so the stranger may sit down now and tell me his story
and also listen to me: I'm eager to question him."
So he spoke, and Eurynome at once went off and fetched
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a polished chair, and threw a fleece over it. Then
much-enduring noble Odysseus seated himself, and prudent
Penelope was the first to start their discussion, saying:
"Stranger, I shall begin by asking you this question:
Who are you? From where? What city? Who are your parents?"
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To her then resourceful Odysseus responded, saying:
"Lady, no mortal on this boundless earth could ever
find fault with you: your fame goes up to the wide heaven,
like that of some king, a blameless, god-fearing person
who reigns over many valiant men, and upholds
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justice: one for whom the black soil bears in abundance
both wheat and barley, the trees are heavy with fruit,
the flocks bring forth young in season, the sea yields fish,
all from his good leadership, and his people thrive under him.
So question me here in your house about anything else,
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but don't ask me about my background or my native country,
lest you fill my heart with yet more suffering as I
recall them; for I'm a man of deep grief. What's more,
it's not right that I should sit in someone else's house
weeping and wailing: such uncurbed sorrow's a bad thing.
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I don't want one of your handmaids, much less you yourself,
saying I swim in tears since my mind's deep-sodden with wine."4
Then prudent Penelope responded to him, saying:
"Stranger, any excellence of beauty and figure I had
the immortals destroyed at the time the Argives embarked
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for Ilion, and among them went my husband, Odysseus.
Were he only to come back now, and give comfort to my life,
greater would be my renown, and finer too; but now
I grieve, so many sorrows has some god laid upon me.
All the highborn leaders who lord it over the islands--
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Doulichion and Same and forested Zakynthos,
besides those who rule as princes in rugged Ithake--
all court me against my will, and squander my property.
And so I pay no attention to strangers and suppliants,
or to heralds at all, who indeed are public officials,
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but waste my own heart away in yearning for Odysseus.
So these men urge my remarriage, while I spin my deceits.
First, some god put in my mind the idea of a great web
in my halls: so I set up a big loom, and started weaving--
broad was the web, fine of thread--then addressed them, saying:
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'You young men, my suitors now noble Odysseus is dead,
be patient, though eager to wed me, until I finish
this web: I should not want my woven work to be wasted--
a shroud for the hero Laertes, against that day
when the grim fate of pitiless death shall overtake him:
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then the local Achaian women won't be able to blame me
for a man who'd won so much being left with no winding-sheet.'
"So I spoke; and the manly spirit was persuaded within them.
From then on, day after day, I'd weave at the great loom,
but at night I'd have torches set up, and undo my work.
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"Thus for three years I convinced, and deceived, the Achaians;
but when the fourth year arrived, and the seasons came round,
and the months wore away, and day after day passed by,
then it was that, told by my handmaids, the uncaring bitches,
they stole up on me and caught me, reproached me loudly.
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So against my will I was made to finish the job, perforce;
and now I can neither avoid this marriage, nor find
any other way of escape. My parents keep urging me
to get wed, my son frets as these men consume our estate--
something he understands, for now he's a man, well able
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to look after a household to which Zeus still grants honor!
Yet even so tell me your family, where you come from--
you're not sprung from the oak of legend, nor from a rock!"5
Then resourceful Odysseus responded to her, saying:
"Respected wife of Odysseus, son of Laertes,
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will you never quit questioning me about my background?
I'll tell you, then; though you'll give me over to yet more
griefs than I have already--but that's the way of it,
when a man's been absent from home as long as I have,
a vagrant who's suffered much on the road from city to city.
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Nevertheless I'll answer your questions and enquiries!6
There's a country called Krete out in the wine-dark deep,
fine, rich-soiled, and sea-girt; it has in it many people,
so many they're countless: they have ninety cities,
and various tongues, one mixed with another--Achaians,
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proud native Kretans, Kydonians, all are established there,
with Dorians in three settlements, and noble Pelasgians too!
Among their townships is Knosos, a great city, in which Minos
ruled from the age of nine, held converse with great Zeus,
and was father to my father, great-hearted Deukalion.
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Deukalion sired both me and the lordly Idomeneus,
who'd set out for Ilion in his curved ships along with
the sons of Atreus. My own famous name is Aithon;
I was the younger by birth, he my elder and better.
It was there I met Odysseus, gave him a guest-friend's gifts,
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for a gale-force wind had brought him too to Krete
as he made for Troy, driving him off course past Malea.
So he put in to Amnisos, site of the cave of Eileithyia,
in a difficult harbor, having barely escaped the storm.
He went up to the city at once, and asked for Idomeneus,
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claiming to be his dear and respected guest-friend; but
it was ten or eleven days since Idomeneus had gone,
sailing away with his curved ships to Ilion. So I
escorted him to our house, and welcomed him properly,
with full entertainment from our rich household store;
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and for the rest of the comrades who were with him I obtained
from public reserves both barley and bright red wine,
and sacrificial cattle, to keep them well satisfied.
There for twelve days the noble Achaians were delayed
by a north wind so powerful it wouldn't even let them stand
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upright: I suppose some maleficent deity roused it.7
But on the thirteenth day the wind dropped, and they put to sea."
Thus he told many lies, but made them seem like the truth,8
and her tears flowed as she listened, her stubborn heart melted.
As snow will melt on a high mountain's ramparts, where
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the east wind thaws the snow that a west wind has sent down,
and, melting, it brims the fast-flowing rivers--just so
her fine cheeks streamed with the tears she shed as she wept
for the husband sitting beside her. But though Odysseus
pitied his sobbing wife in his heart, yet nevertheless
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his eyes--as though made of horn or iron--remained
unwavering under their lids. Deceptively he concealed
his own tears. When she'd had her fill of tearful lamentation,
once more she responded to him, saying: "Now I think
I need to make trial of you, stranger, and discover
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whether you and your godlike comrades did in fact
entertain my husband at home, the way you claim!
Tell me, what clothes was he wearing, what kind of person
was he himself, which companions did he have with him?"
Resourceful Odysseus then responded to her, saying:
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"Lady, it's hard for one who's been so long abroad
to say for sure: it's now the twentieth year since he
departed thence, leaving my native country! However,
I'll tell you how my memory pictures him today:
noble Odysseus had on a woolen cloak, purple in color,
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and double-folded, its fibula fashioned of gold,
with twin pin-sheaths. On its front was delicately incised
a hound with a dappled fawn gripped in its forepaws,
watching it writhe: and everyone thought it marvelous
how the dog, though of gold, eyed the fawn it was throttling,
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while the fawn's feet were struggling in its efforts to escape.
I noted the tunic he wore, too--it shone all over,
like the sheen you see on the skin of a dried onion,
so soft and sheer it was, and as bright as sunlight,
and many indeed were the women who marveled at it.
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And another thing I will tell you, and you take it to heart:
I don't know whether Odysseus wore such clothes at home,
or if some comrade gave him them on boarding that swift ship,
or a stranger perhaps, since to many Odysseus was
a good friend, and few Achaians could be called his equal.
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I gave him a bronze sword myself and a double-folded
cloak--a fine purple one--and a tunic with a fringe,
and saw him off properly in his well-benched vessel.
And there was a herald with him, a slightly older man--
Let me describe him to you, as I recall he looked--
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round-shouldered, dark of complexion, with curly hair,
and his name was Eurybates. Odysseus respected him more
than his other companions: they were a like-minded pair."
So he spoke, and stirred in her heart yet more the urge to weep,
since she recognized the sure signs that Odysseus had told her.
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But when she had had her fill of tearful lamentation,
she then responded to him, saying: "Hitherto, stranger,
you've earned our pity; but from this time on in my halls
you'll receive the treatment that's kept for an honored friend!
I myself gave him those clothes, just as you describe them,
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from the storeroom, folded them, attached that bright brooch
as an ornament for him! But himself I'll never welcome
returning back home to his own beloved country:
an illfated day it was, then, when Odysseus set out
in his hollow ship to ill Ilion--that unspeakable name!"
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To her then resourceful Odysseus responded, saying:
"Respected wife of Odysseus, son of Laertes,
no longer mar your fair flesh, nor waste away your heart
in mourning your husband--though I cannot blame you:
for any woman will weep when she's lost her wedded
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husband, to whom she's borne children, conceived in love,
though he'll not be an Odysseus, who they say was like
the gods. Now stop your crying, and attend to my words,
for I'm going to tell you the truth, and hold back nothing.
I recently heard news concerning Odysseus' return--
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that he's near, in the rich country of the Thesprotians,
still alive, and bringing with him much splendid treasure,
collecting it through the region. But his trusty companions
he lost, with his hollow ship, on the wine-dark deep
on his way from the isle of Thrinakie, for Zeus and Helios
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made him suffer9 because his comrades had slaughtered Helios' cattle.
So they all perished in the surging deep; but him,
astride his ship's keel, the waves then cast ashore
in the country of the Phaiakians, who are kin to the gods.
These treated him like a god, paid him heartfelt honors,
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gave him many gifts, and were themselves quite willing
to escort him home unscathed. Odysseus would have been
back here long since, had he not thought it more gainful
to amass a great deal of wealth by wide world travel:
for Odysseus excels all mortals in his knowledge of ways
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to profit, a field in which no other man could match him.
King Pheidon of the Thesprotians told me as much. Moreover
he told me on oath, while pouring libations at home,
that the ship had been launched, and the crew were in readiness
to convey him to his own country. But me he sent off first,
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since there chanced to be a Thesprotian vessel ready
to sail for Doulichion, that country rich in wheat.
And he showed me all the possessions Odysseus had amassed--
enough to support his descendants to the tenth generation
were the treasures stored for him there in the king's domain!
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But Odysseus, he said, had gone to Dodone,10 to discover
from the deep-leaved sacred oak what Zeus was planning
and how he should make his way back to Ithake's rich land
after so long an absence, whether openly or in secret.
Thus, as I say, he is safe, he'll be here at any moment:
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he's very near now, not much longer will he be absent
from his friends and his country! I'll give you my sworn word:
Zeus first, highest and best of gods, be my witness,
and the hearth of peerless Odysseus, to which I have come,
that all these things indeed will come to pass as I tell you!
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Within the current moon's sequence Odysseus will arrive here,
between this month's waning and the rising of the next."11
Prudent Penelope then responded to him, saying:
"Would that these words of yours, stranger, might be fulfilled!
Then you'd soon know both friendship and gifts in plenty
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from me--any man who met you would call you blessed!
But this is how, in my heart, I think it will be: Odysseus
will nevermore come home, nor will you obtain
conveyance--there are no longer such masters in this house
as Odysseus was among men--if he ever existed--
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to welcome respected strangers or escort them on their way.
Nevertheless, my handmaids, bathe him, make his bed
with bedding and coverlets and bright-colored blankets, so he's
warm until he comes through to Dawn the golden-throned.
Then early tomorrow bathe him and rub him with oil,
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so that in here beside Telemachos he may sharpen his appetite
as he sits in the hall. It will be the worse for any of these
men who rudely annoys him: such a man will have no futur
e
here from now on, no matter how angrily he reacts!
For how will you learn about me, stranger, whether I
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really excel other women in mind and prudent counsel
if you sit down to a meal in my hall unwashed