The <I>Odyssey</I>
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way back to the hall. Your age has helped you in one way.”
It’s All True
Her well-loved nurse Eurukleia answered by saying,
“Dear child, I’m not fooling, everything’s quite true.
Odysseus came, he’s home, just as I told you—
the stranger they all mistreated down in the great hall.
Telemakhos knew him a long time as Odysseus
but charily kept the plans of his father in hiding
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until he could take revenge on the brutish, overproud suitors.”
More Hard Questions
She stopped and her lady gladly jumped out of bed there
to hug her old nurse. Tears fell from her eyelids.
She spoke to her then, the words with a feathery swiftness,
“Ah but if only, dear aunt! Tell me the whole truth:
indeed if the man came home the way you have told me,
how could he lay hands on those brazen suitors
being alone? They’ve always crowded inside here.”
The well-loved nurse Eurukleia answered by saying,
“I asked and saw nothing. Groans of the dying
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were all I heard. We sat in the inmost well-built
room in dread, the doors tightly fitted and holding
until your son Telemakhos came from the great hall
and called me—his father had sent him forward to call me.
Then I found Odysseus, circled by dead men.
They sprawled on the hard floor, he stood there among them,
piled on each other. The sight of the man would have warmed you:
smeared with blood and grime, he looked like a lion.
The corpses are all together now by the courtyard
gate and Odysseus purges the beautiful palace
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♦ with sulfur. He built a great fire and sent me to call you.
Follow me! Both of your loving hearts should be marching
now into joy, for all the harm you have suffered.
Today your endless longing is ended at long last:
the man is alive at your hearth, finding you both well,
his wife and son in the hall. The suitors who caused him
trouble are all avenged right here in your household.”
Some God Must Have Done This
Penelopeia was thoughtful still and she answered,
“Dear aunt, no boasting yet: no chortling too soon.
You know how welcome his sight would be in the great hall
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to everyone—mainly to me and the son born to us both here.
Yet your story is not true, not as you tell it:
rather some deathless God enraged by their brashness
killed the high-born suitors for all of their wrongful,
heart-stinging acts. They honored nobody walking
the wide earth, good or bad, whoever approached them.
They suffered harm for their recklessness. Still my Odysseus
lost his homecoming—lost himself—far from Akhaia.”
The Scar
The well-loved nurse Eurukleia answered by saying,
“My child, what talk gets over the wall of your front teeth!
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Your husband’s inside at the hearth and you say he will never
arrive back home! You heart was always without faith.
Come on then, I’ll tell you another sign that is quite clear:
the scar that a boar’s white tusk caused in the old days.
I saw it washing his feet. I wanted to speak out
and tell you; he clapped his hand on my mouth and stopped me
from saying a word. Your man’s mind is the shrewdest.
“So follow me now. I’ll make a bet with my own life:
kill me if I’ve been fooling—and make it the wretchedest killing.”
Penelopeia thoughtfully gave her an answer.
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“Dear aunt, it’s hard to grasp the planning and power,
for all your shrewdness, of Gods born to be always.
But let’s go down to my son in order to witness
all those wooers dead, and the man who killed them.”
Tense Choices
♦ She stopped and walked from her room, mulling a great deal
at heart, whether to question the man she loved from a ways off
or go to his side, kiss his head and cling to his two hands.
Soon as the lady crossed the stone threshold and came in
she sat right down, bright in the hearth-light facing Odysseus
but close to the farther wall. Her husband, next to a tall post,
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sat there gazing down, waiting to see if his able
wife would speak now that she saw with her own eyes.
She sat quite still for a long time. Wonder had entered
her heart for at times her eyes would go to his whole face,
then she found him unknown with foul rags on his body.
A Rebuke
Telemakhos wanted to scold her, telling her outright,
“Mother, hardly a mother, your heart so unfeeling!
Why so far from my Father? Why don’t you sit down
close to the man and talk to him, ask him your questions?
No other woman’s like you, your heart so steadfast,
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holding back from the man with all of his great pain—
home in the twentieth year in the land of his Fathers.
But then your heart has always been harder than granite.”
Husband and Wife Secrets
Penelopeia thoughtfully gave him an answer.
“My son, this heart in my own breast is astonished.
I hardly can say a word to ask him a question
or look him straight in the face. Yet if he’s truly
Odysseus home at last, then certainly we two
will know each other better, having our own signs,
known by us both and kept in hiding from others.”
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Those were her words. Long-suffering, godlike Odysseus
smiled and promptly told Telemakhos—words with a feathery swiftness—
“Telemakhos, let your mother question and try me
now in the great hall. Soon she’ll know it all better.
But now I’m grimy, the clothes are foul on my body,
so she scorns me. She won’t yet call me her own man.
The Larger Danger Now Ithaka
“But you and I should ponder: what is our best course?
When someone murders a single man in a country,
a man without great numbers behind him to help out,
still the murderer leaves his brothers and homeland.
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We have killed mainstays, the best by far in the city,
the young on Ithaka. That’s what I tell you to ponder.”
Telemakhos promptly gave him a sensible answer.
“See for yourself, dear Father: yours are the best plans
among all men’s, they say. No one could ever
rival your counsel, no other man who is death-bound.
We’ll follow you gladly ourselves. No one is lacking
strength or prowess, I’d say, so long as we’re able.”
Full of designs, Odysseus answered by saying,
“So I’ll tell you myself what looks like the best way.
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First you should all take baths and put on your tunics.
Tell the maids of the hall to pick out the right clothes.
Then our God-gifted bard holding his clear-toned
lyre in hand should lead us in dancing we all love.
Those who can hear outside, whether they’re walking
♦ the road or living around us, will say it’s a wedding.
That way rumors of dead suitors will not spread
bro
adly through town before we go to our densely
wooded and planted farms. There and then we will ponder
whatever counsel Zeus of Olumpos will hand us.”
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Sounds of a Wedding
He spoke that way, they heard him well and obeyed him.
First they all took baths and put on their tunics.
Handmaids adorned themselves. The God-gifted poet
took up his hollow lyre and awakened their longing
for honeyed song, for handsome and faultless dancing.
The whole great house now echoed around with a playful
stamping of men and maids in beautiful dance-clothes.
People who listened outside the house could be saying,
“Surely a man’s married the queen.” “She often was courted.”
“An unkind lady. She’s not holding out for the husband
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she married.” “Or keeping his great house till he came home.”
They’d talk that way but no one knew what had happened.
Like Gold on Silver
Great-hearted Odysseus, now in his own house,
was washed by Eurunome. Then the housekeeper rubbed him
with oil and tossed a beautiful mantle and tunic around him.
Athene lavished grace on his head and she made him
look more muscled and taller. She managed his thick hair:
it curled and fell from his head like hyacinth blossoms.
The way a craftsman skillfully overlays silver
with gold when he’s trained by Hephaistos and Pallas Athene
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in all the arts, and the work he masters is graceful—
she poured grace on his head and shoulders the same way.
He looked like a deathless God as he came from the bathroom.
Then he sat once more on the chair that he rose from.
A Husband in Pain
Facing his wife, at last he spoke to her outright:
“You strange power! Gods with homes on Olumpos
made your heart less yielding than all other women’s.
No other woman’s like you, your heart so steadfast,
holding back from your man with all of his great pain,
home in the twentieth year in the land of his Fathers.
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“Come on, good aunt. Make me a bed and I’ll lie here
myself tonight. This lady’s heart is of iron.”
The Key Test
Mind-full Penelopeia answered by saying,
“You strange power, I’m not so proud or uncaring;
I’m not so amazed. I do know well what you looked like
leaving Ithaka, sailing your ship with its long oars.
“Come on then, Eurukleia, make up the thick bed
outside my well-built room, the bed Odysseus crafted.
Set out the bed thickly: throw on some covers
of lambs’ wool with cloaks and glistening blankets.”
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The Olive-Tree Bedpost
♦ She spoke that way to test her man. But Odysseus
bridled and told his wife, who was knowing and careful,
“Woman, your words are really galling my own heart.
Who settled my old bed elsewhere? Even a greatly
skilled worker would find that hard. Maybe a God could,
arriving there and wanting blithely to settle it elsewhere.
But men? Not even the strongest man in his best prime
could simply move it. That bed was built as a great sign
worked out all by myself: nobody helped me.
“An olive with long leaves had grown in the courtyard,
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mature and hardy. Its trunk resembled a column’s.
I built my bedroom around it until I was all done:
my stones fit snugly, overhead it was well-roofed,
then I added joints and doors that would close tight.
I cut off shoots, the long-leafed hair of the olive,
and trimmed its trunk from the ground up, smoothing around it,
skillful with bronze. I scraped it true to a string-line,
that fine-honed bedpost, and drilled it all with an auger.
After that start I planed the bed until I was quite done,
inlaying it all with gold, ivory and silver.
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Then I stretched the ox-hide bed-straps, glowingly purple.
“So now I’ve explained that sign. But whether my bedstead’s
firmly standing I don’t know, woman, or now some
man’s placed it elsewhere, cutting the olive-tree trunk down.”
Embracing at Last
Her knees and heart loosened now when he’d spoken.
Knowing the signs Odysseus spoke of had not moved,
she ran up straight to him, crying, throwing her hands out,
circling his neck and kissing his head as she told him,
“Don’t be angry, Odysseus! You have the most sense
of all good men. The Gods joined us to sorrow,
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chafing because we two might stay with each other,