The Odyssey(Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

by Robert Fagles

  with your own eyes, all you dreamed of, all your days!

  He’s here —Odysseus —he’s come home, at long last!

  He’s killed the suitors, swaggering young brutes

  who plagued his house, wolfed his cattle down,

  10 rode roughshod over his son!”

  “Dear old nurse,” wary Penelope replied,

  “the gods have made you mad. They have that power,

  putting lunacy into the clearest head around

  or setting a half-wit on the path to sense.

  They’ve unhinged you, and you were once so sane.

  Why do you mock me? —haven’t I wept enough? —

  telling such wild stories, interrupting my sleep,

  sweet sleep that held me, sealed my eyes just now.

  Not once have I slept so soundly since the day

  20 Odysseus sailed away to see that cursed city . . .

  21 Destroy, I call it —I hate to say its name!

  Now down you go. Back to your own quarters.

  If any other woman of mine had come to me,

  rousing me out of sleep with such a tale,

  I’d have her bundled back to her room in pain.

  It’s only your old gray head that spares you that!”

  “Never” —the fond old nurse kept pressing on —

  “dear child, I’d never mock you! No, it’s all true,

  he’s here —Odysseus —he’s come home, just as I tell you!

  30 He’s the stranger they all manhandled in the hall.

  Telemachus knew he was here, for days and days,

  but he knew enough to hide his father’s plans

  so he could pay those vipers back in kind!”

  Penelope’s heart burst in joy, she leapt from bed,

  her eyes streaming tears, she hugged the old nurse

  and cried out with an eager, winging word,

  “Please, dear one, give me the whole story.

  If he’s really home again, just as you tell me,

  how did he get those shameless suitors in his clutches? —

  40 single-handed, braving an army always camped inside.”

  “I have no idea,” the devoted nurse replied.

  “I didn’t see it, I didn’t ask —all I heard

  was the choking groans of men cut down in blood.

  We crouched in terror —a dark nook of our quarters —

  all of us locked tight behind those snug doors

  till your boy Telemachus came and called me out —

  his father rushed him there to do just that. And then

  I found Odysseus in the thick of slaughtered corpses;

  there he stood and all around him, over the beaten floor,

  50 the bodies sprawled in heaps, lying one on another . . .

  How it would have thrilled your heart to see him —

  splattered with bloody filth, a lion with his kill!

  And now they’re all stacked at the courtyard gates —

  he’s lit a roaring fire,

  he’s purifying the house with cleansing fumes

  and he’s sent me here to bring you back to him.

  Follow me down! So now, after all the years of grief,

  you two can embark, loving hearts, along the road to joy.

  Look, your dreams, put off so long, come true at last —

  60 he’s back alive, home at his hearth, and found you,

  found his son still here. And all those suitors

  who did him wrong, he’s paid them back, he has,

  right in his own house!”

  “Hush, dear woman,”

  guarded Penelope cautioned her at once.

  “Don’t laugh, don’t cry in triumph —not yet.

  You know how welcome the sight of him would be

  to all in the house, and to me most of all

  and the son we bore together.

  69 But the story can’t be true, not as you tell it,

  70 no, it must be a god who’s killed our brazen friends —

  up in arms at their outrage, heartbreaking crimes.

  They’d no regard for any man on earth —

  good or bad —who chanced to come their way. So,

  thanks to their reckless work they die their deaths.

  Odysseus? Far from Achaea now, he’s lost all hope

  of coming home . . . he’s lost and gone himself.”

  “Child,” the devoted old nurse protested,

  “what nonsense you let slip through your teeth.

  Here’s your husband, warming his hands at his own hearth,

  80 here —and you, you say he’ll never come home again,

  always the soul of trust! All right, this too —

  I’ll give you a sign, a proof that’s plain as day.

  That scar, made years ago by a boar’s white tusk —

  I spotted the scar myself, when I washed his feet,

  and I tried to tell you, ah, but he, the crafty rascal,

  clamped his hand on my mouth —I couldn’t say a word.

  Follow me down now. I’ll stake my life on it:

  if I am lying to you —

  kill me with a thousand knives of pain!”

  90 “Dear old nurse,” composed Penelope responded,

  “deep as you are, my friend, you’ll find it hard

  to plumb the plans of the everlasting gods.

  All the same, let’s go and join my son

  so I can see the suitors lying dead

  and see . . . the one who killed them.”

  With that thought

  Penelope started down from her lofty room, her heart

  in turmoil, torn . . . should she keep her distance,

  probe her husband? Or rush up to the man at once

  and kiss his head and cling to both his hands?

  100 As soon as she stepped across the stone threshold,

  slipping in, she took a seat at the closest wall

  and radiant in the firelight, faced Odysseus now.

  There he sat, leaning against the great central column,

  eyes fixed on the ground, waiting, poised for whatever words

  his hardy wife might say when she caught sight of him.

  A long while she sat in silence . . . numbing wonder

  filled her heart as her eyes explored his face.

  One moment he seemed . . . Odysseus, to the life —

  the next, no, he was not the man she knew,

  110 a huddled mass of rags was all she saw.

  “Oh mother,” Telemachus reproached her,

  111 “cruel mother, you with your hard heart!

  Why do you spurn my father so —why don’t you

  sit beside him, engage him, ask him questions?

  What other wife could have a spirit so unbending?

  Holding back from her husband, home at last for her

  after bearing twenty years of brutal struggle —

  your heart was always harder than a rock!”

  “My child,”

  Penelope, well-aware, explained, “I’m stunned with wonder,

  120 powerless. Cannot speak to him, ask him questions,

  121 look him in the eyes . . . But if he is truly

  Odysseus, home at last, make no mistake:

  we two will know each other, even better —

  124 we two have secret signs,

  known to us both but hidden from the world.”

  Odysseus, long-enduring, broke into a smile

  and turned to his son with pointed, winging words:

  “Leave your mother here in the hall to test me

  as she will. She soon will know me better.

  130 Now because I am filthy, wear such grimy rags,

  she spurns me —your mother still can’t bring herself

  to believe I am her husband.

  But you and I,

  put heads together. What’s our best defense?

  When someone kills a lone man in the realm


  who leaves behind him no great band of avengers,

  still the killer flees, goodbye to kin and country.

  But we brought down the best of the island’s princes,

  the pillars of Ithaca. Weigh it well, I urge you.”

  “Look to it all yourself now, father,” his son

  140 deferred at once. “You are the best on earth,

  they say, when it comes to mapping tactics.

  142 No one, no mortal man, can touch you there.

  But we’re behind you, hearts intent on battle,

  nor do I think you’ll find us short on courage,

  long as our strength will last.”

  “Then here’s our plan,”

  the master of tactics said. “I think it’s best.

  First go and wash, and pull fresh tunics on

  and tell the maids in the hall to dress well too.

  And let the inspired bard take up his ringing lyre

  150 and lead off for us all a dance so full of heart

  that whoever hears the strains outside the gates —

  a passerby on the road, a neighbor round about —

  will think it’s a wedding-feast that’s under way.

  No news of the suitors’ death must spread through town

  till we have slipped away to our own estates,

  our orchard green with trees. There we’ll see

  what winning strategy Zeus will hand us then.”

  They hung on his words and moved to orders smartly.

  First they washed and pulled fresh tunics on,

  160 the women arrayed themselves —the inspired bard

  struck up his resounding lyre and stirred in all

  a desire for dance and song, the lovely lilting beat,

  till the great house echoed round to the measured tread

  of dancing men in motion, women sashed and lithe.

  And whoever heard the strains outside would say,

  “A miracle —someone’s married the queen at last!”

  “One of her hundred suitors.”

  “That callous woman,

  too faithless to keep her lord and master’s house

  to the bitter end —”

  “Till he came sailing home.”

  170 So they’d say, blind to what had happened:

  the great-hearted Odysseus was home again at last.

  The maid Eurynome bathed him, rubbed him down with oil

  and drew around him a royal cape and choice tunic too.

  And Athena crowned the man with beauty, head to foot,

  made him taller to all eyes, his build more massive,

  yes, and down from his brow the great goddess

  ran his curls like thick hyacinth clusters

  full of blooms. As a master craftsman washes

  gold over beaten silver —a man the god of fire

  180 and Queen Athena trained in every fine technique —

  and finishes off his latest effort, handsome work . . .

  so she lavished splendor over his head and shoulders now.

  He stepped from his bath, glistening like a god,

  and back he went to the seat that he had left

  and facing his wife, declared,

  “Strange woman! So hard —the gods of Olympus

  made you harder than any other woman in the world!

  What other wife could have a spirit so unbending?

  Holding back from her husband, home at last for her

  190 after bearing twenty years of brutal struggle.

  Come, nurse, make me a bed, I’ll sleep alone.

  192 She has a heart of iron in her breast.”

  “Strange man,”

  wary Penelope said. “I’m not so proud, so scornful,

  nor am I overwhelmed by your quick change . . .

  195 You look —how well I know —the way he looked,

  setting sail from Ithaca years ago

  aboard the long-oared ship.

  Come, Eurycleia,

  move the sturdy bedstead out of our bridal chamber —

  that room the master built with his own hands.

  200 Take it out now, sturdy bed that it is,

  and spread it deep with fleece,

  blankets and lustrous throws to keep him warm.”

  Putting her husband to the proof —but Odysseus

  blazed up in fury, lashing out at his loyal wife:

  205 “Woman —your words, they cut me to the core!

  Who could move my bed? Impossible task,

  even for some skilled craftsman —unless a god

  came down in person, quick to lend a hand,

  lifted it out with ease and moved it elsewhere.

  210 Not a man on earth, not even at peak strength,

  would find it easy to prise it up and shift it, no,

  a great sign, a hallmark lies in its construction.

  I know, I built it myself —no one else . . .

  There was a branching olive-tree inside our court,

  grown to its full prime, the bole like a column, thickset.

  Around it I built my bedroom, finished off the walls

  with good tight stonework, roofed it over soundly

  and added doors, hung well and snugly wedged.

  Then I lopped the leafy crown of the olive,

  220 clean-cutting the stump bare from roots up,

  planing it round with a bronze smoothing-adze —

  I had the skill —I shaped it plumb to the line to make

  my bedpost, bored the holes it needed with an auger.

  Working from there I built my bed, start to finish,

  I gave it ivory inlays, gold and silver fittings,

  wove the straps across it, oxhide gleaming red.

  There’s our secret sign, I tell you, our life story!

  228 Does the bed, my lady, still stand planted firm? —

  I don’t know —or has someone chopped away

  that olive-trunk and hauled our bedstead off?”

  230 Living proof —

  Penelope felt her knees go slack, her heart surrender,

  recognizing the strong clear signs Odysseus offered.

  She dissolved in tears, rushed to Odysseus, flung her arms

  around his neck and kissed his head and cried out,

  “Odysseus —don’t flare up at me now, not you,

  always the most understanding man alive!

  The gods, it was the gods who sent us sorrow —

  they grudged us both a life in each other’s arms

  from the heady zest of youth to the stoop of old age.

  240 But don’t fault me, angry with me now because I failed,

  at the first glimpse, to greet you, hold you, so . . .

  242 In my heart of hearts I always cringed with fear

  some fraud might come, beguile me with his talk;

  the world is full of the sort,

  cunning ones who plot their own dark ends.

  Remember Helen of Argos, Zeus’s daughter —

  would she have sported so in a stranger’s bed

  if she had dreamed that Achaea’s sons were doomed

  to fight and die to bring her home again?

  250 Some god spurred her to do her shameless work.

  Not till then did her mind conceive that madness,

  blinding madness that caused her anguish, ours as well.

  But now, since you have revealed such overwhelming proof —

  the secret sign of our bed, which no one’s ever seen

  255 but you and I and a single handmaid, Actoris,

  the servant my father gave me when I came,

  who kept the doors of our room you built so well . . .

  you’ve conquered my heart, my hard heart, at last!”

  The more she spoke, the more a deep desire for tears

  260 welled up inside his breast —he wept as he held the wife

  he loved, the soul of loyalty, in his arms at last.

  Joy, warm as
the joy that shipwrecked sailors feel

  when they catch sight of land —Poseidon has struck

  their well-rigged ship on the open sea with gale winds

  and crushing walls of waves, and only a few escape, swimming,

  struggling out of the frothing surf to reach the shore,

  their bodies crusted with salt but buoyed up with joy

  as they plant their feet on solid ground again,

  spared a deadly fate. So joyous now to her

  270 the sight of her husband, vivid in her gaze,

  that her white arms, embracing his neck

  would never for a moment let him go . . .

  Dawn with her rose-red fingers might have shone

  upon their tears, if with her glinting eyes

  Athena had not thought of one more thing.

  She held back the night, and night lingered long

  at the western edge of the earth, while in the east

  she reined in Dawn of the golden throne at Ocean’s banks,

  commanding her not to yoke the windswift team that brings men light,

  280 Blaze and Aurora, the young colts that race the Morning on.

  Yet now Odysseus, seasoned veteran, said to his wife,

  “Dear woman . . . we have still not reached the end

  of all our trials. One more labor lies in store —

  boundless, laden with danger, great and long,

  and I must brave it out from start to finish.

  So the ghost of Tiresias prophesied to me,

  the day that I went down to the House of Death

  to learn our best route home, my comrades’ and my own.

  But come, let’s go to bed, dear woman —at long last

  290 delight in sleep, delight in each other, come!”

  “If it’s bed you want,” reserved Penelope replied,

  “it’s bed you’ll have, whenever the spirit moves you,

  now that the gods have brought you home again

  to native land, your grand and gracious house.

  But since you’ve alluded to it,

  since a god has put it in your mind,

  please, tell me about this trial still to come.

  I’m bound to learn of it later, I am sure —

  what’s the harm if I hear of it tonight?”

  “Still so strange,”

  300 Odysseus, the old master of stories, answered.

  “Why again, why force me to tell you all?

  Well, tell I shall. I’ll hide nothing now.

  But little joy it will bring you, I’m afraid,

  as little joy for me.

  The prophet said