Goddess of song, teach me the story of a hero.
This was the man of wide-ranging spirit who had sacked the sacred town of Troy and who wandered afterwards long and far. Many were those whose cities he viewed and whose minds he came to know, many the troubles that vexed his heart as he sailed the seas, labouring to save himself and to bring his comrades home. But his comrades he could not keep from ruin, strive as he might; they perished instead by their own presumptuousness. Fools, they devoured the cattle of Hyperion, and he, the sun-god, cut off from them the day of their homecoming.
Goddess, daughter of Zeus, to me in turn impart some knowledge of all these things, beginning where you will.
“Young men who after Odysseus’ death have come here to woo me, you are eager for this marriage with me; nevertheless I ask your patience till I have finished weaving this robe, so that what I have spun may not be wasted and go for nothing; it is King Laertes’ burial-robe, for the time when he is overtaken by the grim doom of distressful death. I dread reproach from Achaean women here for allowing one who had gathered great possessions to lie at his death without a shroud.” So she spoke, and our wills consented. From that time on she would weave the great web all day, but when night came she would have torches set beside her and would unravel the work. For three years on end this trickery foiled the trusting suitors; but when seasons passed and the fourth year came, one of her maids who was in the secret revealed the truth, and we came upon her undoing the glossy web; so with ill grace she finished the work perforce.
‘You are merciless, you gods, resentful beyond all other beings; you are jealous if without disguise a goddess makes a man her bedfellow, her beloved husband. So it was when Dawn of the rosy fingers chose out Orion; you gods who live in such ease yourselves were jealous of her until chaste Artemis in her cloth-of-gold visited him with her gentle shafts and slew him in Ortygia. So it was when Demeter of the braided tresses followed her heart and lay in love with lasion in the triple-furrowed field; Zeus was aware of it soon enough and hurled the bright thunderbolt that killed him. And now so it is with me; you resent this mortal man beside me. I saved him when he was all alone and astride his keel,
and found him sitting upon the shore. His eyes were never dry of tears while the sweetness of life ebbed away from him in his comfortless longings for return, since the nymph was dear to him no longer. At night-time, true, he slept with her even now in the arching caverns, but this was against his will; she was loving and he unloving. He passed the daytime seated upon the rocky shore, shedding tears and gazing outwards over the barren sea.
And with these words King Odysseus crept out from the underwood; but first with his powerful arm he tore a leafy bough from the tangled growth to go across his body and hide his nakedness as a man. Then he advanced like a mountain lion, sure of his strength, who goes his way with blazing eyes through wind and through rain, hunting the wild deer or ranging among sheep or cattle; if flocks are penned in a strong-built fold, his hungry belly makes him go after them even there. And Odysseus, naked as he was, made bold to approach these girls with their braided hair because necessity was upon him. Frightening he looked as he stood before them, befouled with brine. The other girls fled away dismayed, hither and thither over the jutting spits of shore. The princess alone kept where she was, for Athene put courage in her heart and took away trembling from her limbs;
These were the things the great bard sang of. Odysseus meanwhile was greatly moved, and down from his eyes the tears came coursing over his cheeks. It was as when a woman weeps with her arms around her darling husband, one who has been defending his country and countrymen, striving to keep the day of mercilessness far from his city and his children, but now has fallen and is dying and gasping out his life. She gazes at him, she clings to him and she shrieks aloud, but the victors behind her, with their spears, beat her on back and shoulders and lead her away into captivity to suffer lamentable oppression; her cheeks are wasted with piteous sorrow. So from Odysseus’ eyes the tears fell piteously.
‘To these words of mine the savage creature made no response; he only sprang up, and stretching his hands towards my companions clutched two at once and battered them on the floor like puppies; their brains gushed out and soaked the ground. Then tearing them limb from limb he made his supper of them. He began to eat like a mountain lion, leaving nothing, devouring flesh and entrails and bones and marrow, while we in our tears and helplessness looked on at these monstrous doings and held up imploring hands to Zeus.
‘But when the Cyclops had filled his great belly with the human flesh that he devoured and the raw milk he washed it down with, he laid himself on the cavern floor with his limbs stretched out among his beasts.
“Cyclops, you ask what name I boast of. I will tell you, and then you must grant me as your guest the favour that you have promised me. My name is Noman; Noman is what my mother and father call me; so likewise do all my friends.”
‘To these words of mine the savage creature made quick response: “Noman then shall come last among those I eat; his friends I will eat first; this is to be my favour to you.”
“Who are you, and from where? Where are your city and your parents? it bewilders me that you drank this drug and were not bewitched. Never has any other man resisted this drug, once he has drunk it and let it pass his lips. But you have an inner will that is proof against sorcery. You must surely be that man of wide-ranging spirit, Odysseus himself; the Radiant One of the golden wand has told me of you; he always said that Odysseus would come to me on his way from Troy in his dark and rapid vessel. But enough of this; sheathe your sword; then let us go to bed together, and embracing there, let us learn to trust in one another.”
‘Such was her tale; my mind was full, and I longed to embrace my dead mother’s ghost; three times did I spring forward to her, for the will to clasp her was strong in me; three times she vanished between my arms, like a fleeting shadow, a fleeting dream. Each time keen anguish went through my heart, and my words came forth in rapid flight:
“Mother, why will you not wait for me? I long to clasp you, so that even in this house of Hades we may throw loving arms about each other and have our fill of bitter weeping. Or is this some wraith that august Persephone has sent me to increase my sorrowing and my tears?”
“Odysseus, do not gloss over death to me. I would rather be above ground still and labouring for some poor portionless man, than be lord over all the lifeless dead. But tell me now all that you know of my princely son. Did he follow me to the wars to become a chieftain, or did he not? And tell me also what news you have of noble Peleus. Is he honoured still among the thronging Myrmidons, or do they despise him in Hellas and in Phthia because old age has fettered his hands and feet? If only I might return to help him, return to the sunlight as once I was when in the wide land of Troy I championed the Argives and slew the bravest of the foe!
“Come hither, renowned Odysseus, hither, you pride and glory of all Achaea! Pause with your ship; listen to our song. Never has any man passed this way in his dark vessel and left unheard the honey-sweet music from our lips; first he has taken his delight, then gone on his way a wiser man. We know of all the sorrows in the wide land of Troy that Argives and Trojans bore because the gods would needs have it so; we know of all things that come to pass on the fruitful earth.”
Every form of death is loathsome to wretched mortals, but to perish of hunger, to starve to death – that is the most pitiful thing of all. Enough! Let us carry off the best of the sun-god’s cattle and give them in sacrifice to the Deathless Ones whose home is wide heaven. And if ever we should return again to our own land, Ithaca, we will hasten to build a sumptuous temple to Hyperion the sun-god, and there we may place fine offerings in plenty. But if in anger over his long-horned cattle he resolves to wreck our ship and the other gods second him – why, then, I would rather drink the brine and lose life at one gulp than waste away by inches in this forsaken island.”
So saying, he went through the palace entrance and down the hall to the haughty suitors. As for Argos, the fate of dark death fell on him suddenly when in this twentieth year he had once again set eyes upon Odysseus.
Often in front of a blazing fire you see the spitted paunch of some beast, all filled with blood and fat, and a man keeps turning it to and fro, anxious that it should be roasted as soon as may be; just so did Odysseus twist and turn, wondering how he by himself should make assault on the multitude of shameless suitors.
But now Athene descending from heaven drew near him, wearing the likeness of a woman. She stood at his bedside and said to him: ‘Odysseus, more than most men you have been fortune’s plaything, yet why should you thus lie sleepless now?
So the suitors chattered. As for Odysseus, he finished first his handling and scrutiny of the bow; then, like a master of lyre and song who with utmost ease winds a new string round a peg, fitting the pliant sheepgut at either end, so did Odysseus string the great bow tranquilly. Then he put his right hand to the string to try it, and it sang out beneath his fingers as clear as a swallow’s note.
Odysseus bared his limbs of the rags and leapt up on to the great threshold, grasping the bow and the quiver full of shafts. He poured out the arrows at his feet and spoke thus among the suitors: ‘One contest that was to plague contestants is over now. But another mark is left, one that no one hitherto has hit. I mean to find out if I can strike it and if Apollo will grant me glory.’
So he spoke, and stretched a ship’s cable between a tall pillar and the round-house, fastening it high up so that no woman’s feet could touch the ground. Just as long-winged thrushes or just as doves, on their way to roost, strike against a snare set in a thicket and find their death in what should have been their sleeping-place, so with their heads in a single line the women’s necks were all caught and noosed, to make them die the most piteous death. For a little while their feet kept writhing, but not for long.
So she spoke, putting her husband to the test. Then Odysseus in sudden anger said to his faithful wife: ‘Your words have wounded me to the quick. Who can have put my bed elsewhere? That would task the most cunning workman, unless a god whose will can make all things easy should come in person and set it down in some other place. No mortal on earth – no, not if he were in his prime – would find it easy to shift that bed, because a strange secret lies in its fashioning. I was the maker, no one else.
As land is welcome to shipwrecked sailors when out at sea Poseidon has struck their gallant vessel – the sport of tempest and swelling waves – and now a few of them have swum out from the whitening waters to a refuge on shore, their bodies all encrusted with brine – as welcome as is the dry land to those when they set foot there with all their miseries behind them – so welcome to her was the husband she kept her gaze upon, and her white arms about his neck would not even now let him go.