Book 23

1 The old woman went up to the upper rooms, laughing aloud, to tell her mistress that her dear husband was at home. Her knees moved nimbly, and her feet went stumbling in their haste. She stood over her head and spoke to her:

5 “Wake up, Penelope, dear child, so that you may see with your own eyes what you have longed for all your days. Odysseus has come, he is home, late though he has come. And he has killed the proud suitors who troubled his house and ate up his possessions and bullied his son.” Then prudent Penelope said to her: “Dear nurse, the gods have made you mad. They can make even the very wise witless, and they set the feeble-minded on the path of good sense; they have harmed you, though before your mind was sound. Why do you mock me, when my heart is full of sorrow, telling me these wild things, and wake me from the sweet sleep that had bound me and covered my eyelids? I have never slept like that since Odysseus went away to see Evil-Ilion, that name not to be spoken. But come now, go down and go back to the hall. If any other of the women who are mine had come and told me this and woken me from sleep, I would soon have sent her back to the hall in misery; but this time your old age will save you.” Then the dear nurse Eurycleia said to her: “I am not mocking you, dear child. It is true, Odysseus has come, he is home, as I tell you: the stranger whom they all dishonored in the halls. Telemachus has long known he was in the house, but in his good sense he kept his father’s plans hidden, so that he might take vengeance on the violence of these arrogant men.”

32 So she spoke, and Penelope was glad, and she sprang from her bed and threw her arms around the old woman, and tears fell from her eyelids, and she spoke to her, and her words had wings:

35 “But come, dear nurse, tell me truly: if he really has come home, as you say, how did he lay his hands on the shameless suitors, alone as he was, while they always stayed together in the house?”

39 Then the dear nurse Eurycleia said to her: “I did not see, I was not told; I only heard the groaning of men being killed. We sat in the far corner of the well-built storerooms, terrified, and the well-fitted doors held us shut in, until your son called me from the hall, Telemachus, for his father had sent him out to call me. Then I found Odysseus standing among the bodies of the slain, and around him, covering the hard-beaten floor, they lay heaped on one another. It would have warmed your heart to see him. Now they are all lying together at the courtyard gates, and he is purifying the beautiful house with sulfur, and he has lit a great fire; and he sent me to call you. Come with me, so that both of you may bring your dear hearts into gladness, since you have suffered many evils. Now at last this long desire has been fulfilled: he has come himself, alive, to his own hearth, and he has found you and his son in the halls; and the suitors, who did him evil, he has punished, every one of them, in his own house.”

58 Then prudent Penelope said to her: “Dear nurse, do not boast over them yet, laughing aloud. You know how welcome he would be if he appeared in the halls, to everyone, and most of all to me and to the son we bore. But this is no true story, as you tell it; one of the immortals has killed the lordly suitors, angered by their heart-wounding insolence and their evil deeds. For they honored no one among men on earth, bad or good, whoever came among them; and so through their recklessness they have suffered evil. But Odysseus, far away, has lost his homecoming to the Achaean land, and is lost himself.”

69 Then the dear nurse Eurycleia answered her: “My child, what a word has escaped the fence of your teeth! Your husband is here inside, by the hearth, and you said he would never come home. Your heart is always unbelieving. But come, I will tell you another clear sign besides: the scar the boar once gave him with his white tusk. I recognized it when I was washing him, and I wanted to tell you yourself, but he seized me by the mouth with his hands and would not let me speak, in the great cunning of his mind. But come with me, and I will stake my own life on it: if I am deceiving you, kill me by the most pitiful death.” Then prudent Penelope answered her: “Dear nurse, it is hard for you to see into the counsels of the gods who are forever, however wise you are. All the same, let us go to my son, so that I may see the suitors dead, and the man who killed them.” So saying, she came down from the upper rooms, and her heart was much divided, whether to question her dear husband from a distance, or to go up to him and kiss his head and take his hands. When she came in and stepped over the stone threshold, she sat down opposite Odysseus in the light of the fire, against the other wall; and he was sitting against a tall pillar, looking down, waiting to see whether his stately wife would say anything to him, now that her eyes had seen him. She sat a long time in silence, and amazement came upon her heart. At one moment she would look full in his face, and at another she would not know him, in the vile clothes he had on. But Telemachus rebuked her and spoke to her, calling her by name:

97 “Mother, my cruel mother, with your hard heart, why do you keep so apart from my father, and do not sit beside him and question him and ask him about everything? No other woman would harden her heart like this and stand aloof from her husband, who after many hardships had come back to her in the twentieth year to his native land. But your heart is always harder than stone.”

104 Then prudent Penelope said to him: “My child, the heart in my breast is lost in wonder. I cannot speak a word to him, or ask a question, or look him in the face. But if he truly is Odysseus and has come home, then we two will surely know each other, and better than anyone; for we have signs that we two alone know, hidden from others.”

111 So she spoke, and much-enduring noble Odysseus smiled, and at once he spoke to Telemachus, and his words had wings:

113 “Telemachus, let your mother test me in the halls; she will soon know me better. Now, because I am dirty and have vile clothes on my body, she dishonors me and will not yet say that I am he. But let us consider how things may turn out best. Whoever has killed even one man in the land, a man who leaves few behind to avenge him, flees, leaving his kinsmen and his native land. But we have killed the mainstay of the city, the best by far of the young men in Ithaca. I bid you think about this.”

123 Then thoughtful Telemachus answered him: “See to this yourself, dear father. They say your cunning is the best among men, and no other man among mortal men could rival you. We will follow you eagerly, and I tell you we will not fall short in courage, as far as our strength goes.”

129 Odysseus of many wiles answered him: “Then I will tell you what seems to me best. First wash yourselves and put on your tunics, and tell the women servants in the halls to put on their clothes. Then let the godlike bard with his clear-toned lyre lead us in a playful dance, so that anyone outside who hears it, a passerby on the road or one of those who live around us, will say it is a wedding. Let no wide rumor of the slaughter of the suitors go through the town before we have gone out to our farm with its many trees. There afterward we will consider what advantage the Olympian may put into our hands.”

141 So he spoke, and they listened closely and obeyed. First they washed and put on their tunics, and the women dressed themselves; and the godlike bard took up the hollow lyre and stirred in them the desire for sweet song and excellent dancing. The great house resounded all around with the feet of men dancing and of women with lovely sashes. And one would say who heard it from outside the house:

149 “Surely someone has married the queen so many wooed. Hard woman, she could not bear to keep the great house of her wedded husband to the end, until he came.”

152 So one would say, but they did not know what had been done. Meanwhile in his own house the housekeeper Eurynome bathed great-hearted Odysseus and rubbed him with oil and put a fine mantle and a tunic about him; and Athena poured great beauty over him from the head down, and made him taller to look at, and broader, and from his head she made his hair flow in curls like the hyacinth flower. As when a skilled man overlays silver with gold, a man whom Hephaestus and Pallas Athena have taught every kind of craft, and he finishes work full of grace: so she poured grace over his head and shoulders. He stepped out of the bath looking like the immortals, and he sat down again on the chair from which he had risen, opposite his wife, and spoke to her:

166 “Strange woman, those who have their homes on Olympus have given you, beyond all womankind, a heart that will not soften. No other woman would harden her heart like this and stand aloof from her husband, who after many hardships had come back to her in the twentieth year to his native land. But come, nurse, make up a bed for me, so that I may lie down alone; for the heart in her breast is iron.”

173 Then prudent Penelope said to him: “Strange man, I am not proud, nor do I scorn you, nor am I too much amazed; I know very well what you looked like when you went from Ithaca on your long-oared ship. But come, Eurycleia, make up the sturdy bed for him outside the well-built bedroom, the one he built himself. Put the sturdy bed out there for him, and throw bedding on it, fleeces and cloaks and shining blankets.”

181 So she spoke, testing her husband. But Odysseus, troubled, spoke to his loyal wife:

183 “Woman, that is a word that wounds my heart, what you have just said. Who has put my bed somewhere else? That would be hard even for a very skilled man, unless a god himself came and easily set it in another place, if he wished. But no mortal man alive, not even one in the prime of youth, could easily pry it loose, since a great sign is wrought into that well-wrought bed, and I made it myself, no one else. A long-leaved olive tree grew inside the courtyard, in full bloom and thriving, and its trunk was as thick as a pillar. Around this I built my bedroom until I finished it, with close-set stones, and I roofed it well above, and I hung doors on it, close-fitted and well joined. Then I lopped the leafy crown of the long-leaved olive and trimmed the trunk from the root up, and I smoothed it all around with the bronze, well and skillfully, and made it true to the line, and shaped it into a bedpost, and bored it all with an auger. Beginning from this I fashioned the bed until I had finished it, inlaying it with gold and silver and ivory, and I stretched across it straps of oxhide, shining with crimson. So I tell you this sign. But I do not know, woman, whether my bed is still fixed where it was, or whether some man has already cut through the olive trunk at its base and moved it somewhere else.”

205 So he spoke, and her knees and her heart went slack where she sat, as she recognized the sure signs that Odysseus had told her. Then she burst into tears and ran straight to him, and threw her arms around the neck of Odysseus, and kissed his head and said:

209 “Do not be angry with me, Odysseus, since in everything else you were always the wisest of men. It was the gods who gave us sorrow, who begrudged that we two should stay together and have joy of our youth and come to the threshold of old age. So do not be angry with me now, or resent it, that I did not welcome you like this as soon as I saw you. For always the heart in my breast shuddered in fear that some man would come and deceive me with his words; for there are many who plot evil schemes for gain. Not even Argive Helen, daughter of Zeus, would have lain in love with a stranger, a man of another land, if she had known that the warlike sons of the Achaeans would bring her home again to her own dear country. It was a god who stirred her to do that shameful deed; before then she had not laid to heart that grievous folly, from which sorrow first came upon us too. But now, since you have told me the clear signs of our bed, which no other mortal has ever seen, only you and I and a single maid, Actoris, whom my father gave me when I came here, who kept the doors of our sturdy bedroom for us, now you have persuaded my heart, hard as it is.”

231 So she spoke, and stirred in him still more the desire to weep, and he wept, holding his wife, dear to the heart, loyal. As when the land appears welcome to men swimming, whose well-built ship Poseidon has shattered on the sea, driven by wind and heavy waves, and only a few have escaped the gray sea to the shore by swimming, and the brine is caked thick on their skin, and gladly they set foot on land, escaped from evil: so welcome to her was her husband as she gazed at him, and she would not let her white arms go from his neck at all. And now rose-fingered Dawn would have appeared while they wept, if the goddess, gray-eyed Athena, had not had another thought. She held the long night back at the end of its course, and she kept Dawn of the golden throne waiting at the edge of Ocean, and would not let her yoke her swift-footed horses that bring light to men, Lampus and Phaethon, the colts that draw Dawn.

247 And then Odysseus of many wiles said to his wife: “Wife, we have not yet come to the end of all our trials. There is still measureless labor to come, long and hard, and I must fulfill it all. For so the spirit of Tiresias foretold to me on the day when I went down into the house of Hades to ask about the homecoming of my companions and myself. But come, wife, let us go to bed, so that now at last we may lie down and take our joy of sweet sleep.”

256 Then prudent Penelope said to him: “Your bed will be ready whenever your heart desires it, since the gods have brought you back to your well-built house and to your native land. But since you have thought of it, and a god has put it in your heart, come, tell me of this trial; for I think I will learn of it later, and it is no worse to know it at once.”

263 Odysseus of many wiles answered her: “Strange woman, why do you urge me so hard and bid me tell it? Well, I will tell you, and hide nothing. Your heart will not rejoice at it, and I do not rejoice either. For he bid me go to very many cities of men, carrying a well-fitted oar in my hands, until I come to men who do not know the sea and do not eat food mixed with salt; they know nothing of crimson-cheeked ships, nor of well-fitted oars, which are wings for ships. And he told me this sign, very clear, and I will not hide it from you: when another traveler meets me and says that I have a winnowing fan on my shining shoulder, then he bid me fix the oar in the ground and make fine sacrifices to lord Poseidon, a ram and a bull and a boar that mounts the sows, and go back home and offer sacred hecatombs to the immortal gods who hold the wide sky, to all of them in order. And death will come to me myself away from the sea, a gentle death, that will take me worn out with sleek old age; and around me my people will be prosperous. All this, he said, would come to pass for me.” Then prudent Penelope said to him: “If the gods are going to bring about a better old age, then there is hope that you will have an escape from evils.”

288 So they spoke with one another, and meanwhile Eurynome and the nurse made up the bed with soft coverings by the light of blazing torches. And when they had busily spread the sturdy bed, the old woman went back to her room to lie down, and Eurynome, the bedchamber maid, led them on their way to bed with a torch in her hands; she brought them to the bedroom and went back. And they came gladly to the rite of their old bed. Then Telemachus and the cowherd and the swineherd stopped their feet from dancing, and stopped the women, and they lay down to sleep throughout the shadowy halls.

300 And when the two of them had taken their joy of love’s delight, they took joy in talk, telling each other everything: she, noble among women, all that she had endured in the halls, watching the ruinous crowd of the suitors, who for her sake slaughtered many cattle and fat sheep, and much wine was drawn from the jars; and Odysseus, sprung from Zeus, told all the sorrows he had brought upon men and all the toils he himself had suffered in his misery. He told her everything, and she was delighted to listen, and sleep did not fall upon her eyelids until he had told it all.

310 He began with how he first conquered the Cicones, and then came to the rich land of the Lotus-Eaters; and all that the Cyclops did, and how he made him pay for his mighty companions, whom the Cyclops ate and had no pity; and how he came to Aeolus, who received him kindly and sent him on his way, but it was not yet his lot to reach his dear native land; a storm caught him up again and carried him, groaning heavily, over the fish-filled sea; and how he came to Telepylus of the Laestrygonians, who destroyed his ships and all his well-greaved companions, and Odysseus alone escaped in his black ship. He told of the guile of Circe and her many devices, and how he came in his many-benched ship to the dank house of Hades, to consult the spirit of Theban Tiresias, and saw all his companions, and the mother who bore him and nursed him when he was little; and how he heard the voice of the Sirens in their full-throated song, and how he came to the Wandering Rocks and dread Charybdis and Scylla, whom no men have ever escaped unharmed; and how his companions killed the cattle of Helios; and how high-thundering Zeus struck the swift ship with his smoking thunderbolt, and his good companions perished, all together, while he himself escaped the evil fates; and how he came to the island of Ogygia and the nymph Calypso, who kept him there in her hollow caves, longing for him to be her husband, and cared for him and said that she would make him immortal and ageless all his days, but she could never persuade the heart in his breast; and how after many hardships he came to the Phaeacians, who honored him in their hearts as if he were a god and sent him in a ship to his dear native land, after giving him bronze and gold in plenty and clothing. This was the last thing he told, when sweet sleep that loosens the limbs fell upon him, loosening the cares of his heart.

344 Then the goddess, gray-eyed Athena, had another thought. When she judged in her heart that Odysseus had had his joy of his wife’s bed and of sleep, at once she roused early-born Dawn of the golden throne from Ocean, to bring light to men. And Odysseus rose from the soft bed and gave his wife this charge:

350 “Wife, we two have had our fill of many trials by now: you here, weeping over my troubled homecoming, and I, whom Zeus and the other gods kept bound in pains far from my native land, for all my longing. But now that we two have come to the bed we longed for, you must take care of the possessions I have in the halls. As for the flocks that the overbearing suitors have wasted, I will take many myself by raiding, and the Achaeans will give others, until they fill all my folds. But now I am going to the farm with its many trees, to see my good father, who grieves for me constantly. And this I charge you, wife, wise as you are: as soon as the sun comes up, word will go out about the suitors whom I killed in the halls. Go up to the upper rooms with your women attendants and sit there, and do not look at anyone or ask any questions.”

366 He spoke, and he put his fine armor around his shoulders, and roused Telemachus and the cowherd and the swineherd, and told them all to take up the weapons of war in their hands. They did not disobey him; they armed themselves in bronze and opened the doors and went out, and Odysseus led the way. By now there was light over the earth, but Athena hid them in night and quickly led them out of the city.