by Homer
enjoy our youth and arrive at the threshold of old age.
But don’t be irked with me now, bitter or vengeful
because at first, when I saw you, I failed to be loving.
This heart in my caring breast was always afraid some
man might arrive and unfold lies to cajole me
since plenty of men wrongfully plot for their own gain.
♦ Not even the daughter of Zeus, Helen of Argos,
would ever have made love in a foreigner’s bedroom
had she known the Ares-like sons of Akhaians
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would take her back to the well-loved home of her fathers.
But surely a God aroused her to act in that shameful
way for she’d never kept in her heart before such a hapless
urge. All our sorrow came first from that sorrow.
“But now you have plainly spelled the signs of our bed out.
No one else has ever seen our bed in the same way,
only you and I and one of my handmaids:
Aktor’s daughter, my Father’s gift when I came here,
guarded the tightly fitted doors of the bedroom.
You’ve truly prevailed on my heart, unkind as it might be.”
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The Sight of Land for a Swimmer at Sea
Her words provoked still more his yearning to cry out.
He wept and embraced his wife, a knowing and caring
♦ woman, his heart’s joy. So land is a welcome
sight to a swimmer whose well-built ship has been ravaged
at sea by Poseidon, chased by heavy waves and a high wind.
The few who escape from the hoary rollers by swimming
ashore with plenty of salt encrusting their bodies
walk on the land with joy—they’ve run from that havoc.
The woman gazed at her welcome husband the same way,
not letting her white arms ease at all from his neck yet.
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Now the rose-fingered Dawn would have shone on their crying
had not Athene, the glow-eyed Goddess, thought of a new plan.
She kept the long night in the west and she held back
golden Dawn by the Ocean’s flow; she would not let
her quick-hoofed team be yoked—Phaethon, Lampon,
the colts of Dawn that carry her splendor to people.
To Bed
Full of designs, Odysseus spoke to his dear wife.
“My woman, we haven’t arrived at the end of our trials,
not all, not yet. The work ahead is unmeasured,
hard and plentiful. I must wind up the whole thing
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because the soul of Teiresies prophesied just that.
I traveled down one day to the household of Aides
to ask for the right way home for myself and my war-friends.
“But come to bed, my woman. It’s time that we lie down,
finally taking the sweetness and pleasure of sleeping.”
Mind-full Penelopeia answered by saying,
“Surely the bed is yours whenever your heart likes
because the Gods have doubtless made you arrive back
home in your well-built house and the land of your fathers.
But now that you know—some God has thrust it inside you—
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tell me about those trials. I guess I will know them
myself in time. To know them sooner is not worse.”
The Prophecy of the Oar
Full of his own plans Odysseus answered by saying,
“Strange power! What’s the hurry, why do you ask me
to say all that? Though I won’t hide it—I’ll tell you—
it won’t bring joy to your heart. Nor is my own heart
glad since the prophet told me to travel to plenty
of people’s towns. My hands will be holding a well-made
oar and I’ll call on men not knowing the salt sea.
They take no food, he told me, seasoned with salt there.
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They have no knowledge at all of purple-cheeked vessels
and well-turned oars that act as the wings of a fast ship.
He gave me a plain sign; I won’t hide it from you now.
The day another traveler meets me and tells me
I carry a winnowing tool on my glistening shoulder,
the prophet told me to drive my oar in the ground there
and offer beautiful victims to lordly Poseidon—
a ram, a bull and a boar that’s mated with females.
Then I should go back home and render hecatombs holy
to deathless Gods who rule broadly in heaven,
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to each in order. Then death will be far from the salt sea,
arriving very gently, taking my wealthy
life, overcome with age. People will prosper
around me. That’s all Teiresies told me would happen.”
In Their Old Bed
Mind-full Penelopeia answered by saying,
“Truly if Gods will bring you a happier old age,
there’s hope at last you’ll make an escape from your troubles.”
So as the couple spoke that way with each other
the nurse and Eurunome, meanwhile, were making their bed up
with soft coverlets under the glow of their torches.
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After they both had hurried and laid out the thick bed,
the older nurse went back to rest in her own room.
The bedroom nurse, Eurunome, guided the couple
along to bed, holding the torch with her two hands.
She led to their room and went out. The man and the woman
now approached the place and welcomed their old bed.
Meanwhile Telemakhos, joined by the cowherd and swineherd,
slowed their dancers’ feet and stopped the handmaids.
They went to sleep themselves in the shadowy great hall.
Past Troubles
After the pair had taken pleasure in loving
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they spoke to each other, taking pleasure in stories.
This brightest of women had held back in the great hall,
eyeing those men, that crowd of disgraceful suitors.
They’d slaughtered so much livestock, bullocks and fat sheep
because of a woman—so much wine drawn from the wine-jars.
Zeus-bred Odysseus told her all of the hardship
he’d brought on men and all the anguish he’d suffered.
He told it all, she gladly listened and no sleep
fell on her eyelids before he told her the whole tale.
Kikones, Lotos-Eaters, Kuklops, Aiolos, Laistrugonians, Kirke
♦ He told her how he’d mastered the Kikones people
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and sailed to the green fields of the Lotos-eaters.
All of the Kuklops’s acts: Odysseus made him
pay for the stalwart war-friends he’d ruthlessly eaten.
He went to Aiolos next, who welcomed him freely
and sent him off. His fate was not to arrive in his well-loved
fatherland yet for a storm-wind seized him and sent him
away on the fish-filled sea, heavily groaning.
He sailed to Telepulos after, Laistrugonian people
who speared his well-greaved men and bombed his vessels,
all of them—only Odysseus ran in his black ship.
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He spoke about Kirke too, her many ways of misleading.
Aides, Seirenes, Kharubdis and Skulla, the Sun-God’s Cattle
He told her he’d gone by ship with its many oar-locks
to ask for Teiresies’ help, the prophet from Thebes
in moldering Aides’ house. He’d spotted his war-friends
there and his mother, who’d borne and fed him in childhood.
Yes and he heard the endless song of Seirenes.
<
br /> He’d gone to the Wandering Rocks, fearsome Kharubdis
and Skulla: no man before had fled them without harm.
But then his crewmen butchered Helios’s cattle
and Zeus, the high Thunderer, blasted his race-fast
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ship with sulphurous lightning. The last of his good men
drowned together. Only Odysseus ran from that wrong doom.
Kalupso, Phaiakia
He went to Kalupso then, a Nymph on Ogugie Island.
She kept him there, she longed for the man as her husband.
In hollow caves the Goddess fed him and told him
she’d make him deathless, all his days he would not age.
Yet she never prevailed on the heart in his firm chest.
Then he came to Phaiakian land with all of his deep pain:
people took him to heart like a God and esteemed him,
they sent him by ship to the well-loved land of his fathers
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and gave him presents—bronze, gold and plenty of clothing.
He’d said the last word. Now sleep, relaxing his body,
gave him sweetness, undoing his heart from its troubles.
Off to the Farm
Athene, the glow-eyed Goddess, thought of a new plan.
Now that she knew the heart of Odysseus fully
enjoyed the bed of his wife and rested in good sleep,
she promptly roused the newborn Dawn on her golden
throne to bring men light from the Ocean. Odysseus
rose from the soft bed, he spoke to his wife and enjoined her,
“My woman, by now we’ve tired of our many
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trials, you and I. You cried for my woeful return here
while Zeus and the rest of the Gods, for all of my longing,
snarled me in pain far from the land of my Fathers.
Now that we’ve both come back to the bed that we so love,
do care for all of my wealth that’s here in the great hall.
The overbearing suitors devoured my sheep-flocks;
♦ I’ll get some back by looting. Akhaians will give me
the rest of the stock till the last sheepfold is refilled.
Now I’m going out to that farm with its dense trees
to see my worthy Father. He’s grieved for me often.
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So I enjoin you, woman, with all of your good sense:
fast as the rising sun the news will be spreading
about these wooers—men I killed in the great hall.
Go to your upstairs room with the women, your handmaids,
and stay there. Don’t look out or ask any questions.”
Ready for Battle Again
He stopped and clapped his shoulders in beautiful armor.
He woke Telemakhos, then the cowherd and swineherd.
He told them to take the War-God’s tools in their own hands.
No one disobeyed him. Armored in bright bronze
they opened the doors and left with Odysseus leading.
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By now there was light on the land but, using her own night,
Athene hid them and led them fast from the city.
BOOK 24 Last Tensions and Peace
Squeaking Bats in a Cave
♦ Meanwhile from Mount Kullene Hermes was calling
the suitors’ ghosts. In his hand was the beautiful golden
wand he’d often used to weary the vision
of men he chose or wake up men from a sound sleep.
His wand moved and led them. They squeaked as they followed,
sounding like bats that flutter and squeak through the inmost
depths of a wondrous cave when a bat falls from its rock-face,
the cluster where all the rest take hold of each other.
The Land of the Dead
The ghosts went squeaking that way as Hermes the Healer
led them a long way down the moldering pathways.
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♦ They moved past Leukas Rock and that flow, Okeanos,
past the land of dreams and gates of the Sun-God.
Soon their souls were approaching an asphodel meadow
where ghosts have homes, the shadows of people who’ve worn down.
They found Peleus’s son there, the ghost of Akhilleus;
♦ Patroklos too and handsome Antilokhos close by;
in face and frame no one was better than Aias
among the Danaans except for peerless Akhilleus.
A Wretched End for a Great King
They all kept crowding Akhilleus. Moving closer
there was the ghost of Atreus’s son Agamemnon,
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mourning steadily. Others gathered around him,
those who’d met their doom, killed in Aigisthos’s
house. The ghost of Peleus’s son started by saying,
“Son of Atreus, we thought Zeus, whose joy is in lightning,
would love you all your days the most among war-chiefs
because you ruled so many powerful cordons
on Trojan land, where Akhaians underwent great pain.
But all too soon a killing doom was to reach you