"The Odyssey" by Homer, Books 19–24

I wish you’d put your mind on all your house and chattels.

And now a second time Melantho’s voice rang brazen in Odysseus’ ears

Your name has gone out under heaven like the sweet honor of some god-fearing king, who rules in equity over the strong: his black lands bear both wheat and barley, fruit trees laden bright, new lambs at lambing time—and the deep sea gives great hauls of fish by his good strategy, so that his folk fare well.

Two sons Deukalion had: Idomeneus, who went to join the Atreidai before Troy in the beaked ships of war; and then myself, Aithon by name—a stripling next my brother.

You would soon know our love! Our bounty, too: men would turn after you to call you blessed.

Dear guest, no foreign man so sympathetic ever came to my house, no guest more likeable, so wry and humble are the things you say.

Well you know, my hand has been against the world of men and women; odium and distrust I’ve won.

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.

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!

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.”

Now you, too, go to sleep. This all night vigil wearies the flesh.

Evil may be endured when our days pass in mourning, heavy-hearted, hard beset, if only sleep reign over nighttime, blanketing the world’s good and evil from our eyes.

“O Father Zeus, if over land and water, after adversity, you willed to bring me home, let someone in the waking house give me good augury, and a sign be shown, too, in the outer world.”

You others go fetch water from the spring; no loitering; come straight back.

My own feelings keep going round and round upon this tether: can I desert the boy by moving, herds and all, to another country, a new life among strangers?

“It goes against the grain, my lords, but still I say we take this hectoring by Telemakhos. You know Zeus balked at it, or else we might have shut his mouth a long time past, the silvery speaker.”

Granted you mean at last to cut me down: I welcome that—better to die than have humiliation always before my eyes, the stranger buffeted, and the serving women dragged about, abused in a noble house.

as long as hope remained in you to see Odysseus, that great gifted man, again, you could not be reproached for obstinacy, tying the suitors down here

My lords, hear me: suitors indeed, you commandeered this house to feast and drink in, day and night, my husband being long gone, long out of mind.

he, Antmoos, destined to be the first of all to savor blood from a biting arrow at his throat, a shaft drawn by the fingers of Odysseus whom he had mocked and plundered, leading on the rest, his boon companions.

Today the islanders held holiday, a holy day, no day to sweat over a bowstring. Keep your head. Postpone the bow.

Suppose this exile put his back into it and drew the great bow of Odysseus—could he then take me home to be his bride? You know he does not imagine that! No one need let that prospect weigh upon his dinner! How very, very improbable it seems.

Contempt was all you had for the gods who rule wide heaven, contempt for what men say of you hereafter.

Odysseus glowered under his black brows and said: “Not for the whole treasure of your fathers, all you enjoy, lands, flocks, or any gold put up by others, would I hold my hand. There will be killing till the score is paid.

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.

Amphi'medon’s point bloodied Telemakhos’ wrist, a superficial wound, and Ktesippos’ long spear passing over Eumaios’ shield grazed his shoulder, hurtled on and fell.

I had no part in what they did: my part was visionary—reading the smoke of sacrifice. Scruples go unrewarded if I die.

Think of a catch that fishermen haul in to a halfmoon bay in a fine-meshed net from the white-caps of the sea: how all are poured out on the sand, in throes for the salt sea, twitching their cold lives away in Helios’ fiery air: so lay the suitors heaped on one another.

To glory over slain men is no piety. Destiny and the gods’ will vanquished these, and their own hardness.

When the great room was cleaned up once again, at swordpoint they forced them out, between the roundhouse and the palisade, pell-mell to huddle in that dead end without exit.

Few men can keep alive through a big surf to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind: and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband, her white arms round him pressed as though forever.

The moment of revelation he foretold was this, for you may share the prophecy

Take care of what is left me in our house; as to the flocks that pack of wolves laid waste they’ll be replenished: scores I’ll get on raids and other scores our island friends will give me till all the folds are full again.

They would have boarded ship that night and fled except for one man’s wisdom—venerable Nestor, proven counselor in the past.

But I might add—don’t take offense—your own appearance could be tidier. Old age yes—but why the squalor, and rags to boot?

His mother at his bier never bewailed him, nor did I, his father, nor did his admirable wife, Penelope, who should have closed her husband’s eyes in death and cried aloud upon him as he lay.

Odysseus held him swooning until he got his breath back and his spirit and spoke again

At this point, querying Zeus, Athena said: “O Father of us all and king of kings, enlighten me. What is your secret will?

He yielded to her, and his heart was glad.

Both parties later swore to terms of peace set by their arbiter, Athena, daughter of Zeus who bears the stormcloud as a shield—though still she kept the form and voice of Mentor.