to Zeus who plays in lightning—and no man
ever gave more to Zeus—with all your prayers
for a green age, a tall son reared to manhood.
There is no day of homecoming for you.
Stranger, some women in some far off place
perhaps have mocked my lord when he’d be home
as now these strumpets mock you here. No wonder
you would keep clear of all their whorishness
and have no bath. But here am I. The queen
Penélopê, Ikarios’ daughter, bids me;
so let me bathe your feet to serve my lady—
to serve you, tod.
My heart within me stirs,
mindful of something. Listen to what I say:
strangers have come here, many through the years,
but no one ever came, I swear, who seemed
so like Odysseus—body, voice and limbs—
as you do.”
Ready for this, Odysseus answered:
“Old woman, that is what they say. All who have seen
the two of us remark how like we are,
as you yourself have said, and rightly, too.”
Then he kept still, while the old nurse filled up
her basin glittering in firelight; she poured
cold water in, then hot.
But Lord Odysseus
whirled suddenly from the fire to face the dark.
The scar: he had forgotten that. She must not
handle his scarred thigh, or the game was up.
But when she bared her lord’s leg, bending near,
she knew the groove at once.
An old wound
a boar’s white tusk inflicted, on Parnassos
years ago. He had gone hunting there
in company with his uncles and Autólykos,
his mother’s father—a great thief and swindler
by Hermes’ favor, for Autólykos pleased him
with burnt offerings of sheep and kids. The god
acted as his accomplice. Well, Autólykos
on a trip to Ithaka
arrived just after his daughter’s boy was born.
In fact, he had no sooner finished supper
than Nurse Eurýkleia put the baby down
in his own lap and said:
“It is for you, now,
to choose a name for him, your child’s dear baby;
the answer to her prayers.”
Autólykos replied:
“My son-in-law, my daughter, call the boy
by the name I tell you. Well you know, my hand
has been against the world of men and women;
odium and distrust I’ve won. Odysseus
should be his given name. When he grows up,
when he comes visiting his mother’s home
under Parnassos, where my treasures are,
I’ll make him gifts and send him back rejoicing.”
Odysseus in due course went for the gifts,
and old Autólykos and his sons embraced him
with welcoming sweet words; and Amphithéa,
his mother’s mother, held him tight and kissed him,
kissed his head and his fine eyes.
The father
called on his noble sons to make a feast,
and going about it briskly they led in
an ox of five years, whom they killed and flayed
and cut in bits for roasting on the skewers
with skilled hands, with care; then shared it out.
So all the day until the sun went down
they feasted to their hearts’ content. At evening,
after the sun was down and dusk had come,
they turned to bed and took the gift of sleep.
When the young Dawn spread in the eastern sky
her finger tips of rose, the men and dogs
went hunting, taking Odysseus. They climbed
Parnassos’ rugged flank mantled in forest,
entering amid high windy folds at noon
when Helios beat upon the valley floor
and on the winding Ocean whence he came.
With hounds questing ahead, in open order,
the sons of Autólykos went down a glen,
Odysseus in the lead, behind the dogs,
pointing his long-shadowing spear.
Before them
a great boar lay hid in undergrowth,
in a green thicket proof against the wind
or sun’s blaze, fine soever the needling sunlight,
impervious too to any rain, so dense
that cover was, heaped up with fallen leaves.
Patter of hounds’ feet, men’s feet, woke the boar
as they came up—and from his woody ambush
with razor back bristling and raging eyes
he trotted and stood at bay. Odysseus,
being on top of him, had the first shot,
lunging to stick him; but the boar
had already charged under the long spear.
He hooked aslant with one white tusk and ripped out
flesh above the knee, but missed the bone.
Odysseus’ second thrust went home by luck,
his bright spear passing through the shoulder joint;
and the beast fell, moaning as life pulsed away.
Autólykos’ tall sons took up the wounded,
working skillfully over the Prince Odysseus
to bind his gash, and with a rune they stanched
the dark flow of blood. Then downhill swiftly
they all repaired to the father’s house, and there
tended him well—so well they soon could send him,
with Grandfather Autólykos’ magnificent gifts,
rejoicing, over sea to Ithaka.
His father and the Lady Antikleia
welcomed him, and wanted all the news
of how he got his wound; so he spun out
his tale, recalling how the boar’s white tusk
caught him when he was hunting on Parnassos.
This was the scar the old nurse recognized;
she traced it under her spread hands, then let go,
and into the basin fell the lower leg
making the bronze clang, sloshing the water out.
Then joy and anguish seized her heart; her eyes
filled up with tears; her throat closed, and she whispered,
with hand held out to touch his chin:
“Oh yes!
You are Odysseus! Ah, dear child! I could not
see you until now—not till I knew
my master’s very body with my hands!”
Her eyes turned to Penélopê with desire
to make her lord, her husband, known—in vain,
because Athena had bemused the queen,
so that she took no notice, paid no heed.
At the same time Odysseus’ right hand
gripped the old throat; his left hand pulled her near,
and in her ear he said:
“Will you destroy me,
nurse, who gave me milk at your own breast?
Now with a hard lifetime behind I’ve come
in the twentieth year home to my father’s island.
You found me out, as the chance was given you.
Be quiet; keep it from the others, else
I warn you, and I mean it, too,
if by my hand god brings the suitors down
I’ll kill you, nurse or not, when the time comes—
when the time comes to kill the other women.”
Eurýkleia kept her wits and answered him:
“Oh, what mad words are these you let escape you!
Child, you know my blood, my bones are yours;
no one could whip this out of me. I’ll be
a woman turned to stone, iron I’ll be.
And let me tell you too—mind now—if god
cuts down the arrogant suitors by your hand,
<
br /> I can report to you on all the maids,
those who dishonor you, and the innocent.”
But in response the great tactician said:
“Nurse, no need to tell me tales of these.
I will have seen them, each one, for myself.
Trust in the gods, be quiet, hold your peace.”
Silent, the old nurse went to fetch more water,
her basin being all spilt.
When she had washed
and rubbed his feet with golden oil, he turned,
dragging his bench again to the fire side
for warmth, and hid the scar under his rags.
Penélopê broke the silence, saying:
“Friend,
allow me one brief question more. You know,
the time for bed, sweet rest, is coming soon,
if only that warm luxury of slumber
would come to enfold us, in our trouble. But for me
my fate at night is anguish and no rest.
By day being busy, seeing to my work,
I find relief sometimes from loss and sorrow;
but when night comes and all the world’s abed
I lie in mine alone, my heart thudding,
while bitter thoughts and fears crowd on my grief.
Think how Pandáreos’ daughter, pale forever,
sings as the nightingale in the new leaves
through those long quiet hours of night,
on some thick-flowering orchard bough in spring;
how she rills out and tilts her note, high now, now low,
mourning for Itylos whom she killed in madness—
her child, and her lord Zethos’ only child.
My forlorn thought flows variable as her song,
wondering: shall I stay beside my son
and guard my own things here, my maids, my hall,
to honor my lord’s bed and the common talk?
Or had I best join fortunes with a suitor,
the noblest one, most lavish in his gifts?
Is it now time for that?
My son being still a callow boy forbade
marriage, or absence from my lord’s domain;
but now the child is grown, grown up, a man,
he, too, begins to pray for my departure,
aghast at all the suitors gorge on.
Listen:
interpret me this dream: From a water’s edge
twenty fat geese have come to feed on grain
beside my house. And I delight to see them.
But now a mountain eagle with great wings
and crooked beak storms in to break their necks
and strew their bodies here. Away he soars
into the bright sky; and I cry aloud—
all this in dream—I wail and round me gather
softly braided Akhaian women mourning
because the eagle killed my geese.
Then down
out of the sky he drops to a cornice beam
with mortal voice telling me not to weep.
‘Be glad,’ says he, ‘renowned Ikarios’ daughter:
here is no dream but something real as day,
something about to happen. All those geese
were suitors, and the bird was I. See now,
I am no eagle but your lord come back
to bring inglorious death upon them all!’
As he said this, my honeyed slumber left me.
Peering through half-shut eyes, I saw the geese
in hall, still feeding at the self-same trough.”
The master of subtle ways and straight replied:
“My dear, how can you choose to read the dream
differently? Has not Odysseus himself
shown you what is to come? Death to the suitors,
sure death, too. Not one escapes his doom.”
Penélopê shook her head and answered:
“Friend,
many and many a dream is mere confusion,
a cobweb of no consequence at all.
Two gates for ghostly dreams there are: one gateway
of honest horn, and one of ivory.
Issuing by the ivory gate are dreams
of glimmering illusion, fantasies,
but those that come through solid polished horn
may be borne out, if mortals only know them.
I doubt it came by horn, my fearful dream—
too good to be true, that, for my son and me.
But one thing more I wish to tell you: listen
carefully. It is a black day, this that comes.
Odysseus’ house and I are to be parted.
I shall decree a contest for the day.
We have twelve axe heads. In his time, my lord
could line them up, all twelve, at intervals
like a ship’s ribbing; then he’d back away
a long way off and whip an arrow through.
Now I’ll impose this trial on the suitors.
The one who easily handles and strings the bow
and shoots through all twelve axes I shall marry,
whoever he may be—then look my last
on this my first love’s beautiful brimming house.
But I’ll remember, though I dream it only.”
Odysseus said:
“Dear honorable lady,
wife of Odysseus Laertiades,
let there be no postponement of the trial.
Odysseus, who knows the shifts of combat,
will be here: aye, he’ll be here long before
one of these lads can stretch or string that bow
or shoot to thread the iron!”
Grave and wise,
Penelope replied:
“If you were willing
to sit with me and comfort me, my friend,
no tide of sleep would ever close my eyes.
But mortals cannot go forever sleepless.
This the undying gods decree for all
who live and die on earth, kind furrowed earth.
Upstairs I go, then, to my single bed,
my sighing bed, wet with so many tears
after my Lord Odysseus took ship
to see that misery at Ilion, unspeakable.
Let me rest there, you here. You can stretch out
on the bare floor, or else command a bed.”
So she went up to her chamber softly lit,
accompanied by her maids. Once there, she wept
for Odysseus, her husband, till Athena
cast sweet sleep upon her eyes.
BOOK XX
SIGNS AND A VISION
Outside in the entry way he made his bed—
raw oxhide spread on level ground, and heaped up
fleeces, left from sheep the Akhaians killed.
And when he had lain down, Eurynome
flung out a robe to cover him. Unsleeping
the Lord Odysseus lay, and roved in thought
to the undoing of his enemies.
Now came a covey of women
laughing as they slipped out, arm in arm,
as many a night before, to the suitors’ beds;
and anger took him like a wave to leap
into their midst and kill them, every one—
or should he let them all go hot to bed
one final night? His heart cried out within him
the way a brach with whelps between her legs
would howl and bristle at a stranger—so
the hackles of his heart rose at that laughter.
Knocking his breast he muttered to himself:
“Down; be steady. You’ve seen worse, that time
the Kyklops like a rockslide ate your men
while you looked on. Nobody, only guile,
got you out of that cave alive.”
His rage
held hard in leash, submitted to his mind,
while he himself rocked, rolling from side to side,
as a cook turns a sausage,
big with blood
and fat, at a scorching blaze, without a pause,
to broil it quick: so he rolled left and right,
casting about to see how he, alone,
against the false outrageous crowd of suitors
could press the fight.
And out of the night sky
Athena came to him; out of the nearby dark
in body like a woman; came and stood
over his head to chide him:
“Why so wakeful,
most forlorn of men? Here is your home,
there lies your lady; and your son is here,
as fine as one could wish a son to be.”
Odysseus looked up and answered:
“Aye,
goddess, that much is true; but still
I have some cause to fret in this affair.
I am one man; how can I whip those dogs?
They are always here in force. Neither
is that the end of it, there’s more to come.
If by the will of Zeus and by your will
I killed them all, where could I go for safety?
Tell me that!”
And the grey-eyed goddess said:
“Your touching faith! Another man would trust
some villainous mortal, with no brains—and what
am I? Your goddess-guardian to the end
in all your trials. Let it be plain as day:
if fifty bands of men surrounded us
and every sword sang for your blood,
you could make off still with their cows and sheep.
Now you, too, go to sleep. This all night vigil
wearies the flesh. You’ll come out soon enough
on the other side of trouble.”
The Odyssey: The Fitzgerald Translation Page 35