Muse, tell me of a man: a man of much resource, who was made to wander far and long, after he had sacked the sacred city of Troy. Many were the men whose lands he saw and came to know their thinking: many too the miseries at sea which he suffered in his heart, as he sought to win his own life and the safe return of his companions. But even so, for all his efforts, he could not save his companions. They perished through their own arrant folly – the fools, they ate the cattle of Hyperion the Sun, and he took away the day of their return.
“Young men, you who are my suitors now that godlike Odysseus is dead, you are eager for this marriage with me, but wait until I finish this robe, so that my weaving is not wasted in vain. It is a burial-shroud for the hero Laertes, for when the cruel fate of death’s long sorrow takes him – so that none of the Achaian women in the town should think wrong of me, that a man of many possessions should lie there without a shroud.” That is what she said, and our proud hearts believed her. Then in the day time she would weave away at the great web, but at nights she would undo the work, with torches set by the loom. So for three years her trick fooled and convinced the Achaians. But when the fourth year came and the seasons had progressed once more, then it was that one of her women, who knew the truth, told us about it, and we found her undoing the splendid web. So she was forced to finish it against her will.
‘You are cruel, you gods, jealous beyond measure. You resent goddesses sleeping with men in open union, if one of us makes a man her loved husband. So it was when rosy-fingered Dawn chose Orion. All the time you resented her, you gods who live at ease yourselves, until chaste Artemis of the golden throne visited him with her gentle arrows and killed him in Ortygia. So it was when lovely-haired Demeter yielded to her desire for Iasion and lay with him in love’s union in the three-furrowed fallow: it was not long before Zeus heard of it, and he killed him, striking him down with a flashing thunderbolt. And so now this time with me – you gods resent me having a mortal man with me. I saved him when he was floating astride his keel,
She found him sitting on the shore. His eyes were never dry of tears, and the sweet life was ebbing from him as he wept for his return – since he had lost his pleasure in the nymph. At nights, indeed, he had no choice but to sleep with her in her hollow cave – she was willing, he unwilling. But by day he would sit on the rocks and sands of the shore, breaking his heart with tears and groans and anguish, looking out over the harvestless sea with his tears falling.
So speaking godlike Odysseus crept out from the bushes, and with his powerful hand he broke off from the thick undergrowth a leafy branch, to cover his naked manhood. Then he set out like a mountain lion who, sure of his own power, goes on his way through rain and wind, his eyes burning: he is after cattle or sheep or wild deer, and his hungry belly urges him to break right into a close-built fold and try for the flocks. So it was that Odysseus made to meet these lovely-haired girls, naked though he was: necessity was on him. And he was a horrible sight to them, all uglified by the brine. They fled in terror this way and that over the jutting shores. Only the daughter of Alkinoös stayed: Athene had put courage in her heart and taken the fear from her legs.
Such was the famous bard’s song. But Odysseus melted in tears, and his cheeks were wet with the tears flowing from his eyes. As when a woman weeps, throwing herself over the the body of her dear husband who has fallen in front of his city and his people, trying to keep the pitiless hour of death away from his town and his children: she sees him gasping there and dying, and folds herself over him shrieking loud: and behind her they beat her back and shoulders with their spears, and carry her off into slavery, to suffer hardship and misery: and her cheeks are wasted in her most piteous grief. So Odysseus shed piteous tears from his eyes.
So I spoke, and he gave me no answer from his pitiless heart, but sprang up and laid his hands on my companions. He snatched up two together and smashed them on the ground like puppies: their brains ran out and soaked the earth. Then he tore them limb from limb and made them his supper. And he ate them like a mountain lion, leaving nothing – guts, flesh, bones and marrow.
We wept and lifted up our hands to Zeus, as we watched these hideous deeds, and hopelessness gripped our hearts. When the Cyclops had filled his great belly with his meal of human flesh and the undiluted milk he drank on top, he lay down inside the cave, stretched out among his flocks.
“Cyclops, you ask me for the name I am known by. Now I shall tell you: but you must give me the gift you promised. Noman is my name. Noman is what my mother and father and all my friends call me.”
So I spoke, and he gave me immediate answer from his pitiless heart: “Well, I shall eat Noman last of his company – the others first. That will be my gift to you.”
“Who are you and where are you from? Where is your town and your parents? I am amazed that you have drunk my drugs and were not bewitched. No other man has ever resisted these drugs, once he has drunk them and let them pass the barrier of his teeth: but you must have a will in your breast that is proof against magic. You must surely be that Odysseus of much resource, the man of whom I have often heard from the god of the golden wand, the slayer of Argos – he always told me that Odysseus would come here with his fast black ship on his way home from Troy. So now sheathe your sword, and let the two of us go to our bed, to lie there in love’s union and trust each other.”
So she spoke. My mind was torn, but I wanted to embrace the spirit of my dead mother. Three times I reached for her, with my heart eager to embrace her, and three times she slipped out of my arms like a shadow or a dream. Each time the grief grew sharper in my heart, and I spoke winged words to her: “Mother, why will you not stay for me to embrace you, when that is my desire – so that even in the house of Hades we can throw our arms around each other and both have our pleasure in the pain of tears? Or is this some phantom that queen Persephone is sending me, to make yet more pain and weeping for me?”
“Do not talk to me lightly of death, glorious Odysseus. I had rather be above earth and a labourer for another, for a man without land of his own and little to live on, than be king over all the lifeless dead. But come, tell me now the news of my proud son – did he follow me to prominence in war, or not? And tell me too if you have heard anything of the noble Peleus, whether he is still held in honour among the host of Myrmidons, or whether they slight him now throughout Hellas and Phthia because old age has taken hold of his hands and feet. If only I were there under the light of the sun to protect him, the man I was when fighting for the Argives in the broad land of Troy and killing the best of the Trojan army.
“Come here now, famed Odysseus, great glory of the Achaians, and stop your ship, to hear the song we sing. No man has yet passed by here in his black ship without hearing the honey-sweet voice from our lips. No, he has his pleasure in it and goes on a wiser man. We know all that the Argives and the Trojans suffered through the will of the gods in the broad land of Troy. We know all that happens on the nourishing earth.”
Any form of death is hateful to poor mortals, but starvation is the most pitiable way to die and meet one’s doom. So come, let us drive off the best of Helios’ cattle and sacrifice them to the immortal gods who hold the wide heaven. And if we do reach our own native land of Ithaka, then we shall immediately build a rich temple to Hyperion the Sun, and we would put many fine offerings in it. But if in anger for his long-horned cattle he determines to destroy our ship, and the other gods go with him, then I would rather lose my life with one big gulp of the sea than be slowly worn to nothing here in this deserted island.”
So speaking he entered the palace and went straight through the hall to join the proud suitors. And the fate of black death now took Argos, once he had seen Odysseus again in the twentieth year.
as when a man cooking a paunch full of fat and blood over a fierce fire turns it round and round to have it roasted as soon as he can. So he tossed to and fro, pondering how he could indeed lay his hands on the shameless suitors, when he was alone and they so many. But now Athene came down from heaven and came close to him, taking the form of a woman. She stood above his head and said to him: ‘Why sleepless again, you poor man? Ill-fated beyond all others,
So spoke the suitors. Resourceful Odysseus finished checking the great bow all over with eye and hand. Then in an instant, as when a skilled musician and singer fits the string to a new peg on his lyre with practised ease, looping the twisted sheep-gut at each end, so Odysseus effortlessly strung the great bow. With his right hand he plucked the string to try it: and the string sang sweetly to his touch, a note like a swallow’s.
Now resourceful Odysseus bared his limbs from the rags and leapt onto the great threshold, with the bow in his hand and the quiver full of arrows. He poured out the swift arrows there in front of his feet, and said to the suitors: ‘So here is one hard trial brought to its end. Now for another target, which no man has yet hit – let me see if I can strike it, if Apollo will grant my prayer.’
So he spoke. He took the cable of a dark-prowed ship, fastened it to one of the tall pillars, then pulled it high and taut over the round-house, so none of their feet could reach the ground. As when long-winged thrushes or doves strike into a snare set in the bushes – they are flying in to roost, but it is a grim sleep that awaits them – so those women had their heads held fast, all in a row, a noose round every neck, for them to die the most pitiable death. Their feet twitched for a while, but not very long.
So she spoke, and she was testing her husband. But Odysseus flared into anger and said to his loyal wife: ‘What you say now, wife, is a pain right to my heart. Who has moved my bed? That would be hard even for the most skilled of men – unless a god were to come in person and place that bed elsewhere in the ease of his will. But no living man, not even the strongest, could easily shift that bed – because something very special went into its making: and it was I who made it, no one else.
Just as land is a welcome sight to sailors forced to swim for their lives, when Poseidon has wrecked their well-made ship on the open sea, as the wind and the massive waves drive it to destruction: a few of them escape the grey sea and swim to land, their bodies caked thick with brine, and they are overjoyed to set foot on dry land with their peril survived – so glad a sight was her husband to Penelope as she gazed at him, and she would still not let her white arms for a moment from his neck.