Homer · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
The old woman climbed to the upper chamber, laughing with delight, to tell her mistress that her dear husband was inside the house. Her knees moved briskly and her feet stumbled over themselves in haste. She stood over Penelope's head and spoke to her:
"Wake up, Penelope, dear child, so you can see with your own eyes what you have longed for every day of your life. Odysseus has come, he is home at last, however late his coming. And he has killed the arrogant suitors who wasted his household, devoured his goods, and tormented his son."
Thoughtful Penelope answered her: "Dear nurse, the gods have made you mad — the gods who can turn even a sensible person foolish, and can set a simple-minded fool on the path of good sense. It's they who have addled you; before this your wits were sound. Why do you mock me, when my heart is already so full of grief, telling me these wild things and waking me out of the sweet sleep that bound me, wrapping itself around my eyelids? I have not slept so deeply since Odysseus went off to look upon that Ilium whose name I cannot bear to speak. Go now, go back down, return to the hall.
"For if any other of the women who serve me had come with this news and roused me from sleep, I would have sent her away in disgrace, back into the hall. But you — your old age will spare you that."
Her dear old nurse Eurycleia answered her: "I am not mocking you, dear child — it is the plain truth, just as I tell it: Odysseus has come, he is home, that very stranger whom everyone in the hall treated with contempt. Telemachus knew long ago that he was inside, but in his good sense he kept his father's plans hidden, so that Odysseus might have his revenge on the violence of those overbearing men."
So she spoke, and Penelope, full of joy, sprang from her bed and threw her arms around the old woman, and tears fell from her eyes. She spoke to her, and her words flew like birds: "Come now, dear nurse, tell me the truth. If he has really come home, as you say, how did he lay his hands on the shameless suitors, alone as he was, while they always stayed together inside, in a crowd?"
Her dear old nurse Eurycleia answered her: "I did not see it, I did not hear of it firsthand — I only heard the groaning of men being killed. We sat huddled together in the innermost part of our well-built chamber, terrified, while the close-fitted doors held us in, until your son Telemachus called me out of the hall — for his father had sent him to call me. Then I found Odysseus standing among the bodies of the slain, and they lay around him, one on top of another, on the hard-packed floor — it would have warmed your heart to see him. Now they all lie together in a heap by the courtyard gates, while he is fumigating the beautiful hall, kindling a great fire, and he sent me to call you.
"Come with me, so that the two of you may step into joy together, your two hearts, since you have both suffered so much. Now at last this long-cherished hope has been fulfilled: he himself has come alive to his own hearth, and he has found you and his son safe in the halls, while all the suitors who wronged him — every one of them — he has paid back in his own house."
Thoughtful Penelope answered her: "Dear nurse, do not exult too greatly and boast just yet. You know how welcome he would appear in these halls to everyone, and above all to me and to the son we bore together — but this story you tell is not the plain truth. It must be some god who has killed the proud suitors, angered by their heart-galling insolence and their wicked deeds. They honored no man on the earth, neither the base nor the noble, whoever came among them — and so, through their own recklessness, they met with disaster. But Odysseus himself has lost his homecoming, far from Achaea — he himself has perished."
Her dear old nurse Eurycleia answered her in turn: "My child, what a word has escaped the fence of your teeth! You said your husband, who is right here inside by the hearth, would never come home again — your heart was always slow to trust. But listen, let me tell you another sign, one beyond doubt: the scar the boar once gave him with its white tusk. I recognized it while washing his feet, and I wanted to tell you myself, but he seized my throat with his hands and, in his cunning wisdom, would not let me speak. But come with me — I will stake my own life on it: if I am deceiving you, kill me by the most pitiful death you can find."
Thoughtful Penelope answered her in turn: "Dear nurse, hard it is for you to trace the plans of the gods who live forever, wise as you are. Still, let us go to my son, so that I may see the dead suitors, and see the man who killed them."
So saying she went down from the upper chamber, and her heart turned over many things as she went — whether to stand apart and question her dear husband, or to go up to him, take his hands and his head, and kiss him. When she came in and crossed the stone threshold, she sat down opposite Odysseus, in the firelight, against the far wall, while he sat by the tall pillar, looking down, waiting to see whether his noble wife would say anything to him, now that her eyes had seen him.
But she sat a long while in silence, and amazement filled her heart. At one moment, looking straight at him, she seemed to know his face; at another she failed to know him, in those shabby clothes that covered his body. Telemachus rebuked her, speaking her name: "Mother, my hard mother, with your unyielding heart, why do you hold back from my father like this, why don't you sit beside him and ask him questions, question him closely? No other woman would keep such a stubborn heart, standing apart from a husband who, after so much suffering, has come home in the twentieth year to his own native land. But your heart is always harder than stone."
Thoughtful Penelope answered him: "My child, the heart in my breast is stunned with wonder, and I have no power to speak a word to him, or to ask him anything, or even to look him in the face. But if this is truly Odysseus, and he has come home, then the two of us will surely know each other even better than that — for we have signs between us, known to ourselves alone, hidden from everyone else."
So she spoke, and long-suffering, godlike Odysseus smiled, and at once spoke winged words to Telemachus: "Telemachus, let your mother test me here in the hall as she wishes — soon she will know me even better. It is because I am filthy now, and wear such shabby clothes on my body, that she despises me and still will not say that I am he. But let us think how everything may turn out for the best. For even when a man has killed just one person in a community, one who does not leave behind many avengers, he still goes into exile, leaving his kinsmen and his native land. But we have killed the pillars of this city, the very best of the young men of Ithaca — that is what I want you to think carefully about."
Wise Telemachus answered him: "See to that yourself, dear father — men say your judgment is the best there is among mortals, and no other man alive could rival you in it. We will follow you eagerly, and I promise you we will not fall short in courage, so far as our strength allows."
Odysseus, master of many wiles, answered him: "Then I will tell you what seems best to me. First, all of you go and bathe and put on fresh tunics, and tell the maidservants in the hall to bring you clothing. Then let the godlike singer, with his clear-sounding lyre in hand, lead us in the merry rhythm of the dance, so that anyone hearing it from outside — a passerby on the road, or a neighbor — will say it is a wedding feast. That way no wide rumor of the suitors' slaughter will spread through the town before we have gone out to our orchard, thick with trees, in the country. There we will decide whatever advantage the Olympian god grants us."
So he spoke, and they listened closely and obeyed him. First they bathed and put on fresh tunics, and the women arrayed themselves, while the godlike singer took up his rounded lyre and stirred in them a longing for sweet song and the blameless dance. The great hall echoed all around with the tread of men and fair-girdled women at their revels, and anyone hearing it from outside the house would say: "Truly someone has married the queen so long besieged by suitors. Hard-hearted woman — she did not have the courage to keep watch over the great house of her true husband right to the end, until he came." So people said, not knowing what had really happened.
Meanwhile the housekeeper Eurynome bathed great-hearted Odysseus in his own home and rubbed him with oil, and dressed him in a fine cloak and tunic. And Athena poured great beauty down over his head, making him taller to look at and more powerful, and she made the curling locks flow down from his head like the petals of the hyacinth flower. Just as when a skilled craftsman overlays silver with gold — a man Hephaestus and Pallas Athena have taught every kind of art, and he finishes graceful work — so Athena poured grace over his head and shoulders.
He stepped from the bath looking like one of the immortals, and went back and sat again on the chair from which he had risen, facing his wife, and spoke to her: "Strange woman — the gods who hold the halls of Olympus have given you, beyond all women born, an unyielding heart. No other woman would keep such a stubborn heart, standing apart from a husband who, after so much suffering, has come home in the twentieth year to his own native land. Come then, nurse, make up a bed for me, so that I may lie down alone — for this woman's heart is iron within her."
Thoughtful Penelope answered him: "Strange man — I am not proud, nor am I scornful of you, nor am I too amazed to speak. I know very well what you looked like when you left Ithaca on your long-oared ship. But come, Eurycleia, make up the sturdy bed for him outside the well-built bedchamber that he built with his own hands. Set the sturdy bed out there for him, and pile it with fleeces, cloaks, and shining blankets."
She said this to test her husband. But Odysseus, deeply troubled, said to his wife, who knew him so well: "Woman, this is a painful thing you have said. Who has moved my bed elsewhere? That would be hard even for a very skilled craftsman, unless a god came in person and easily chose to set it somewhere else. But no living man, however strong in his prime, could easily pry it from its place, for a great secret was built into its construction, and it was my work, and no one else's. There grew a bush of long-leaved olive inside the courtyard, full-grown and flourishing, thick as a pillar.
"Around this I built my bedchamber, working until I finished it, with close-set stones, and I roofed it well above, and I fitted it with jointed doors that closed tight. Only then did I cut away the crown of the long-leaved olive tree, and trimmed the trunk from the root up, planing it with bronze, skillfully and carefully, and trued it to the line to make a bedpost, and I bored it all through with an auger. Starting from that I carved out my bed, and worked on it until it was finished, inlaying it with gold, silver, and ivory, and I stretched across it a strap of oxhide, dyed bright with purple.
"That is the sign I show you now — but I do not know, woman, whether my bed still stands firm in its place, or whether some man has already cut through the olive trunk and moved it elsewhere."
So he spoke, and her knees went weak, and her heart melted, as she recognized the sure signs that Odysseus had laid out before her. Weeping, she ran straight to him, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed his head, saying: "Don't be angry with me, Odysseus — you were always the wisest of men. The gods gave us sorrow, resenting that we should stay together and enjoy our youth and reach the threshold of old age side by side. But don't hold it against me now, don't be angry, that I did not welcome you like this the moment I first saw you.
"For always my heart within me trembled with fear that some man would come and deceive me with his words — for there are many who scheme for wicked gain. Not even Argive Helen, daughter of Zeus, would have lain with a foreign man in love if she had known that the warlike sons of the Achaeans would one day bring her home again to her own native land. It was a god who drove her to that shameful act; before that, she had never let such ruinous folly settle in her heart, the folly from which our own sorrow first began.
"But now, since you have told me the clear and certain signs of our bed, which no other mortal has ever seen, only you and I, and one single servant of mine, Actoris, whom my father gave me when I first came here, who guarded the doors of our sturdy chamber — now you have won my heart, hard as it has been."
So she spoke, and stirred in him an even greater longing for tears. He wept, holding his dear and faithful wife in his arms. And as when the sight of land is welcome to men swimming for their lives, after Poseidon has wrecked their sturdy ship at sea, driving it hard with wind and heavy waves, and only a few escape the gray water by swimming to shore, their bodies caked thick with brine, and they climb onto the land, glad to have escaped disaster — so welcome was her husband to her as she gazed at him, and she would not let her white arms release his neck.
And now rosy-fingered Dawn would have found them still weeping, had not the goddess, gray-eyed Athena, thought of something else. She held back the long night at its close, and kept golden-throned Dawn beside the Ocean, not letting her yoke her swift-footed horses that bring light to men, Lampus and Phaethon, the colts that draw the Dawn.
Then Odysseus, master of many wiles, said to his wife: "Woman, we have not yet come to the end of all our trials — there is still labor ahead, boundless, heavy and hard, all of which I must finish. For so the spirit of Tiresias prophesied to me on the day I went down into the house of Hades, seeking a homecoming for my companions and for myself. But come, let us go to bed, wife, so that at last we may lie down and take our fill of sweet sleep together."
Thoughtful Penelope answered him: "Our bed will be ready for you whenever your heart desires it, now that the gods have brought you home to your well-built house and your own native land. But since you have thought of it, and a god has put it in your heart, tell me now of this trial — for I will surely learn of it later, I think, so there is no harm in hearing it at once."
Odysseus, master of many wiles, answered her: "Strange woman, why do you press me so urgently to tell it? Still, I will speak, and hide nothing. Your heart will not rejoice in it — indeed I take no joy in it myself, since the prophecy commands me to go to a great many cities of men, carrying a well-shaped oar in my hands, until I come to a people who know nothing of the sea, and eat their food without salt, and know nothing of ships painted red at the prow, nor of shapely oars, which serve as wings for ships.
"And he told me a very plain sign, which I will not hide from you: when some other traveler I meet on the road says I carry a winnowing-fan on my strong shoulder, then I must plant my oar in the earth and offer fine sacrifices to lord Poseidon — a ram, a bull, and a boar that mounts the sows — and go home again, and offer sacred hecatombs to the immortal gods who hold the wide heaven, all of them, one after another. And death will come to me myself, away from the sea, a very gentle death, that will take me when I am worn down by sleek old age, and my people around me will live in prosperity. All this, he told me, would come to pass."
Thoughtful Penelope answered him: "If the gods will indeed grant you a better old age, then there is hope that you will find an end to your troubles."
So the two of them spoke to each other of such things. Meanwhile Eurynome and the nurse were making up the bed with soft bedding by the light of blazing torches. And when they had spread the sturdy bed, working quickly, the old woman went back to her own quarters to sleep, while Eurynome, keeper of the bedchamber, led the couple to bed, a torch in her hands. Having brought them to the chamber, she went back out. And so, joyfully, they came to the rites of their marriage bed, as it had been long ago.
Then Telemachus, the cowherd, and the swineherd stopped their feet from dancing, and stopped the women too, and they themselves lay down to sleep throughout the shadowy hall. And when Odysseus and Penelope had taken their fill of loving union, they delighted in talk, telling each other their stories,
She told him everything she had endured in the halls, watching the ruinous crowd of suitors — how many oxen and fat sheep they slaughtered for her sake, and how much wine was drawn from the jars.
And in turn Odysseus, sprung from Zeus, told all the griefs he had brought upon other men, and all the hardship he himself had suffered and labored through. She listened with delight, and sleep did not fall on her eyelids until he had told it all.
He began with how he first conquered the Cicones, and then came to the rich land of the Lotus-Eaters. He told what the Cyclops did, and how he paid him back for the brave companions the monster had eaten without pity. He told how he reached Aeolus, who welcomed him kindly and sent him on his way, though it was not yet his fate to reach his own country — a storm swept him up again and carried him, groaning heavily, over the swarming sea. He told how he came to Telepylus of the Laestrygonians, who destroyed his ships and his well-armored comrades, every one — Odysseus alone escaping in his black ship. He told of Circe's cunning and her many-schemed treachery, and how he went down to the dank house of Hades to consult the spirit of Theban Tiresias, sailing there in his benched ship, and saw all his companions, and his own mother, who had borne him and raised him when he was small. He told how he heard the throbbing song of the Sirens, and how he came to the Wandering Rocks and dread Charybdis and Scylla, whom no man has ever yet escaped unharmed. He told how his companions killed the cattle of the Sun, and how Zeus who thunders on high struck his swift ship with a smoking bolt, and his good comrades perished all together, while he alone escaped the deadly fates. He told how he reached the island of Ogygia and the nymph Calypso, who kept him there, longing to have him for her husband, in her hollow caves, and fed him, and promised to make him immortal and ageless for all his days — but she could never persuade the heart in his chest. He told how he came at last to the Phaeacians after much suffering, and how they honored him in their hearts like a god and sent him home in a ship to his own dear country, giving him bronze and gold and clothing in abundance.
This was the last thing he told her, when sweet sleep, loosener of limbs, came upon him and released the cares of his heart.
Then the bright-eyed goddess Athena had another thought. When she judged that Odysseus had had his fill of his wife's embrace and of sleep, at once she roused golden-throned Dawn from the Ocean to bring light to men. And Odysseus rose from his soft bed and spoke these words to his wife:
"Wife, the two of us have had our fill of trials by now — you weeping here over my long and painful voyage home, while Zeus and the other gods held me back from my own country, though I longed for it. But now that we have both come to the bed we love, look after the possessions that are mine within the house. As for the flocks the arrogant suitors ate up, I will win back much of it myself by raiding, and the rest the Achaeans will give me, until they have filled all my folds again. Now I am going out to my orchards, thick with trees, to see my good father, who has grieved so heavily for me. And this I charge you, wife, wise as you are — as soon as the sun comes up, word will spread of the suitors I killed in the halls. Go up to your room with your women and sit there — do not look at anyone or question anyone."
So he spoke, and put on the fine armor about his shoulders, and roused Telemachus, the cowherd, and the swineherd, and told them all to take weapons of war in their hands. They did not disobey him, but armed themselves in bronze, and opened the doors and went out, and Odysseus led the way. By now the light lay upon the earth, but Athena, hiding them in night, led them quickly out of the city.