Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many were they whose cities he saw and whose manners he learnt, 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 saved not his comrades, though he desired it sore, for through their own blind folly they perished—fools, who devoured the kine of Helios Hyperion; but he took from them the day of their returning. Of these things, goddess, daughter of Zeus, beginning where thou wilt, tell thou even unto us.
‘Young men, my wooers, since goodly Odysseus is dead, be patient, though eager for my marriage, until I finish this robe—I would not that my spinning should come to naught—a shroud for the lord Laertes, against the time when the fell fate of grievous death shall strike him down; lest any Achaean woman in the land should be wroth with me, if he who had won great possessions lay without a shroud.’
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, when she had let place torches by 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, even then one of her women who knew all told us, and we caught her unravelling the splendid web. So she finished it against her will, perforce.
“Cruel are ye, O gods, and quick to envy above all others, seeing that ye begrudge goddesses that they should mate with men openly, if any take a mortal as her dear bed-fellow. So, when rosy-fingered Dawn took to herself Orion, ye gods that live at ease were jealous of her until chaste Artemis of the golden throne assailed him with her gentle shafts and slew him. So again, when fair-tressed Demeter, yielding to her passion, lay in love with Iasion in the thrice-ploughed fallow land, Zeus was not long without knowledge thereof, but smote him with his bright thunder-bolt and slew him. And even so again do ye now begrudge me, that there is beside me a mortal man whom I saved. Him I saved when he was bestriding the keel and alone;
She found him sitting on the shore, and his eyes were never dry of tears, and his sweet life was ebbing away, as he longed mournfully for his return, for the nymph was no longer pleasing in his sight. At 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 on the sands, racking his soul with tears and groans and pains, and he would look out over the unvasting sea, shedding tears.
So saying the goodly Odysseus came forth from beneath the thicket, and with his stout hand he broke from the thick wood a leafy branch, that he might hold it before him and hide his private nakedness. Forth he came like a mountain-nurtured lion that goes in his might, that is buffeted with rain and wind, but his two eyes are ablaze; and he goes amid the kine or amid 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. But terrible did he seem to them, all beslimed with brine, and they shrank away, one here, one there, along the jutting sand-spits. Alone the daughter of Alcinous kept her place, for in her heart Athena 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 flings herself about 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 she clings to him as he gasps and dies, and lifts up her voice to wail, while the foe behind her strike her back and shoulders with their spears and lead her away into bondage to bear toil and woe, while with most pitiful grief her cheeks are wasted; even so did Odysseus shed pitiful tears from beneath his brows.
So I spoke, but from his pitiless heart he made no reply, but sprang up and put forth his hands upon my comrades. Two of them at once he seized and dashed to the ground like puppies, and their brains flowed forth upon the ground and wet the earth. Then he cut them limb from limb and made ready his supper, and ate them as a mountain-nurtured lion, leaving nothing—ate the entrails, and the flesh and the marrowy bones. And we with wailing held up our hands to Zeus, beholding the cruel deeds; and helplessness possessed our souls. But when the Cyclops had filled his great belly by eating human flesh and thereafter drinking pure milk, he lay down within the cave, stretched out among his flocks.
“‘Cyclops, thou askest me of my glorious name, and I will tell it thee; and do thou give me a stranger’s gift, even as thou didst promise. Noman is my name, Noman do they call me—my mother and my father and all my comrades as well.’
“So I spoke, and he straightway answered me with pitiless heart: ‘Noman will I eat last among his comrades, and the others before him; this shall be thy gift.’
“‘Who art thou among men, and from whence? Where is thy city, and where thy parents? Amazement holds me that thou hast drunk this charm and wast in no wise bewitched. For no man else soever hath withstood this charm, when once he has drunk it, and it has passed the barrier of his teeth. Nay, but the mind in thy breast is one not to be beguiled. Surely thou art Odysseus, the man of ready device, who Argeiphontes of the golden wand ever said to me would come hither on his way home from Troy with his swift, black ship. Nay, come, put up thy sword in its sheath, and let us two then go up into my bed, that couched together in love we may put trust in each other.’
“So she spoke, and I pondered in heart, and was fain to clasp the spirit of my dead mother. Thrice I sprang towards her, and my heart bade me clasp her, and thrice she flitted from my arms like a shadow or a dream, and pain grew ever sharper at my heart. And I spoke, and addressed her with winged words:
“‘My mother, why dost thou not stay for me, who am eager to clasp thee, that even in the house of Hades we two may cast our arms each about the other, and take our fill of chill lamentating? Is this but a phantom that august Persephone has sent me, that I may lament and groan the more?’
‘Nay, seek not to speak soothingly to me of death, glorious Odysseus. I should choose, so I might live on earth, to serve as the hireling of another, of some portionless man whose livelihood was but small, 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 noble Peleus, if thou hast heard aught, whether he still has honour among the host of the Myrmidons, or whether men do him dishonour 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 the host in defence of the Argives.
“Come hither, as thou farest, renowned Odysseus, great glory of the Achaeans; stay thy ship that thou mayest listen to the voice of us two. For never yet has any man rowed past this isle in his black ship until he has heard the sweet voice from our lips. Nay, he has joy of it, and goes his way a wiser man. For we know all the toils that in wide Troy the the Achaeans and Trojans suffered by the will of the gods, and all that comes to pass on the bounteous earth.”
All deaths are hateful to wretched mortals, but to die of hunger and meet one’s doom is most piteous. Nay, come, let us drive off the best of the cattle of Helios, and sacrifice them to the immortals who hold broad heaven. And if we ever reach Ithaca, our native land, straightway will we build a rich temple to Helios Hyperion, and set therein many goodly offerings. But if he be wroth for his high-horned cattle, and be minded to destroy us, and the other gods join with him, I would rather at once gulp down the wave and lose my life, than waste away on a desert isle.”
So saying, he entered the stately house and went straight to the hall to join the company of the lordly wooers. But as for Argos, the fate of black death seized him straightway when he had seen Odysseus in the twentieth year.
And as when a man before a great blazing fire turns swiftly 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 he might put forth his hands upon the shameless wooers, one man as he was against so many. Then Athene came down from heaven and drew near to him in the likeness of a woman, and she stood above his head, and spoke to him, and said:
“Why now again art thou wakeful, ill-fated above all men?
So spoke the wooers, but Odysseus of many wiles, as soon as he had lifted the great bow and scanned it on every side—even as when a man well-skilled 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 he held it in his right hand, and tried the string, which sang sweetly beneath his touch, like to a swallow in tone.
But Odysseus of many wiles stripped off his rags and sprang to the great threshold with the bow and the quiver full of arrows, and poured forth the swift arrows right there before his feet, and spoke among the wooers:
“Lo, now at last is this decisive contest ended; and now as for another mark, which till now no man has ever smitten, I will know if haply I may strike it, and Apollo grant me glory.”
So he spoke, and tied the cable of a dark-prowed ship to a great pillar and flung it round the dome, stretching it on high 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 resting-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 long.
So she spoke, and made trial of her husband. But Odysseus, in a burst of anger, spoke to his true-hearted wife, and said: “Woman, truly this is a bitter word that thou hast spoken. Who has set my bed elsewhere? Hard would it be for one, though never so skilled, unless a god himself should come and easily by his will set it in another place. But of men there is no mortal that lives, be he never so young and strong, who could easily pry it from its place, for a great token is wrought in the fashioned bed, and it was I that built it and none other.
And welcome as is the sight of land to men that swim, whose well-built ship Poseidon has smitten on the sea as it was driven on by the wind and the swollen wave, 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; even so welcome to her was her husband, as she gazed upon him, and from his neck she could in no wise let her white arms go.