The <I>Odyssey</I>
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♦ one against many? Athene came to him close by.
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Down from the heavens, she’d taken the form of a woman
standing over his head and asking him shortly,
“Why are you still awake? Most hapless of all men!
Your house is in fact right here, your wife’s in your own house
and anyone surely would want your child for his own son.”
Full of designs Odysseus answered by saying,
“Goddess, it’s true. You’ve said everything rightly.
Yet in my heart and mind I’m pondering one thing:
how can I lay my hands on pride-swollen suitors
being alone? They’re always crowding inside here.
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My head keeps pondering more boldly what’s later:
even if you and Zeus would help me to kill them,
where could I run from their families? Mull what I ask you.”
Rustle Their Bulls
The glow-eyed Goddess Athene answered by saying,
“Still stubborn? Others rely on some frailer,
death-bound friend who lacks my knowledge of good plans,
but I myself am your Goddess! Through all of your struggles
I guard and watch you. Yes and I’ll openly tell you,
even if fifty death-bound men were in ambush,
eager to kill us both on a field of the War-God,
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still we could rustle all their cattle and fat sheep!
So now let sleep take hold. It’s hard to be watchful,
awake all night. You’re emerging from trials already.”
Sleep for the Man, Not for the Woman
She spoke that way and poured out sleep on his eyelids.
Bright as a Goddess herself, she left for Olumpos.
Sleep overtook him, freeing his heart from its worries,
relaxing his man’s frame. But his knowing and caring
wife woke up and cried. She sat on the soft bed.
In time when her heart had taken its fill of crying,
this brightest of women prayed to Artemis foremost:
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“Queenly Goddess, Zeus’s daughter, if only
your arrow would lodge in my breast, taking my life right
here and now! Or let me be seized by a whirlwind,
hurried away and down some shadowy byway
or thrown in the mouth of that backward flow, Okeanos,
♦ the way a whirlwind carried Pandareos’s daughters.
Gods had killed their dear parents and left them
orphans at home, cared for by bright Aphrodite,
helped by her cheese, good wine and the sweetness of honey.
Here gave them more wisdom and beauty than any
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woman’s and hallowed Artemis gave them their full height.
Athene taught them her skills, their wonderful handcraft.
But after bright Aphrodite went to the heights of Olumpos
to ask for a flowery wedding at last for the daughters—
Zeus revels in thunder there and knows about all things,
both the luck and the lack of luck for men who are death-bound—
Windstorm-Powers meanwhile were snaring the daughters.
They gave them shortly to hateful Avengers to deal with.
Longing for the Underworld
“If Gods with Olumpos homes erased me the same way,
if Artemis, beautifully braided, struck me and helped me
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go under the hateful earth with the face of Odysseus,
then I might never delight the mind of a lesser
man. But so much harm is bearable, even
crying each day, my heart crowded by troubles,
if only sleep takes you at night and makes you forget things,
all your rights and wrongs, when it covers your eyelids.
Truth-Filled Dreams
“But now some Power sends me painfully bad dreams.
Again tonight my man’s likeness lay alongside me—
his looks when he left with the army. My heart was delighted,
I thought it was not some dream but truly a vision.”
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She stopped: Dawn was arriving fast on her gold throne.
Godlike Odysseus heard the sound of her crying
and wondered a while. In his heart she seemed to be standing
close to his own face and to know him already.
New Signs from Zeus
He gathered the wooly bedclothes, all he had slept on,
and placed them on chairs in the hall. He carried the bull’s-hide
outdoors and set it down. He prayed to Zeus with his hands raised:
“Fatherly Zeus, if you Gods have wanted to bring me
home by land and sea after you mangled me so much,
let someone awake inside the house, tell me an omen.
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Outside too, let Zeus show me his own sign.”
He prayed and was heard by Zeus, God of the great plans.
Promptly he thundered broadly from glowing Olumpos,
high in the clouds. Godlike Odysseus felt glad.
A Frail Woman’s Prayer
A woman also spoke from the house like an omen.
She’d milled nearby where a shepherd of people had set up
mills where twelve women in all had been grinding
barley and wheat into flour—the marrow of good men.
Having milled their grains the others were sleeping.
The frailest however had not yet finished her labor.
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She stopped her mill and spoke, a sign for her master:
“Fatherly Zeus, Lord of Gods and us humans,
what loud thunder you send from the star-studded heavens
and nowhere a cloud! It’s a sign you’re showing to someone.
Poor as I am, make real this word that I say now:
today let suitors all sit down and relish
their last meal, glad in Odysseus’s hall for the last time.
Those men have loosened my knees with heart-hurting labor,
this milling of grain. Let them dine for the last time.”
She spoke that way as an omen that cheered godlike Odysseus
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like Zeus’s thunder. He planned to punish the offenders.
How Is the Stranger Treated?
Other maids in Odysseus’s beautiful household
started to gather and build a tireless hearth-fire.
Telemakhos rose from his bed, a man like a God-man:
he dressed and dangled a sharp sword from a shoulder,
strapped on his oil-smooth feet two beautiful sandals
and took up a strong spear pointed with sharp bronze.
Then he walked to the threshold and asked Eurukleia,
“Dear aunt, have you honored the guest in our household
with food and a bed? He’s not still lying uncared for?
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My Mother works that way, for all of her foresight:
she prizes a lesser, earth-born stranger at random
but sends the greater man away without honor.”
A thoughtful Eurukleia gave him an answer:
“My child, don’t blame a woman now who is blameless.
The stranger sat here drinking wine as long as he wanted.
He said he no longer craved food when she asked him.
Then when your guest was thinking of rest and a night’s sleep,
the lady told her handmaids to spread out some bedding.
Yet like a man entirely wretched and luckless,
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he wanted no fine blankets or bedding to lie on,
only the untanned hide of a bull and some sheepskins.
He slept in the forecourt. We put a cloak on his body.”
Telemakhos, after she’d spoken, went through the great hall
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ding the spear. Two white dogs followed him closely.
He walked to the assembly place among well-greaved Akhaians.
Building the Feast
Now a goddess-like woman called to the handmaids,
Eurukleia, the daughter of Ops, the son of Peisenor:
“Hurry and move, you maids, sweep up the whole house!
Dampen the floor, throw some purple cloths on the well-made
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chairs and the rest of you wipe of all of the tables
with sponges. Wash the mixing bowls, the double-
handled and well-worked goblets. Go for some water,
be off to the spring and quickly carry it back now!
The suitors won’t be away from the hall much longer,
they’ll come back soon: it’s feasting time for us all here.”
She spoke that way, they heard her well and obeyed her.
Twenty handmaids went to the spring with its dark depths.
The others labored deftly and fast in the great hall.
Anger and Outrage Still
The Akhaians’ helpers came in next and they promptly
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and skillfully chopped up wood. Shortly the women
came from the spring, the swineherd coming behind them,
driving three of his boars, the best of the whole herd.
He let them feed right there in the beautiful courtyard
but spoke to Odysseus himself, asking him gently,
“Stranger, are all the Akhaians treating you better?
Or lacking esteem for you now as before in the great hall?”
An answer came from Odysseus, full of his good plans:
“Eumaios, if only the Gods would punish their outrage!
They form such reckless and high-handed plots in another
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man’s house. They have no shame, not even a portion.”
More Taunts
Then as the two men spoke that way with each other
Melantheus walked up closely, the herder of goat-flocks,
driving nannies to town, the best in the whole herd—
food for the suitors. A pair of goatherds had joined him.
Soon as he tethered goats in the echoing courtyard
he spoke again to Odysseus, taunting him boldly,
“Still around, stranger, to pester the whole house
and wheedle from men? Not outdoors and a ways off?
I’m thinking, all in all, the two of us won’t be
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parting without a taste of our fists for your messy
wheedling. Then too there are other Akhaian dinners.”
Odysseus, full of his own plans, gave him no answer.
He shook his head quietly, brooding on evil.
A Wish for Better Luck
A third man came, Philoitios, a master of good men.
He drove a barren cow and fatted goats for the suitors,
brought from the mainland by boatmen ferrying others—
men they’d boarded—whoever arrived there and asked them.
He tied the animals well in the echoing courtyard,
came up close himself to the swineherd and asked him,
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“Who’s the stranger, swineherd, newly arrived here
in our own house? What clan does he say he belongs to?
Where are his bloodlines, the farming land of his fathers?
He looks doomed—though a lord or king with a good build.
The Gods, whenever they weave their anguish, can lower
a man who’s often wandered—yes and a king too.”
He stopped and approached the beggar, gave him his right hand
and spoke to him now, the words with a feathery swiftness,
“Fatherly stranger, be well. May all of your future
luck be good, though now you have plenty of hardship.
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“You Zeus, our Father, no other God is more deadly.
You pity no man, not even a man you have fathered.
You mix us all in pain, trouble and sorrow.
“I started sweating, stranger, my eyes teared when I saw you
there recalling Odysseus. He too could be wearing
rags like those, I think, roaming among men—
indeed if he’s still alive and gazing at sunlight.
“But now if he’s dead and gone to the household of Aides,
I am lost. Blameless Odysseus! You made me your cowherd
when I was a child in Kephallenian country.
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Now your herds are countless. No one was better
at breeding wide-browed cattle—you raised them like cornstalks!
To Run Off or Stay
“But suitors tell me to drive them here to be eaten.
They don’t care for the man’s son in his great hall.
They don’t tremble at Gods’ vengeance, no, they are only
eager to split up the wealth of a ruler who’s long gone.
So this heart in my own chest has been turning
matters often. It’s very wrong, with Odysseus’s
son in the house, to take my herd to some outland,