Tell me, Muse, the story of that resourceful man who was driven to wander far and wide after he had sacked the holy citadel of Troy. He saw the cities of many people and he learnt their ways. He suffered great anguish on the high seas in his struggles to preserve his life and bring his comrades home. But he failed to save those comrades, in spite of all his efforts. It was their own transgression that brought them to their doom, for in their folly they devoured the oxen of Hyperion the Sun-god and he saw to it that they would never return. Tell us this story, goddess daughter of Zeus, beginning at whatever point you will.
“My lords, my Suitors, now that noble Odysseus is dead, restrain your ardour, do not urge on this marriage till I have done this work, so that the threads I have spun may not be altogether wasted. It is a shroud for Lord Laertes. When he succumbs to the dread hand of remorseless Death that stretches all men out at last, I must not risk the scandal there would be among my countrywomen here if one who had amassed such wealth were laid to rest without a shroud.” That’s what she said; and we magnanimously consented. So by day she used to weave at the great web, but every night had torches set beside it and undid the work.
For three years she took us in by this trick. A fourth began, and the seasons were slipping by, when one of her women who knew all about it gave her mistress away. We caught her unravelling her beautiful work, and she was forced reluctantly to complete it.
‘You are hard-hearted, you gods, and unmatched for jealousy. You are outraged if a goddess sleeps openly with a man even if she has chosen him as her husband. You were the same when rosy-fingered Dawn fell in love with Orion. Free and easy yourselves, you were outraged at her conduct, and in the end chaste Artemis of the golden throne rose, attacked him in Ortygie with her gentle arrows and left him dead. And so again, when the lovely Demeter gave way to her desire and made love with her beloved lasion in the field of the three ploughed furrows, Zeus heard of it quickly enough and struck him dead with his blinding thunderbolt.
‘And now it is my turn to incur the envy of you gods for living with a mortal man – a man whom I rescued from death as he was drifting alone astride the keel of his ship,
She found him sitting on the shore. His eyes were wet with weeping, as they always were. Life with its sweetness was ebbing away in the tears he shed for his lost home. For the Nymph had long since ceased to please. At nights, it is true, he had to sleep with her in the vaulted cavern, cold lover, ardent lady. But the days found him sitting on the rocks or sands, torturing himself with tears, groans and heartache, and looking out with streaming eyes across the watery wilderness.
So the noble Odysseus crept out from under the bushes, after breaking off with his great hand a leafy bough from the thicket to conceal his naked manhood. Then he advanced on them like a mountain lion who sallies out, defying wind and rain in the pride of his power, with fire in his eyes, to hunt down the oxen or sheep or pursue the wild deer. Forced by hunger, he will even attack flocks in a well-protected fold. So Odysseus, naked as he was, made a move towards these girls with their braided hair; necessity compelled him. Grimy with salt he was a gruesome sight, and the girls went scuttling off in every direction along the jutting spits of sand.
Alcinous’ daughter Nausicaa was the only one to stand firm. Athene put courage into her heart and took the fear from her limbs,
While the famous minstrel was singing, Odysseus’ heart was melting with grief and his cheeks were wet with the tears that ran down from his eyes. He wept as a woman weeps when she throws her arms round the body of her beloved husband, fallen in battle in the defence of his city and his comrades, fighting to save his city and his children from the evil day. She has found him gasping in the throes of death; she clings to him wailing and lamenting. But the enemy come up and beat her back and shoulders with spears, as they lead her off into slavery and a life of miserable toil, with her cheeks wasted by her pitiful grief. Equally pitiful were the tears that now welled up in Odysseus’ eyes,
‘To this the cruel brute made no reply. Instead, he jumped up, and reaching out towards my men, seized a couple and dashed their heads against the floor as though they had been puppies. Their brains ran out on the ground and soaked the earth. Limb by limb he tore them to pieces to make his meal, which he devoured like a mountain lion, leaving nothing, neither entrails nor flesh, marrow nor bones, while we, weeping, lifted up our hands to Zeus in horror at the ghastly sight. We felt completely helpless. When the Cyclops had filled his great belly with this meal of human flesh, which he washed down with unwatered milk, he stretched himself out for sleep among his flocks inside the cave.
‘ “Cyclops,” I said, “you ask me my name. I’ll tell it to you; and in return give me the gift you promised me. My name is Nobody. That is what I am called by my mother and father and by all my friends.”
‘The Cyclops answered me from his cruel heart. “Of all his company I will eat Nobody last, and the rest before him. That shall be your gift.”
‘“Who are you and where do you come from?” she asked, and her words had wings. “Where is your native town? Who are your parents? I am amazed to see you take my drug and suffer no magic change. For never before have I known a man who could resist that drug once he had taken it and swallowed it down. You must have a heart in your breast that is proof against all enchantment. I am sure you are Odysseus, that resourceful man; the man whom the Giant-killer with the golden wand always told me to expect here on his way back from Troy in his swift black ship. But now put up your sword and come with me to my bed, so that in making love we may learn to trust one another.”
‘These were my mother’s words. Without knowing whether I could, I yearned to embrace her spirit, dead though she was. Three times, in my eagerness to clasp her to me, I started forward. Three times, like a shadow or a dream, she slipped through my hands and left me pierced by an even sharper pain.
‘“Mother!” I cried with words that winged their way to her. “Why do you not wait for me? I long to reach you, so that even in Hell we may throw our loving arms round each other and draw cold comfort from our tears. Or is this a mere phantom that august Persephone has sent me to increase my grief?”
‘“And do not you make light of death, illustrious Odysseus,” he replied. “I would rather work the soil as a serf on hire to some landless impoverished peasant than be King of all these lifeless dead. Come, give me news of that fine son of mine. Did he follow me to the war to play a leading part or not? And tell me anything you have heard of the noble Peleus. Does the Myrmidon nation still do him homage, or do they dishonour him in Hellas and Phthie because old age has made a cripple of him? For I am not up there in the sunlight to protect him as I once protected the Argives and laid the champions of the enemy low on the broad plains of Troy.
‘“Draw near, illustrious Odysseus, man of many tales, great glory of the Achaeans, and bring your ship to rest so that you may hear our voices. No seaman ever sailed his black ship past this spot without listening to the honey-sweet tones that flow from our lips and no one who has listened has not been delighted and gone on his way a wiser man. For we know all that the Argives and Trojans suffered on the broad plain of Troy by the will of the gods, and we know whatever happens on this fruitful earth.”
To us wretched men all forms of death are abominable, but death by starvation is the most miserable way to meet one’s doom. So come, let us round up the best of the Sun’s cows and sacrifice them in honour of the immortals who live in the broad sky. If ever we reach our homeland in Ithaca, our first act will be to build Hyperion the Sun-god a magnificent temple and fill it with precious offerings. But if in anger at the loss of his straight-horned herds he chooses to wreck our ship, with the support of the other gods, I would sooner drown instantly in a watery grave than waste away by slow degrees on a desert island.”
With this Eumaeus left him, and, entering the stately palace, passed straight into the hall where the haughty Suitors were assembled. As for Argus, the black hand of Death descended on him the moment he caught sight of Odysseus – after twenty years.
just as a paunch stuffed with fat and blood is turned this way and that in the blaze of the roaring fire by a man who wants to get it quickly roasted. Twisting and turning, he pondered how, single-handed against such odds, he could get his hands on the shameless Suitors, when Athene descended from heaven and approached him in the form of a woman. She stood above his head and spoke to him: ‘Sleepless again, Odysseus, most ill-fated of mortals?
While they were talking Odysseus, master of stratagems, had picked up the great bow and checked it all over. As a minstrel skilled at the lyre and in song easily stretches a string round a new leather strap, fixing the twisted sheep-gut at both ends, so he strung the great bow without effort or haste. Then with his right hand he tested the string, and it sang as he plucked it with a sound like a swallow’s note.
Throwing off his rags, the resourceful Odysseus leaped on to the great threshold with his bow and his full quiver, and poured out the swift arrows at his feet.
‘The match that was to seal your fate is over,’ he called out to the Suitors. ‘Now for another target which no man has yet hit – if I can hit it and Apollo grants my prayer.’
With that he took a cable which had seen service on a blue-bowed ship, made one end fast to a high column in the portico, and threw the other over the round-house, high up, so that their feet would not touch the ground. As when long-winged thrushes or doves get entangled in a snare, which has been set in a thicket – they are on their way to roost, but find a grim reception – so the women’s heads were held fast in a row, with nooses round their necks, to bring them to the most pitiable end. For a little while their feet twitched but not for very long.
This was her way of putting her husband to the test. But Odysseus flared up at once and rounded on his loyal wife. ‘Lady,’ he cried, ‘your words are a knife in my heart! Who has moved my bed? That would be hard even for a skilled workman, though for a god who took it into his head to come and move it somewhere else it would be quite easy. No man alive, not even one in his prime, would find it easy to shift. A great secret went into the making of that complicated bed; and it was my work and mine alone.
It was like the moment when the blissful land is seen by struggling sailors, whose fine ship Poseidon has battered with wind and wave and smashed on the high seas. A few swim safely to the mainland out of the foaming surf, their bodies caked with brine; and blissfully they tread on solid land, saved from disaster. It was bliss like that for Penelope to see her husband once again. Her white arms round his neck never quite let go.