With these words he took
Theoklymenos to his own house. When they got there they laid their
cloaks on the benches and seats, went into the baths, and washed
themselves. When the maids had washed and anointed them, and had
given them cloaks and shirts, they took their seats at table. A maid
servant then brought them water in a beautiful golden ewer, and
poured it into a silver basin for them to wash their hands; and she
drew a clean table beside them. An upper servant brought them bread
and offered them many good things of what there was in the house.
Opposite them sat Penelope, reclining on a couch by one of the
bearing-posts of the room, and spinning. Then they laid their hands
on the good things that were before them, and as soon as they had had
enough to eat and drink Penelope said:
"Telemakhos, I shall go upstairs
and lie down on that sad couch, which I have not ceased to water with
my tears, from the day Odysseus set out for Troy with the sons of
Atreus. You failed, however, to make it clear to me before the
suitors came back to the house, whether or not you had been able to
hear anything about the return [nostos] of your
father."
"I will tell you then truth
[alêtheia]," replied her son. "We went to Pylos
and saw Nestor, who took me to his house and treated me as hospitably
as though I were a son of his own who had just returned after a long
absence; so also did his sons; but he said he had not heard a word
from any human being about Odysseus, whether he was alive or dead. He
sent me, therefore, with a chariot and horses to Menelaos. There I
saw Helen, for whose sake so many, both Argives and Trojans, were in
heaven's wisdom doomed to suffer. Menelaos asked me what it was
that had brought me to Lacedaemon, and I told him the whole truth
[alêtheia], whereon he said, ‘So, then,
these cowards would usurp a brave man's bed? A hind might as
well lay her new-born young in the lair of a lion, and then go off to
feed in the forest or in some grassy dell. The lion, when he comes
back to his lair, will make short work with the pair of them, and so
will Odysseus with these suitors. By father Zeus, Athena, and Apollo,
if Odysseus is still the man that he was when he wrestled with
Philomeleides in Lesbos, and threw him so heavily that all the Greeks
cheered him - if he is still such, and were to come near these
suitors, they would have a swift doom and a sorry wedding. As regards
your question, however, I will not prevaricate nor deceive you, but
what the old man of the sea told me, so much will I tell you in full.
He said he could see Odysseus on an island sorrowing bitterly in the
house of the nymph Calypso, who was keeping him prisoner, and he
could not reach his home, for he had no ships nor sailors to take him
over the sea.’ This was what Menelaos told me, and when I had
heard his story I came away; the gods then gave me a fair wind and
soon brought me safe home again."
With these words he moved the
heart of Penelope. Then Theoklymenos said to her:
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.