sprang to the nipple of his breast as the barb stuck in his
liver.
The bright broadsword clanged down. He lurched and fell
aside,
pitching across his table. His cup, his bread and meat,
were spilt and scattered far and wide, and his head slammed
on the ground.
Revulsion, anguish in his heart, with both feet kicking out,
he downed his chair, while the shrouding wave of mist closed
on his eyes.
Amphínomos now came running at Odysseus,
broadsword naked in his hand. He thought to make
the great soldier give way at the door.
But with a spear throw from behind Telémakhos hit him
between the shoulders, and the lancehead drove
clear through his chest. He left his feet and fell
forward, thudding, forehead against the ground.
Telémakhos swerved around him, leaving the long dark spear
planted in Amphinomos. If he paused to yank it out
someone might jump him from behind or cut him down with
a sword
at the moment he bent over. So he ran—ran from the tables
to his father’s side and halted, panting, saying:
“Father let me bring you a shield and spear,
, a pair of spears, a helmet.
I can arm on the run myself; I’ll give
, outfits to Eumaios and this cowherd.
Better to have equipment.”
Said Odysseus:
“Run then, while I hold them off with arrows
as long as the arrows last. When all are gone
if I’m alone they can dislodge me.”
Quick
upon his father’s word Telémakhos
ran to the room where spears and armor lay.
He caught up four light shields, four pairs of spears,
four helms of war high-plumed with flowing manes,
and ran back, loaded down, to his father’s side.
He was the first to pull a helmet on
and slide his bare arm in a buckler strap.
The servants armed themselves, and all three took their stand
beside the master of battle.
While he had arrows
he aimed and shot, and every shot brought down
one of his huddling enemies.
But when all barbs had flown from the bowman’s fist,
he leaned his bow in the bright entry way
beside the door, and armed: a four-ply shield
hard on his shoulder, and a crested helm,
horsetailed, nodding stormy upon his head,
then took his tough and bronze-shod spears.
The suitors
who held their feet, no longer under bowshot,
could see a window high in a recess of the wall,
a vent, lighting the passage to the storeroom.
This passage had one entry, with a door,
at the edge of the great hall’s threshold, just outside.
Odysseus told the swineherd to stand over
and guard this door and passage. As he did so,
a suitor named Agelaos asked the others:
“Who will get a leg up on that window
and run to alarm the town? One sharp attack
and this fellow will never shoot again.”
His answer
came from the goatherd, Melánthios:
“No chance, my lord.
The exit into the courtyard is too near them,
too narrow. One good man could hold that portal
against a crowd. No: let me scale the wall
and bring your arms out of the storage chamber.
Odysseus and his son put them indoors,
I’m sure of it; not outside.”
The goatish goatherd
clambered up the wall, toes in the chinks,
and slipped through to the storeroom. Twelve light shields,
twelve spears he took, and twelve thick-crested helms,
and handed all down quickly to the suitors.
Odysseus, when he saw his adversaries
girded and capped and long spears in their hands
shaken at him, felt his knees go slack,
his heart sink, for the fight was turning grim.
He spoke rapidly to his son:
“Telémakhos, one of the serving women
is tipping the scales against us in this fight,
or maybe Melánthios.”
But sharp and clear
Telémakhos said:
“It is my own fault, Father,
mine alone. The storeroom door—I left it
wide open. They were more alert than I.
Eumaios, go and lock that door,
and bring back word if a woman is doing this
or Melanthios, Dolios’ son. More likely he.”
Even as they conferred, Melanthios
entered the storeroom for a second load,
and the swineherd at the passage entry saw him.
He cried out to his lord:
“Son of Laërtês,
Odysseus, master mariner and soldier,
there he goes, the monkey, as we thought,
there he goes into the storeroom.
Let me hear your will:
put a spear through him—I hope I am the stronger—
or drag him here to pay for his foul tricks
against your house?”
Odysseus said:
“Telémakhos and I
will keep these gentlemen in hall, for all their urge to leave.
You two go throw him into the storeroom, wrench his arms
and legs behind him, lash his hands and feet
to a plank, and hoist him up to the roof beams.
Let him live on there suffering at his leisure.”
The two men heard him with appreciation
and ducked into the passage. Melánthios,
rummaging in the chamber, could not hear them
as they came up; nor could he see them freeze
like posts on either side the door.
He turned back with a handsome crested helmet
in one hand, in the other an old shield
coated with dust—a shield Laërtês bore
soldiering in his youth. It had lain there for years,
and the seams on strap and grip had rotted away.
As Melánthios came out the two men sprang,
jerked him backward by the hair, and threw him.
Hands and feet they tied with a cutting cord
behind him, so his bones ground in their sockets,
just as Laërtês’ royal son commanded.
Then with a whip of rope they hoisted him
in agony up a pillar to the beams,
and—O my swineherd—you were the one to say:
“Watch through the night up there, Melánthios.
An airy bed is what you need.
You’ll be awake to see the primrose Dawn
when she goes glowing from the streams of Ocean
to mount her golden throne.
No oversleeping
the hour for driving goats to feed the suitors.”
They stooped for helm and shield and left him there
contorted, in his brutal sling,
and shut the doors, and went to join Odysseus,
whose mind moved through the combat now to come.
Breathing deep, and snorting hard, they stood
four at the entry, facing two score men.
But now into the gracious doorway stepped
Zeus’s daughter Athena. She wore the guise of Mentor,
and Odysseus appealed to her in joy:
“O Mentor, join me in this fight! Remember
how all my life I’ve been devoted to you,
friend of my youth!”
For he guessed it was Athena,
Hope
of Soldiers. Cries came from the suitors,
and Agelaos, Damástor’s son, called out:
“Mentor, don’t let Odysseus lead you astray
to fight against us on his side.
Think twice: we are resolved—and we will do it—
after we kill them, father and son,
you too will have your throat slit for your pains
if you make trouble for us here. It means your life.
Your life—and cutting throats will not be all.
Whatever wealth you have, at home, or elsewhere,
we’ll mingle with Odysseus’ wealth. Your sons
will be turned out, your wife and daughters
banished from the town of Ithaka.”
Athena’s anger grew like a storm wind as he spoke
until she flashed out at Odysseus:
“Ah, what a falling off!
Where is your valor, where is the iron hand
that fought at Troy for Helen, pearl of kings,
no respite and nine years of war? How many foes
your hand brought down in bloody play of spears?
What stratagem but yours took Priam’s town?
How is it now that on your own door sill,
before the harriers of your wife, you curse your luck
not to be stronger?
Come here, cousin, stand by me,
and you’ll see action! In the enemies’ teeth
learn how Mentor, son of Álkimos,
repays fair dealing!”
For all her fighting words
she gave no overpowering aid—not yet;
father and son must prove their mettle still.
Into the smoky air under the roof
the goddess merely darted to perch on a blackened beam—
no figure to be seen now but a swallow.
Command of the suitors had fallen to Ageláos.
With him were Eurynomos, Amphimedon,
Demoptólemos, Peisándros, Pólybos,
the best of the lot who stood to fight for their lives
after the streaking arrows downed the rest.
Agelaos rallied them with his plan of battle:
“Friends, our killer has come to the end of his rope,
and much good Mentor did him, that blowhard, dropping in.
Look, only four are left to fight, in the light there at the door.
No scattering of shots, men, no throwing away good spears;
we six will aim a volley at Odysseus alone,
and may Zeus grant us the glory of a hit.
If he goes down, the others are no problem.”
At his command, then, “Ho!” they all let fly
as one man. But Athena spoiled their shots.
One hit the doorpost of the hall, another
stuck in the door’s thick timbering, still others
rang on the stone wall, shivering hafts of ash.
Seeing his men unscathed, royal Odysseus
gave the word for action.
“Now I say, friends,
the time is overdue to let them have it.
Battlespoil they want from our dead bodies
to add to all they plundered here before.”
Taking aim over the steadied lanceheads
they all let fly together. Odysseus killed
Demoptólemos; Telémakhos
killed Euryades; the swineherd, Elatos;
and Peisándros went down before the cowherd.
As these lay dying, biting the central floor,
their friends gave way and broke for the inner wall.
The four attackers followed up with a rush
to take spears from the fallen men.
Re-forming,
the suitors threw again with all their strength,
but Athena turned their shots, or all but two.
One hit a doorpost in the hall, another
stuck in the door’s thick timbering, still others
rang on the stone wall, shivering hafts of ash.
Amphímedon’s point bloodied Telémakhos’
wrist, a superficial wound, and Ktésippos’
long spear passing over Eumaios’ shield
grazed his shoulder, hurtled on and fell.
No matter: with Odysseus the great soldier
the wounded threw again. And Odysseus raider of cities
struck Eurydamas down. Telémakhos
hit Amphimedon, and the swineherd’s shot
killed Pólybos. But Ktésippos, who had last evening thrown
a cow’s hoof at Odysseus, got the cowherd’s heavy cast
full in the chest—and dying heard him say:
“You arrogant joking bastard!
Clown, will you, like a fool, and parade your wit?
Leave jesting to the gods who do it better.
This will repay your cow’s-foot courtesy
to a great wanderer come home.”
The master
of the black herds had answered Ktésippos.
Odysseus, lunging at close quarters, put a spear
through Agelaos, Damastor’s son. Telémakhos
hit Leókritos from behind and pierced him,
kidney to diaphragm. Speared off his feet,
he fell face downward on the ground.
At this moment that unmanning thunder cloud,
the aegis, Athena’s shield,
took form aloft in the great hall.
And the suitors mad with fear
at her great sign stampeded like stung cattle by a river
when the dread shimmering gadfly strikes in summer,
in the flowering season, in the long-drawn days.
After them the attackers wheeled, as terrible as falcons
from eyries in the mountains veering over and diving down
with talons wide unsheathed on flights of birds,
who cower down the sky in chutes and bursts along the
valley—
but the pouncing falcons grip their prey, no frantic wing
avails,
and farmers love to watch those beakèd hunters.
So these now fell upon the suitors in that hall,
turning, turning to strike and strike again,
while torn men moaned at death, and blood ran smoking
over the whole floor.
Now there was one
who turned and threw himself at Odysseus’ knees—
Leódês, begging for his life:
“Mercy,
mercy on a suppliant, Odysseus!
Never by word or act of mine, I swear,
was any woman troubled here. I told the rest
to put an end to it. They would not listen,
would not keep their hands from brutishness,
and now they are all dying like dogs for it.
I had no part in what they did: my part
was visionary—reading the smoke of sacrifice.
Scruples go unrewarded if I die.”
The shrewd fighter frowned over him and said:
“You were diviner to this crowd? How often
you must have prayed my sweet day of return
would never come, or not for years!—and prayed
to have my dear wife, and beget children on her.
No plea like yours could save you
from this hard bed of death. Death it shall be!”
He picked up Agelaos’ broadsword
from where it lay, flung by the slain man,
and gave Leódês’ neck a lopping blow
so that his head went down to mouth in dust.
One more who had avoided furious death
was the son of Terpis, Phemios, the minstrel,
singer by compulsion to the suitors.
He stood now with his harp, holy and clear,
in the wall’s recess, under the window, wondering
if he should flee that way to the courtyard altar,
sanctuary of Zeus, the Enclosure God.
/> Thighbones in hundreds had been offered there
by Laërtês and Odysseus. No, he thought;
the more direct way would be best—to go
humbly to his lord. But first to save
his murmuring instrument he laid it down
carefully between the winebowl and a chair,
then he betook himself to Lord Odysseus,
clung hard to his knees, and said:
“Mercy,
mercy on a suppliant, Odysseus!
My gift is song for men and for the gods undying.
My death will be remorse for you hereafter.
No one taught me: deep in my mind a god
shaped all the various ways of life in song.
And I am fit to make verse in your company
as in the god’s. Put aside lust for blood.
Your own dear son Telémakhos can tell you,
never by my own will or for love
did I feast here or sing amid the suitors.
They were too strong, too many; they compelled me.”
Telémakhos in the elation of battle
heard him. He at once called to his father:
“Wait: that one is innocent: don’t hurt him.
And we should let our herald live—Medôn;
he cared for me from boyhood. Where is he?
Has he been killed already by Philoitios
or by the swineherd? Else he got an arrow
The Odyssey: The Fitzgerald Translation Page 39