The Odyssey Page 0,160

would pick the best men of a town would choose no others. Was it on shipboard that Poseidon smote you, raising ill winds and heavy seas? Or did fierce men destroy you on the land, while you were cutting off their cattle or their fair flocks of sheep, or while you fought to win their town and carry off their women? Tell what I ask! I call myself your friend. Do you not recollect how I, with godlike Menelaus, came to your house to urge Odysseus to follow us to Ilios on the well-benched ships? A whole month long we spent, crossing the open sea, and found it hard to win the spoiler of towns, Odysseus.”

Then answered him the spirit of Amphimedon: “Great son of Atreus, Agamemnon, lord of men, all that you say, heaven-favored one, I recollect; and I in turn will very plainly tell how a cruel end of death befell us. We courted the wife of Odysseus long away. She neither declined the hated suit nor did she end it, because she planned for us death and dark doom. This was the last pretext she cunningly devised: within the hall she set up a great loom and went to weaving; fine was the web and very large; and then to us said she: ‘Young men who are my suitors, though royal Odysseus now is dead, delay to urge my marriage till I complete this robe,—its threads must not be wasted,—a shroud for lord Laeärtes, against the time when the hard doom of death that lays men low shall overtake him. Achaean wives about the land I fear might give me blame if he should lie without a shroud, he who had great possessions.’ Such were her words, and our high hearts assented. Then in the daytime would she weave at the great web, but in the night unravel, after her torch was set. Thus for three years she hid her craft and cheated the Achaeans. But when the fourth year came, as time rolled on, when the months waned and the long days were done, then at the last one of her maids, who knew full well, confessed, and we discovered her unraveling the splendid web; so then she finished it, against her will, by force. When she displayed the robe, after weaving the great web and washing it, like sun or moon it shone. And then some hostile god guided Odysseus,—whence I know not,—to the confines of our country, where the swineherd has his home. There the son of royal Odysseus also came, returning by black ship from sandy Pylos. And when the two had planned the suitors’ cruel death, they entered our famous town; Odysseus later, Telemachus coming on before. The swineherd brought Odysseus, who wore a sorry garb, like an old and wretched beggar, leaning upon a staff. Upon his back were miserable clothes, and none of us could know him as he suddenly appeared, not even our older men; but we assailed him with harsh words and missiles. A while he bore with patience this pelting and abuse in his own house; but when at last the will of aegis-bearing Zeus aroused him, he and Telemachus gathered the goodly weapons and put them in the store-room, fastening the bolts. Then, full of craft, he bade his wife deliver to the suitors the bow and the gray steel, to be to us ill-fated men means for our sport and harbingers of death. Not one of us could draw the string of the strong bow; we fell far short of power. But when the great bow reached Odysseus’ hands, we shouted all together not to give the bow, whatever he might say. Telemachus alone urgently bade him take it. Then long-tried royal Odysseus took the bow in hand, bent it with ease, and sent an arrow through the steel. Advancing to the threshold, there he stood and poured out the swift arrows, glaring terribly around. First he shot prince Antinouäs, and then on others turned his grievous shafts, with careful aim, and side by side they fell. Soon it was seen some god was the men’s ally; for straightway rushing down the hall, with all their might they smote us right and left. Then went up moans, a dismal sound, as skulls were crushed and all the pavement ran with blood. Thus we died, Agamemnon; and still uncared for in Odysseus’ halls our bodies lie. Our friends at home have had no tidings, or they