Tell me, Muse, of the man of many devices, driven far astray after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy. Many were the men whose cities he saw and whose minds he learned, and many the woes he suffered in his heart upon the sea, seeking to win his own life and the return of his comrades. Yet even so he did not save his comrades, for all his desire, for through their own blind folly they perished—fools, who devoured the cattle of Helios Hyperion; whereupon he took from them the day of their returning. Of these things, goddess, daughter of Zeus, beginning where you will, tell us in our turn.
“‘Young men, my suitors, since noble Odysseus is dead, be patient, though eager for my marriage, until I finish this robe—I would not have my spinning come to naught—a shroud for the hero Laertes, against the time when the cruel fate of pitiless death shall strike him down; for fear any of the Achaean women in the land should cast blame upon me, if he were to lie without a shroud who had won great possessions.’
“So she spoke, and our proud hearts consented. Then day by day she would weave at the great web, but by night would unravel it, having had torches placed beside her. Thus for three years she by her craft kept the Achaeans from knowing, and beguiled them; but when the fourth year came as the seasons rolled on, then it was that one of her women, who knew all, told us, and we caught her unraveling the splendid web. So she finished it against her will, perforce.
“Cruel are you, you gods, and quick to envy above all others, seeing that you begrudge goddesses that they
should mate with men openly, if any takes a mortal as her own bedfellow. Thus, when rosy-fingered Dawn took to herself Orion, you gods that live at ease begrudged her, till in Ortygia chaste Artemis of the golden throne assailed him with her gentle shafts and slew him. Thus too, when fair-tressed Demeter, yielding to her passion, lay in love with Iasion in the thrice-plowed fallow land, Zeus was not long without knowledge of it, but smote him with his bright thunderbolt and slew him. And in this way again do you now begrudge me, you gods, that a mortal man should be my companion. Him I saved when he was bestriding the keel and all alone,
Him she found sitting on the shore, and his eyes were never dry of tears, and his sweet life was ebbing away, as he grieved for his return, for the nymph no longer pleased him. By night indeed he would sleep by her side perforce in the hollow caves, unwilling beside the willing nymph, but by day he would sit on the rocks and the sands, racking his heart with tears and groans and griefs, and he would look out over the unresting sea, shedding tears.
So saying the noble Odysseus came forth from beneath the bushes, and with his stout hand he broke from the thick wood a leafy branch, that he might hold it about him and thereby hide his genitals. Forth he came like a mountain-nurtured lion trusting in his strength, who goes forth, beaten with rain and wind, his two eyes blazing in his head: into the midst of the cattle he goes, or of the sheep, or on the track of the wild deer, and his belly bids him go even into the close-built fold, to make an attack upon the flocks. Even so Odysseus was about to enter the company of the fair-tressed maidens, naked though he was, for need had come upon him. And terrible he seemed to them, all befouled with brine, and they fled in fear, one here, one there, along the jutting sand spits. Alone the daughter of Alcinous kept her place, for in her heart Athene put courage, and took fear from her limbs.
This song the famous minstrel sang. But the heart of Odysseus was melted and tears wet his cheeks beneath his eyelids. And as a woman wails and throws herself upon her dear husband, who has fallen in front of his city and his people, seeking to ward off from his city and his children the pitiless day; and as she beholds him dying and gasping for breath, she clings to him and shrieks aloud, while the foe behind her beat her back and shoulders with their spears, and lead her away to captivity to bear toil and woe, while with most pitiful grief her cheeks are wasted—so did Odysseus let fall pitiful tears from beneath his brows.
“So I spoke, but from his pitiless heart he made no answer, but sprang up and laid his hands upon my comrades. Two of them together he seized and dashed to the earth like puppies, and their brains flowed forth upon the ground and wetted the earth. Then he cut them limb from limb and made ready his supper, and ate them like a mountain-nurtured lion, leaving nothing—ate the entrails, and the flesh, and the bones and marrow. And we with wailing held up our hands to Zeus, seeing these cruel deeds; and helplessness possessed our spirits. But when the Cyclops had filled his huge belly by eating human flesh and thereafter drinking pure milk, he lay down within the cave, stretched out among the sheep.
“‘Cyclops, you ask me of my glorious name, and I will tell you it; and do you give me a stranger’s gift, even as you promised. Nobody is my name, Nobody they call me—my mother and my father, and all my comrades as well.’
“So I spoke, and at once he answered me with pitiless heart: ‘Nobody will I eat last among his comrades, and the others before him; this shall be your gift.’
“Who are you among men, and from where? Where is your city, and your parents? Amazement holds me that you have drunk this charm and were in no way bewitched. For no other man has ever withstood this charm, when once he has drunk it, and it has passed the barrier of his teeth. No, but the mind in your breast is not one to be beguiled. Surely you are Odysseus, the man of many devices, who Argeiphontes of the golden wand always said to me would come here on his way home from Troy with his swift, black ship. No, come, put up your sword in its sheath, and let us two then go up into my bed, that mingling in the bed of love we may come to trust one another.’
“So she spoke, and I wondered in my heart how I might clasp the ghost of my dead mother. Three times I sprang toward her, and my will said, ‘Clasp her,’ and three times she flitted from my arms like a shadow or a dream. As for me, the pain grew ever sharper in my heart, and I spoke and addressed her with winged words:
“‘My mother, why do you not stay for me when I wish to clasp you, so that even in the house of Hades we two may throw our arms about each other and take our fill of chill lamenting. Is this some phantom that august Persephone has sent me so that I may lament and groan still more?’
‘Never try to reconcile me to death, glorious Odysseus. I should choose, so I might live on earth, to serve as the hireling of another, some landless man with hardly enough to live on, rather than to be lord over all the dead that have perished. But come, tell me tidings of my son, that lordly youth, whether or not he followed to the war to be a leader. And tell me of flawless Peleus, if you have heard anything, whether he still has honor among the host of the Myrmidons, or men do him dishonor throughout Hellas and Phthia, because old age binds him hand and foot. For I am not there to bear him aid beneath the rays of the sun in such strength as once was mine in wide Troy, when I slew the best of their army in defence of the Argives.
“Come hither on your way, renowned Odysseus, great glory of the Achaeans; stop your ship that you may listen to the voice of us two. For never yet has any man rowed past the island in his black ship until he has heard the sweet voice from our lips; instead, he has joy of it, and goes his way a wiser man. For we know all the toils that in wide Troy the Argives and Trojans endured through the will of the gods, and we know all things that come to pass upon the fruitful earth.’
All forms of death are hateful to wretched mortals, but to die of hunger, and so meet one’s doom, is the most pitiful. Instead, come, let us drive off the best of the cattle of Helios and offer sacrifice to the immortals who hold broad heaven. And if we ever reach Ithaca, our native land, we will at once build a rich temple to Helios Hyperion and put in it many choice offerings. And if perchance he be at all angry because of his straight-horned cattle, and wish to destroy our ship, and the other gods consent, I would rather lose my life once for all with a gulp at the wave, than pine slowly away in a desert island.’
So saying, he entered the stately house and went straight to the hall to join the company of the lordly suitors. But as for Argus, the fate of black death seized him once he had seen Odysseus in the twentieth year.
And as when a man before a big blazing fire turns this way and that a paunch full of fat and blood, and is very eager to have it roasted quickly, so Odysseus tossed from side to side, pondering how at last he might lay his hands on the shameless suitors, one man against so many. Then Athene drew near to him, coming down from the sky; in form she was like a woman; and she stood above his head and spoke to him, and said:
“Why now again are you wakeful, ill-fated above all
men?
So spoke the suitors, but resourceful Odysseus, as soon as he had lifted the great bow and scanned it on every side—just as when a man well-skilled in the lyre and in song easily stretches the string about a new peg, making fast at either end the twisted sheep-gut—so without effort did Odysseus string the great bow. And taking it in his right hand, he tried the string, which sang sweetly beneath his touch, like a swallow in tone.
But resourceful Odysseus stripped off his rags and sprang to the broad threshold with the bow and the quiver full of arrows, and poured out the swift arrows there before his feet, and spoke among the suitors:
“Here now is the end of this clear contest, and now another mark, which till now no man has ever struck, I shall see if I shall hit, and Apollo grant my prayer.”
So he spoke, and tied the cable of a dark-prowed ship to a great pillar and cast it about the round house, stretching it high up that none might reach the ground with her feet. And as when long-winged thrushes or doves fall into a snare that is set in a thicket, as they seek to reach their roosting place, and hateful is the bed that gives them welcome, even so the women held their heads in a row, and round the necks of all nooses were laid, that they might die most piteously. And they writhed a little while with their feet, but not for long.
So she spoke, testing her husband. But Odysseus, breaking out in anger, spoke to his true-hearted wife, and said: “Woman, truly this is a bitter word that you have spoken. Who has set my bed elsewhere? Hard would it be even for someone of great skill, unless a god should come and easily of his own choice set it in another place. But of men there is no mortal that lives, however young and strong, who could easily pry it from its place, for a great token is worked into the making of the bed, and it was I that built it and no one else.
And welcome as is the sight of land to men that swim, whose well-built ship Poseidon smashes on the sea as it is driven on by the wind and the swollen waves, and but few have made their escape from the gray sea to the shore by swimming, and thickly are their bodies crusted with brine, and gladly have they set foot on the land and escaped from their evil case; so welcome to her was her husband, as she gazed upon him, and from his neck still did not loosen her white arms at all.