
and Athena set off uncontrollable laughter in the suitors,
crazed them out of their minds —mad, hysterical laughter
seemed to break from the jaws of strangers, not their own,
and the meat they were eating oozed red with blood —
tears flooded their eyes, hearts possessed by grief.
390 The inspired seer Theoclymenus wailed out in their midst,
“Poor men, what terror is this that overwhelms you so?
Night shrouds your heads, your faces, down to your knees —
cries of mourning are bursting into fire —cheeks rivering tears —
the walls and the handsome crossbeams dripping dank with blood!
395 Ghosts, look, thronging the entrance, thronging the court,
go trooping down to the world of death and darkness!
The sun is blotted out of the sky —look there —
a lethal mist spreads all across the earth!”
At that
they all broke into peals of laughter aimed at the seer —
400 Polybus’ son Eurymachus braying first and foremost,
“Our guest just in from abroad, the man is raving!
Quick, my boys, hustle him out of the house,
into the meeting grounds, the light of day —
everything here he thinks is dark as night!”
“Eurymachus,” the inspired prophet countered,
“when I want your escort, I’ll ask for it myself.
I have eyes and ears, and both my feet, still,
and a head that’s fairly sound,
nothing to be ashamed of. These will do
to take me past those doors . . .
410 Oh I can see it now —
the disaster closing on you all! There’s no escaping it,
no way out —not for a single one of you suitors,
/> wild reckless fools, plotting outrage here,
the halls of Odysseus, great and strong as a god!”
With that he marched out of the sturdy house
and went home to Piraeus, the host who warmed him in.
Now all the suitors, trading their snide glances, started
heckling Telemachus, made a mockery of his guests.
One or another brash young gallant scoffed,
420 “Telemachus, no one’s more unlucky with his guests!”
“Look what your man dragged in —this mangy tramp
scraping for bread and wine!”
“Not fit for good hard work,
the bag of bones —”
“A useless dead weight on the land!”
“And then this charlatan up and apes the prophet.”
“Take it from me —you’ll be better off by far —
toss your friends in a slave-ship —”
“Pack them off
427 to Sicily, fast —they’ll fetch you one sweet price!”
So they jeered, but the prince paid no attention . . .
silent, eyes riveted on his father, always waiting
430 the moment he’d lay hands on that outrageous mob.
And all the while Icarius’ daughter, wise Penelope,
had placed her carved chair within earshot, at the door,
so she could catch each word they uttered in the hall.
Laughing rowdily, men prepared their noonday meal,
succulent, rich —they’d butchered quite a herd.
But as for supper, what could be less enticing
than what a goddess and a powerful man
would spread before them soon? A groaning feast —
for they’d been first to plot their vicious crimes.
BOOK TWENTY-ONE
Odysseus Strings His Bow
The time had come. The goddess Athena with her blazing eyes
inspired Penelope, Icarius’ daughter, wary, poised,
to set the bow and the gleaming iron axes out
before her suitors waiting in Odysseus’ hall —
to test their skill and bring their slaughter on.
Up the steep stairs to her room she climbed
and grasped in a steady hand the curved key —
fine bronze, with ivory haft attached —
and then with her chamber-women made her way
10 to a hidden storeroom, far in the palace depths,
and there they lay, the royal master’s treasures:
bronze, gold and a wealth of hard wrought iron
and there it lay as well . . . his backsprung bow
with its quiver bristling arrows, shafts of pain.
Gifts from the old days, from a friend he’d met
16 in Lacedaemon —Iphitus, Eurytus’ gallant son.
17 Once in Messene the two struck up together,
in sly Ortilochus’ house, that time Odysseus
went to collect a debt the whole realm owed him,
20 for Messenian raiders had lifted flocks from Ithaca,
three hundred head in their oarswept ships, the herdsmen too.
So his father and island elders sent Odysseus off,
a young boy on a mission,
a distant embassy made to right that wrong.
Iphitus went there hunting the stock that he had lost,
a dozen mares still nursing their hardy suckling mules.
The same mares that would prove his certain death
when he reached the son of Zeus, that iron heart,
Heracles —the past master of monstrous works —
30 who killed the man, a guest in his own house.
Brutal. Not a care for the wrathful eyes of god
or rites of hospitality he had spread before him,
no, he dined him, then he murdered him, commandeered
those hard-hoofed mares for the hero’s own grange.
Still on the trail of these when he met Odysseus,
Iphitus gave him the bow his father, mighty Eurytus,
used to wield as a young man, but when he died
in his lofty house he left it to his son.
In turn, Odysseus gave his friend a sharp sword
40 and a rugged spear to mark the start of friendship,
treasured ties that bind. But before they got to know
the warmth of each other’s board, the son of Zeus
had murdered Iphitus, Eurytus’ magnificent son
who gave the prince the bow.
That great weapon —
King Odysseus never took it abroad with him
when he sailed off to war in his long black ships.
He kept it stored away in his stately house,
guarding the memory of a cherished friend,
and only took that bow on hunts at home.
Now,
50 the lustrous queen soon reached the hidden vault
and stopped at the oaken doorsill, work an expert
sanded smooth and trued to the line some years ago,
planting the doorjambs snugly, hanging shining doors.
At once she loosed the thong from around its hook,
55 inserted the key and aiming straight and true,
shot back the bolts —and the rasping doors groaned
as loud as a bull will bellow, champing grass at pasture.
So as the key went home those handsome double doors
rang out now and sprang wide before her.
60 She stepped onto a plank where chests stood tall,
brimming with clothing scented sweet with cedar.
Reaching, tiptoe, lifting the bow down off its peg,
still secure in the burnished case that held it,
down she sank, laying the case across her knees,
and dissolved in tears with a high thin wail
as she drew her husband’s weapon from its sheath . . .
Then, having wept and sobbed to her heart’s content,
off she went to the hall to meet her proud admirers,
cradling her husband’s backsprung bow in her arms,
70 its quiver bristling arrows, shafts of pain.
Her women followed, bringing a chest that held
the bronze and the iron axes, trophies won by the master.
That radiant woman, once she reached her suitors,
drawing her glistening veil across her cheeks,
paused now where a column propped the sturdy roof,
with one of her loyal handmaids stationed either side,
and delivered an ultimatum to her suitors:
“Listen to me, my overbearing friends!
You who plague this palace night and day,
80 drinking, eating us out of house and home
with the lord and master absent, gone so long —
the only excuse that you can offer is your zest
to win me as your bride. So, to arms, my gallants!
Here is the prize at issue, right before you, look —
I set before you the great bow of King Odysseus now!
The hand that can string this bow with greatest ease,
that shoots an arrow clean through all twelve axes —
he is the man I follow, yes, forsaking this house
where I was once a bride, this gracious house
90 so filled with the best that life can offer —
I shall always remember it, that I know . . .
even in my dreams.”
She turned to Eumaeus,
ordered the good swineherd now to set the bow
and the gleaming iron axes out before the suitors.
He broke into tears as he received them, laid them down.
The cowherd wept too, when he saw his master’s bow.
But Antinous wheeled on both and let them have it:
“Yokels, fools —you can’t tell night from day!
You mawkish idiots, why are you sniveling here?
100 You’re st
irring up your mistress! Isn’t she drowned
in grief already? She’s lost her darling husband.
Sit down. Eat in peace, or take your snuffling
out of doors! But leave that bow right here —
our crucial test that makes or breaks us all.
105 No easy game, I wager, to string his polished bow.
Not a soul in the crowd can match Odysseus —
what a man he was . . .
I saw him once, remember him to this day,
though I was young and foolish way back then.”
Smooth talk,
110 but deep in the suitor’s heart his hopes were bent
on stringing the bow and shooting through the axes.
Antinous —fated to be the first man to taste
an arrow whipped from great Odysseus’ hands,
the king he mocked, at ease in the king’s house,
egging comrades on to mock him too.
“Amazing!”
Prince Telemachus waded in with a laugh:
“Zeus up there has robbed me of my wits.
My own dear mother, sensible as she is,
says she’ll marry again, forsake our house,
120 and look at me —laughing for all I’m worth,
giggling like some fool. Step up, my friends!
Here is the prize at issue, right before you, look —
a woman who has no equal now in all Achaean country,
neither in holy Pylos, nor in Argos or Mycenae,
not even Ithaca itself or the loamy mainland.
You know it well. Why sing my mother’s praises?
Come, let the games begin! No dodges, no delays,
no turning back from the stringing of the bow —
we’ll see who wins, we will.
130 I’d even take a crack at the bow myself . . .
If I string it and shoot through all the axes,
I’d worry less if my noble mother left our house
with another man and left me here behind —man enough
at last to win my father’s splendid prizes!”
With that
he leapt to his feet and dropped his bright-red cloak,
slipping the sword and sword-belt off his shoulders.
137 First he planted the axes, digging a long trench,
one for all, and trued them all to a line
then tamped the earth to bed them. Wonder took
140 the revelers looking on: his work so firm, precise,
though he’d never seen the axes ranged before.
He stood at the threshold, poised to try the bow . . .
Three times he made it shudder, straining to bend it,
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