Tell me, Muse, of a man who was always shifting, drifting, driven about so far and wide, after he burned and looted Troy, the holy city. He saw many peoples’ towns, and came to see their views, and in his heart he suffered many agonies on the sea, struggling for his own life and for his crew’s return. But he did not bring them back, despite how much he wanted to. They perished, through their own recklessness—the fools. They feasted on the cattle of Hyperion the Sun, and he took away the day of their return. Of all this, beginning at any point, Goddess, Daughter of Zeus, tell us once again.
‘Young men, my suitors, since brilliant Odysseus is dead, although you are in a hurry to marry me, be patient, until I finish this robe, so my spinning will not be all for nothing. It is a shroud for the great champion, Laertes, for the time when the cruel finality of unforgiving death will strike him down, or in case some of the Akhaian women in this land may become outraged at me, if he, who had acquired so much, were to lie without a shroud.’
“As she spoke, our eager hearts were persuaded. From then on, every day she’d weave at that enormous loom, and at night, with torches placed beside her, she would unravel it. With this ruse, for three years she swayed the Akhaians, and they did not notice. But when the fourth year came and the seasons rolled around, one of her women, who understood it clearly, told us, and we surprised her as she was unraveling that splendid web. And so she finished it by force, against her will.
“You are so cruel, you gods, so utterly envious beyond all other beings. You resent us goddesses who sleep with men openly and make them our lovers. That’s how it was back then, when Dawn lay her rosy fingers on Orion. You gods, who live so free and easy, envied her until, there in Ortygia, from her golden throne, innocent Artemis released her gentle arrows and cut him down. And that’s how it was when Demeter, with her lovely hair, gave in to her heart and lay with Jason, embracing there in a fresh field, plowed three times. Zeus was not unaware of it for long. He threw a flash of lightning and killed the man. Now, once again, you gods—you envy me for having a mortal man live with me.
“I saved him as he was straddling the keel,
She found him sitting on the rocks, his eyes never dry, because life’s sweetness was ebbing away as he ached for his return, since the nymph no longer pleased him. At night, inside her empty cave, he slept beside her against his will, disinterested in her interest, but during the day he would sit outside on the sand and rocks, racking his heart with tears, groans, and agonies. He looked out over the restless sea, his tears flowing.
As he spoke, brilliant Odysseus emerged from the bushes, and with his thick hand, he snapped off a leafy sapling from the underbrush, to keep his private matters to himself. He came out like a fierce mountain lion, confident of its power, that moves about through the rain and wind, its eyes blazing, and then closes in on the cattle or wild deer. His belly drives him on to enter even the sturdy pen to go for the sheep. So Odysseus, totally naked, was about to mingle among those young women with their lovely hair, because necessity had now overcome him. To them, he appeared awful, caked with slime. And they fled in fear, one here and another there, along the jutting sand bars.
Only Alkinoos’ daughter remained, since Athena filled her heart with courage and took the fear out of her limbs.
The famous singer sang this song, and Odysseus’s heart melted, and the tears flowed out from under his eyelids down over his cheeks.
Like a woman who cries out and then throws herself upon her beloved husband, who has fallen before his city and its people, trying to hold back the merciless day for his city and his children. She watches him as he is dying, gasping for breath, and she throws herself upon him, shrieking loudly. They beat on her back and shoulders with the shafts of their spears, then lead her away to servitude, to suffer hardship and misery, her cheeks wasting away with the most pitiful grief. In this way, Odysseus let his own mournful tears fall under his brow.
“After I spoke, he did not answer, given his merciless heart. He jumped up and reached out his hands for my mates. He grabbed two of them together and dashed them both against the ground like puppies. Their brains flowed out on the ground and drenched the earth. He cut off their limbs and prepared his meal. Like a mountain lion, he devoured the entrails, the flesh, and the bones with all their marrow, leaving nothing. We watched this vicious act, and we cried out, holding our hands up to Zeus. Helplessness clutched our hearts.
“After the Kyklops had filled his enormous belly by eating human flesh and drinking down pure milk, he lay down inside the cave and stretched himself out among his sheep.
“‘Kyklops, you ask me for my illustrious name and I’ll tell you. Then you can offer me what a guest deserves, as you’ve just promised. No One is my name. They call me No One, my mother and my father and all of my friends.’
“After I spoke, he answered with a callous heart.
“‘I’ll eat No One last of all, after your shipmates and all those others before. That’ll be what you deserve.’
“‘Who are you among men? Where are you from? Where are your city and your parents? I’m shocked you drank this drug and were not at all charmed! No other man has ever withstood this drug, once he’s taken it and it has passed the barrier of his teeth. The resolve you carry in your chest is not vulnerable to charm. You must be Odysseus, always shifting, drifting. Hermes Argeïphontes, with his golden wand, told me that you would come here, heading home from Troy on your swift black ship. But come now, put that sword of yours back inside its sheath and let us both climb into bed, so we can come to trust each other, lolling about and making love.’
“She said all this, and I turned it over in my mind to take hold of my dead mother’s soul. Three times my heart impelled me to hold her, and I moved forward. Three times she slipped from my arms like a shadow or a dream, and the pain became sharper in my heart. I found my voice and made these words take wing.
“‘Mother, why won’t you stay? I want to hug you, so that the two of us, here in the house of Hades, might throw our arms around each other with love and find solace in our coldest grief? Is this some hallucination that her grace Persephone has sent me, to make me cry out and groan even more?’
“‘Don’t talk around the fact that I, in fact, am dead, charming Odysseus. I’d rather work as a hired hand for someone else, some man without a speck of land and very little means, than be the ruler over all these lifeless dead. But come, tell me about my fine son, whether or not he has gone to war and is a leader. And tell me of Peleus, who has no equal, if you’ve heard anything. Does he still maintain his honor among the Myrmidon people, or do they now dishonor him throughout Hellas and Phthia, because old age is holding him down, hand and foot, since I am not up there, under the sun’s rays, to protect him, as I was before when I was fighting for the Argives and killed the very best of the others on the Trojan plains.
“‘Come closer, dearest Odysseus, the most famous of the Akhaians—send your ship in nearer to the shore so you may listen to our voices more closely, since no one’s ever sailed his ship past this place before hearing our voices pass sweetly from our lips. And yes, each person finds such satisfaction from us, and then goes on his way so much the wiser. We sympathize with all the sorrows the Argives and the Trojans suffered in spacious Troy, through the will of the gods, as well as what is still to surface in this bounteous world.’
All kinds of death are horrible to us miserable mortals, but to come to the end by dying of hunger is the most awful. So come now, let’s drive off all the best of Helios’ cattle and offer a sacrifice to those who live there in the vast sky and never have to die. And if we ever reach Ithaka, our native land, at once we’ll build a splendid temple to Hyperion the Sun, and inside, we’ll put many valuable offerings. And if he happens to be a bit angry about his cattle, with their straight horns, and chooses to destroy our ship, and the other gods agree—well, I’d rather lose my life all at once, mouth open, gasping at a wave, than slowly waste away on this desolate island.’
After he spoke, he entered the stately house and went straight to the great hall among the gathered suitors. And the finality of black death took hold of Argos, as soon as he had seen Odysseus after twenty years.
Like a man who is turning a sausage, full of fat and blood, back and forth, over a flickering fire, anxious to roast it quickly, Odysseus tossed and turned, again and again, wondering how he, just one against so many, might get his hands upon the arrogant suitors. Athena came down from the sky and drew near to him, in the body of a woman. She stood above his head and said these words to him.
“Why are you still awake? Are you a man who is unluckier than any other?
The suitors kept on talking. But Odysseus himself, always thinking ahead, raised the huge bow and looked it over. As a man who is knowledgeable in lyre and song casually stretches the string about a new peg and tightens the twisted sheep gut at both ends, Odysseus strung the enormous bow without effort. He grasped it firmly in his right hand and tried the string. It sang like the voice of a swallow under his touch.
Always thinking ahead, Odysseus stripped away his rags and leaped up onto the large threshold with his bow and quiver full of arrows. He emptied the arrows quickly at his feet and spoke among the suitors.
“This onerous game has reached its end, and now we will go for another target that no one has yet to hit, if Apollo answers my prayer and I can make it.”
As he spoke, he tied the rope from a dark-prowed ship to a huge pillar and threw it about the round house. He stretched it up high, so none of them would be able to touch the ground with their feet—as doves or thrushes with long wings, trying to reach their nest, go rushing into a trap set in a thicket, and the bed that welcomes them is bitter. That’s how the women held their heads—close to each other, in a row—and nooses were placed around their necks so they would die in the most miserable manner. Their feet fidgeted for a while, but not for long.
She spoke like this to test her husband, and Odysseus lost his temper, and raised his voice at his cautious-minded wife.
“Woman, what you’re saying is utterly heartbreaking. Who put my bed somewhere else? It would be hard, even for someone who knows what he’s doing, unless a god has come and on his own, easily set it down in another place. But here among men, there’s no one alive, no matter how young, who could pry it out of place without difficulty, because there’s a great feature that is built into the bed’s construction, and I built it and no one else.
The sight of land is welcome to swimmers, after Poseidon has smashed their well-built ship out on the sea, as it was driven about by the wind and heavy waves, and only a few ever escape the gray sea by swimming ashore, their bodies thickly crusted with salt. But when they escape the most horrible agony, they make it to shore, full of joy. That is how welcome her husband was as she looked at him, and she never loosened her white arms around his neck.