Thoas had waited impatiently for the messenger to finish. The moment he had ended, the king commanded all his people to mount horses and ride to the coast. They were to take the ship as soon as the waves hurled it ashore, and with the help of offended Artemis capture the fugitives. They were to sink the ship with all the crew, but the two strangers and the priestess were to be thrown into the sea from a tall cliff, or impaled alive on a pole.
The cavalcade was already storming toward the shore when a dazzling apparition halted them. Against his will, the king reined in his horse. Pallas Athene, encircled with shining clouds, floated between heaven and earth in all her majesty and splendor and her voice sounded like thunder in the ears of the Tauri. “Where are you going, King Thoas?” she cried. “Where are you going in such breathless haste? Mark the words of a goddess. Stop your people in their hot pursuit, and let my wards leave your country unmolested. Apollo’s oracle proclaimed the will of Fate. It is the Fates who brought Orestes to these shores, so that he might be cured of his madness and take his sister back to her native land, and with her the image of Artemis who also wishes to dwell in my beloved city. For my sake, Poseidon will quiet the sea and carry the ship home. Orestes will build a new and splendid temple for the goddess in Athens, and Iphigenia will continue to be the priestess of Artemis. The daughter of Agamemnon shall die and be buried in her own country. And you, Thoas, king of the Tauri, shall not begrudge her this happiness. You shall give up your anger.”
King Thoas reverenced the gods devoutly. He threw himself on the ground before the vision and said: “O Pallas Athene, base is he who hears the will of the gods and does not obey, or even tries to resist. Your wards shall take the image of Artemis where they will and set it up in its new shrine. I lower my lance at the command of the gods.” Then he turned to his men. “Back to our city!” he ordered.
And what Athene had predicted came true. Tauric Artemis was lodged in a temple in Athens, and Iphigenia continued to be her priestess. In Mycenae, Orestes ascended the throne of his fathers. He married Hermione, the only daughter of Menelaus and Helen. She had been betrothed to Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, but Orestes slew him and was made king of Sparta. Even before that he had taken over the rule of Argos, so that he now had a greater realm than his father had ever ruled. Electra became the wife of Pylades and shared the throne of Phocis with him. Chrysothemis died unwed. Orestes himself grew very old, but in his ninetieth year the curse of the Tantalides struck once more: a serpent bit him in the heel, and he died of its venom.
ODYSSEUS
TELEMACHUS AND THE SUITORS
THE war for Troy was over, and all the Argive heroes who had escaped death on the battlefield and survived the storms on the homeward journey had reached their native shores. Only Odysseus, son of Laertes, the king of Ithaca, had not returned. A strange fate had overtaken him. After many wanderings he had landed on a lonely island covered with wild forests. It was the island of Ogygia, and there the nymph Calypso held him captive in her grotto, because she wished to have him for her husband. But he was faithful to Penelope, the wife he had left behind in Ithaca, and at long last the gods on Olympus pitied his sad lot—all but Poseidon, the sea-god. He was the ancient enemy of Odysseus, and while he did not dare destroy him, he put every possible obstacle in his way and drove him wandering over the sea. It was he who had cast him ashore on the island.
But now, while Poseidon was feasting with the Ethiopians, the immortals resolved that Odysseus was to be released by Calypso. At Athene’s request, Hermes, the messenger of the gods, went to the lovely nymph to announce the decision of Zeus. Athene herself, meanwhile, bound to her feet the golden sandals which carried her over lands and seas, took in her hand the sharp-pointed lance with which she had overcome many a hero in battle, and descended from the rocky peak of Olympus. She flew to the island of Ithaca, on the west coast of Greece. There she assumed the form of Mentes, leader of the Taphians, and went to the palace of Odysseus.
Here there was sad confusion. Beautiful Penelope, daughter of Icarius, and her young son Telemachus had not been able to remain masters in their own house. When Odysseus failed to return, long after the news of the fall of Troy and the homecoming of other heroes had reached Ithaca, the rumor of his death spread and was given more and more credence. Penelope was looked on as a young and wealthy widow, and she attracted many suitors. Twelve rich lords came from Ithaca alone, twenty-four from the neighboring island of Same, twenty from Zacynthus, and from Dulichium fifty-two. Besides these, there were among their retinue a singer and a herald, two expert cooks, and a large following of slaves. All the lords courted Penelope and used up the stores of absent Odysseus. For over three years they had eaten, drunk, made merry, and lived on the fat of his land.
When Athene arrived in the shape of Mentes, she found the suitors playing draughts in front of the palace. They were seated on the hides of cattle they had taken from the stalls of Odysseus. Heralds and servants went among them, mixing wine and water in bowls, cutting and serving meat, and cleaning the tables with sponges. Telemachus, the son of the house, sat among the suitors with a sad heart and thought of his father. He longed for him to come and drive out the throng of arrogant wastrels. When he saw Mentes, he ran forward to greet him, clasped his right hand in welcome, and asked him into the house. They entered the great hall, and Telemachus took the stranger’s lance and leaned it against the spear rack. Then he led his guest to a chair covered with soft tapestry and put a footstool under his feet. He himself sat beside him. A woman slave brought water in a golden pitcher for the stranger to wash his hands. Then meat and bread were served and the cups filled with wine. Soon after, the suitors joined them and began to eat and drink with much gusto. Then they demanded music. The herald handed Phemius, the singer, his graceful lyre, and he plucked the strings and chanted his tale.
While the suitors listened, Telemachus turned his head to his guest and whispered in his ear: “My friend, I shall unburden my heart to you, if I may. Do you see how these men are wasting the fortune of my father, whose bones are perhaps at the bottom of the sea, or rotting on an alien shore? I fear he will never return to punish them. But tell me where you come from, who you are, and the names of your parents. Perhaps you were a friend of my father’s?”
“I am Mentes, son of Anchialus,” answered Athene. “I rule the island of Taphos and have come here by ship to barter iron for copper in Temese. Ask Laertes, your grandfather, who, they say, is eating out his heart in sorrow far from the city, and he will tell you that from time immemorial our houses have been bound by the ties of hospitality. I came because I thought your father had returned. I see he has not, but I am sure he is living! Perhaps he has been shipwrecked on some savage island and is held captive there. But my spirit, which can look into the future, tells me that it will not be for long. He will soon be released and return to his country. You are your father’s true son, dear Telemachus! How you resemble him in your features, above all your eyes! I knew your father well before he left for Troy. Since then I have not seen him. But tell me, what are all these people doing in your house? Are you celebrating a wedding, or is this some other festive banquet?”
Telemachus answered him with a sigh: “All these men you see are courting my mother and eating us out of house and home. We may have been prosperous once, but now everything is changed. My mother cannot bear the thought of marrying again, but while she refuses her consent, she cannot get rid of her suitors, who are consuming our substance and will soon bring me to ruin.”
The goddess replied in sorrowful but angry tones: “How much you need your father! Let me counsel you how to drive this swarm of wooers from your palace. Speak to them tomorrow and bid them return to their homes. Tell your mother that if she wishes to marry again, she should go to her father. In his house, the wedding can be arranged, and there they can see to her dowry. You yourself, however, make ready your best ship. Take twenty oarsmen and set out to look for your father. First go to Pylos and question Nestor. If
he cannot tell you anything, go on to Sparta, to Menelaus, for he was the last of the Argives to reach home. If you learn from him that your father is alive, then have patience one more year. But if you hear that he has died, return home, make offerings to the dead, and heap him a burial mound. If the suitors are still in your house, you must kill them openly or by guile. For you are no longer a boy who needs a guardian. Have you not heard of the glory Orestes won by slaying Aegisthus, who had murdered his father? You are tall and strong. Conduct yourself accordingly and see to it that later generations have nothing but praise for you!” Telemachus thanked his guest for his fatherly counsel and wanted to give him a gift in parting. But Mentes promised to come again and take it with him on his way back to his own country. Then he, who was Athene, vanished. Like a bird she flew upward, and Telemachus trembled, for now he guessed that he had been talking to an immortal.
In the meantime, Phemius had been singing of the perilous homeward journey of the Achaeans. Lonely Penelope sat in her chamber, and the song drifted up to her. She veiled herself and with two of her tirewomen descended to the great hall. There she went up to the singer and said: “You know many joyful tales, Phemius. Gladden the hearts of my guests with them, but do not sing of matters which torment me and wring my soul. For even without your song, I do nothing but think of the man whose fame has travelled over all of Greece, and who has not come home.”
But Telemachus spoke kindly to his mother. “Do not reprove the singer for giving voice to what kindles his soul at the moment,” he said. “Let him sing of the Danai. Odysseus is not the only one who has not returned. Think how many others have perished. And you, dear mother, go back to your chamber and direct your women in spinning and weaving. Giving orders is the business of men and above all mine, for I am master in this house.”
Penelope was surprised to hear such determined words from her son who seemed suddenly to have ripened into manhood. She returned to her room and mourned her husband in solitude. When she was gone, Telemachus joined the suitors, who were reeling and shouting over their cups, and called aloud: “Enjoy the feast, but do not make so much noise! It takes silence to delight in song. Tomorrow I shall call an assembly of the Achaeans, and then I shall demand that each of you return to his own home before you have entirely used up my father’s property.”
The suitors scowled and bit their lips at the resolute speech of the young man. But they stubbornly rejected his suggestion to woo Penelope at the house of her father, Icarius. After much wrangling and jeering they retired to their couches, and Telemachus too went to rest.
The next morning he rose early, slung his sword over his shoulder, left his room, and ordered the herald to summon the citizens of Ithaca to a council. The suitors were also asked to attend. When the people had gathered, the young prince appeared before them, lance in hand. Pallas Athene had made him taller and so handsome that all those who saw him were struck with wonder. Even old men reverently made way for him as he strode toward the chair of his father Odysseus. The first to speak was Aegyptius, who was bent with age and rich in experience. His eldest son Antiphus had gone to Troy with Odysseus and been killed on the journey home. His second son Eurynomus was one of the suitors, and his two youngest sons still lived in their father’s house. Aegyptius faced the assembly and said: “We have not come together since Odysseus went away. Who is it that has summoned us now? Is it an old or a young man, and why has he called us? Has he heard of foes approaching? Has he something to propose for the welfare of our country? In any case, I believe he has honest intentions, and I ask Zeus to bless his purpose.”
Telemachus rejoiced in the happy omen he saw in these words. He rose and took the scepter which Peisenor, the herald, handed him. Then he turned to Aegyptius and said: “Noble old man, he who has summoned you stands, before you. It is I who am in trouble and need. First, I lost my father who was once your king, and now my heritage is being wasted so that soon nothing will be left. My mother Penelope is pressed by unwelcome suitors. They refuse to woo her in her father’s house, as I have proposed to them. Day after day they slaughter our cattle and sheep and drink the wine sealed in our jars. What can I do against so many? You suitors, do you not realize you are wrong? Do you not fear these citizens and the vengeance of the gods? Did my father ever offend you? Have I myself ever done you harm which would entitle you to take what is mine in recompense? No, you have caused me sorrow through no fault of my own.”
So said Telemachus, and bursting into angry tears he threw his scepter on the ground. The suitors had listened in silence, and no one except Antinous, son of Eupeithes, ventured to reply. He, however, rose and cried: “Defiant boy, how dare you malign us! It is not we who are to blame, but your mother! She has been deceiving us! Three years have passed; the fourth is almost up, and still she scoffs at our wooing. She shows favor now to this one and now to that, but her true thoughts are quite different. We have discovered her ruse! She began weaving a large web and announced to us, her assembled suitors: “The wedding shall wait until I have finished weaving the shroud for my husband’s old father, Laertes, so that no Achaean woman can ever say his body was not clad as befits a king.’ This devout pretext of hers won us over. We consented to wait. She really sat at her loom all day and worked at her weaving, but at night, by torch-light, she secretly unravelled everything she had woven by day. In this way she put us off for three years. But finally one of her handmaids, who spied on her, told us the truth, and then we ourselves surprised her as she was undoing her work, and forced her to finish the shroud. So our answer to you, Telemachus, is this: send your mother to her father, if you wish. But command her to marry the man her father and she herself may choose. If she prefers to go on deceiving us and putting us off, we shall go on living on your stores. In any case, we shall not return to our homes until your mother has taken a husband.”
Then Telemachus replied: “I cannot compel my mother, who bore and reared me, to leave my home against her will, Antinous. Neither Icarius, her father, nor the gods would approve such a course. If you have any sense of fairness at all, provide your banquets from your own stores. Let each take his turn in feasting the rest. If it pleases you better to devour the means of one man without attempting to pay back what you have taken—do so. But I shall implore Zeus and the immortals to help me deal out to you your just deserts.”
While Telemachus was speaking, Zeus sent him a sign. Two eagles soared down from the mountains on widespread pinions. First they flew side by side, and then they circled each other. When they were directly above the assemblage, they looked down threateningly and began to tear at each other’s throats and heads. Then they swept upward to the right and winged over Ithaca. Halitherses, the aged soothsayer versed in reading the future from the flight of birds, interpreted this as an omen of destruction for the suitors. He claimed Odysseus was alive and near, and that his coming would spell death for them. But Eurymachus, son of Polybus, scoffed at the old man and said: “Go home and tell your own children what fate is in store for them, foolish old man! You will not trouble us with your prophecies. Many birds fly around in the beams of the sun, and they do not all foretell something. There is nothing more certain than that Odysseus has died far from his native land.” And the other suitors applauded his words and insisted that Penelope should go to her father’s house and choose a husband.
Telemachus made no further effort to persuade them otherwise. He asked the people of Ithaca for a swift ship with twenty oarsmen, for he wanted to set out for Pylos and Sparta to seek news of his father. If he were alive, Telemachus would wait another year. If he were dead, he would urge his mother to marry again. And now Mentor, the friend of Odysseus, to whom he had entrusted the welfare of his house while he was fighting for Troy, rose in council. Angrily he turned toward the suitors and said: “It would be no wonder if a king lost his sense of justice and treated his people with cruelty! They do not deserve any better! Who among you remembers Odysseus, who was always kind to you and ruled over you like a fath
er? Are you not letting these suitors squander his substance unhindered? They are hardly to blame, for they are encouraged by rumors that Odysseus will never return. But the people of Ithaca are to blame because they are silent and do not even attempt to curb the suitors with a single word, although they are in the majority.”
At that, Leocritus, one of the boldest of Penelope’s wooers, jeered at Mentor and said: “Just let Odysseus come if he likes, old mischief-maker! We shall see if he can get the better of us! And believe me, Penelope herself, much as she yearns for him, would be least pleased if he were actually to appear. I’ll luck would soon overtake him! And now let us leave this meeting. Mentol and Halitherses will do to speed Telemachus on his journey. But what do you wager that he will be here for weeks to come, and wait safe in Ithaca for news of his father? I am sure he will never start for Pylos!”
The assembly broke up speedily and with a great deal of noise. The people of Ithaca returned to their houses and occupations, and the suitors sat at their ease at the board of Odysseus.
TELEMACHUS AND NESTOR
Telemachus went down to the shore. He washed his hands in the surf of the sea and called to the god who had come to him in human shape the day before. At his prayer, Pallas Athene approached him in the shape of Mentor, his father’s friend, and said: “If the spirit of your father, wise Odysseus, has not wholly forsaken you, stir up your soul to action and carry out your decision. I, your father’s friend, will see to it that a swift ship is prepared for you, and I will accompany you myself.” Telemachus, who thought he had heard the counsel of Mentor, hastened toward the palace, firmly resolved to set out on his journey. On the way he met Antinous, who caught at his hand laughingly and said: “Why so rebellious and gloomy? Come, eat and drink with us as you did before. Let the citizens see to your ship and its crew, and when everything is ready, sail to Pylos if you like.”
Gods and Heroes of Ancient Greece Page 67