The Odyssey Page 0,16

you visit here, or are you my father’s friend? For many foreigners once sought our home; because Odysseus also was a rover among men.”

Then said to him the goddess, clear-eyed Athene: “Well, I will very plainly tell you all: Mentes I call myself, the son of wise Anchialus, and I am lord of the oar-loving Taphians. Even now I put in here, with ship and crew, when sailing over the wine-dark sea to men of a strange speech, to Temeseê, for bronze.4 I carry glittering iron. Here my ship lies, just off the fields outside the town, within the bay of Reithron under woody Neäïon. Hereditary friends we count ourselves from early days, as you may learn if you will go and ask old lord Laeärtes. He, people say, comes to the town no more, but far out in the country suffers hardship, an aged woman his attendant, who supplies him food and drink whenever weariness weighs down his knees, as he creeps about his slope of garden ground. Even now I came, for I was told your father was at home. But, as I see, the gods delay his journey; for surely nowhere yet on earth has royal Odysseus died; living, he lingers somewhere still on the wide sea, upon some sea-girt island, and cruel men constrain him, savage folk, who hold him there against his will. Yet, I will make a prophecy as the immortals prompt my mind and as I think will happen; although I am no prophet and have no skill in birds.5 Not long shall he be absent from his own dear land, though iron fetters bind him. Some means he will devise to come away; for many a trick has he. But now, declare me this and plainly tell, if you indeed—so tall—are the true son of Odysseus. You surely are much like him in head and beautiful eyes. So often we were together before he embarked for Troy, where others too, the bravest of the Argives,c went in their hollow ships. But since that day I have not seen Odysseus, nor he me.”

Then answered her discreet Telemachus: “Yes, stranger, I will plainly tell you all. My mother says I am his child; I myself do not know; for no one ever yet knew his own parentage. Yet would I were the son of some blest man on whom old age had come amongst his own possessions. But now, the man born most ill-fated of all human kind—of him they say I am, since this you ask me.”

Then said to him the goddess, clear-eyed Athene: “Surely the gods meant that your house should never lack when they allowed Penelope to bear a son like you. But now declare me this and truly tell, what means the feast? What company is this? And what do you do here? Is it a drinking bout or wedding? It surely is no festival at common cost. How rude they seem, and wanton, feasting about the hall! A decent man must be indignant who comes and sees such outrage.”

Then answered her discreet Telemachus: “Stranger,—since now you ask of this and question me,—in former days this house had promised to be wealthy and esteemed, so long as he was here; but the hard-purposed gods then changed their minds and shut him from our knowledge more than all men beside. For were he dead, I should not feel such grief, if he had fallen among comrades in the Trojan land, or in the arms of friends when the skein of war was wound. Then would the whole Achaean host have made his grave, and for his son in after days a great name had been gained. Now, silently the robber winds have swept him off. Gone is he, past all sight and hearing, and sighs and sorrows he has left to me. Yet now I do not grieve and mourn for him alone. The gods have brought me other sore distress. For all the nobles who bear sway among the islands,—Doulichion, Same, and woody Zacynthus,—and they who have the power in rocky Ithaca, all woo my mother and despoil my home. She neither declines the hated suit nor has she power to end it; while they with feasting impoverish my home and soon will bring me also to destruction.”6

Stirred into anger, Pallas Athene spoke: “Alas! in simple truth you greatly need absent Odysseus, to lay hands on the shameless suitors. What if he came even now and here before his house