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fiefoeHomer as translated by Robert Fagles and read by Ian McKellen. The story meanders and explodes and pulls back again.
But then, when the wheeling seasons brought the year around,
20 that year spun out by the gods when he should reach his home,
25 Poseidon had gone to visit the Ethiopians worlds away,
Ethiopians off at the farthest limits of mankind,
And young Telemachus cautiously replied,
“I’ll try, my friend, to give you a frank answer.
249 Mother has always told me I’m his son, it’s true,
250 but I am not so certain. Who, on his own,
has ever really known who gave him life?
If only that Odysseus sported with these suitors,
a blood wedding, a quick death would take the lot!
think hard, reach down deep in your heart and soul
for a way to kill these suitors in your house,
340 by stealth or in open combat.
341 You must not cling to your boyhood any longer —
*400 Bards are not to blame —
Zeus is to blame. He deals to each and every
laborer on this earth whatever doom he pleases.
Why fault the bard if he sings the Argives’ harsh fate?
It’s always the latest song, the one that echoes last
in the listeners’ ears, that people praise the most.
So by day she’d weave at her great and growing web —
by night, by the light of torches set beside her,
she would unravel all she’d done. Three whole years
she deceived us blind, seduced us with this scheme . . .
Then, when the wheeling seasons brought the fourth year on,
120 one of her women, in on the queen’s secret, told the truth
But I’ll cry out to the everlasting gods in hopes
that Zeus will pay you back with a vengeance —all of you
destroyed in my house while I go scot-free myself!”
260 Think: not one of the people whom he ruled
remembers Odysseus now, that godlike man,
and kindly as a father to his children!
106 More than all other men, that man was born for pain.
Don’t soften a thing, from pity, respect for me —
once the winds had driven you that far off course,
into a sea so vast not even cranes could wing their way
in one year’s flight
“Look, Pisistratus —joy of my heart, my friend —
80 the sheen of bronze, the blaze of gold and amber,
silver, ivory too, through all this echoing mansion!
Surely Zeus’s court on Olympus must be just like this,
the grief that numbs the spirit gluts us quickly —
for none of all those comrades, pained as I am,
do I grieve as much for one . . .
that man who makes sleep hateful, even food,
surely he’s Telemachus! The boy that hero left
160 a babe in arms at home when all you Achaeans
fought at Troy, launching your headlong battles
just for my sake, shameless whore that I was.”
* 253 potent gifts from Polydamna the wife of Thon,
a woman of Egypt, land where the teeming soil
bears the richest yield of herbs in all the world:
many health itself when mixed in the wine,
and many deadly poison.
Every man is a healer there, more skilled
than any other men on earth —Egyptians born
260 of the healing god himself.
* in the wooden horse where all our best encamped,
our champions armed with bloody death for Troy . . .
when along you came, Helen —roused, no doubt,
by a dark power bent on giving Troy some glory,
309 and dashing Prince Deiphobus squired your every step.
310 Three times you sauntered round our hollow ambush,
feeling, stroking its flanks,
challenging all our fighters, calling each by name —
yours was the voice of all our long-lost wives!...
but Odysseus clamped his great hands on the man’s mouth
and shut it, brutally —yes, he saved us all,
holding on grim-set till Pallas Athena
lured you off at last.”
brooding now . . . would her fine son escape his death
or go down at her overweening suitors’ hands?
Her mind in torment, wheeling
like some lion at bay, dreading gangs of hunters
890 closing their cunning ring around him for the finish.
Four springs in a row, bubbling clear and cold,
running side-by-side, took channels left and right.
80 Soft meadows spreading round were starred with violets,
81 lush with beds of parsley. Why, even a deathless god
who came upon that place would gaze in wonder,
* The queenly nymph sought out the great Odysseus —
the commands of Zeus still ringing in her ears —
and found him there on the headland, sitting, still,
weeping, his eyes never dry, his sweet life flowing away
with the tears he wept for his foiled journey home,
170 since the nymph no longer pleased. In the nights, true,
he’d sleep with her in the arching cave —he had no choice —
* Working away at speed
he put up half-decks pinned to close-set ribs
and a sweep of gunwales rounded off the sides.
280 He fashioned the mast next and sank its yard in deep
and added a steering-oar to hold her right on course,
then he fenced her stem to stern with twigs and wicker,
bulwark against the sea-surge, floored with heaps of brush.
And lustrous Calypso came again, now with bolts of cloth
to make the sail, and he finished that off too, expertly.
Braces, sheets and brails —he rigged all fast on board,
then eased her down with levers into the sunlit sea.
360 Pell-mell the rollers tossed her along down-current,
wild as the North Wind tossing thistle along the fields
at high harvest —dry stalks clutching each other tightly —
so the galewinds tumbled her down the sea, this way, that way,
now the South Wind flinging her over to North to sport with,
now the East Wind giving her up to West to harry on and on.
* 178 once I saw the like —in Delos, beside Apollo’s altar —
the young slip of a palm-tree springing into the light.
180 There I’d sailed, you see, with a great army in my wake,
out on the long campaign that doomed my life to hardship.
That vision! Just as I stood there gazing, rapt, for hours . . .
no shaft like that had ever risen up from the earth —
so now I marvel at you, my lady: rapt, enthralled,
too struck with awe to grasp you by the knees
250 But despite my misery, let me finish dinner.
The belly’s a shameless dog, there’s nothing worse.
Always insisting, pressing, it never lets us forget —
destroyed as I am, my heart racked with sadness,
sick with anguish, still it keeps demanding,
‘Eat, drink!’ It blots out all the memory
of my pain, commanding, ‘Fill me up!’
* “I’m hardly a man for reckless, idle anger.
Balance is best in all things. (Alcinous )
Poseidon god of the earthquake came, and Hermes came,
the running god of luck, and the Archer, lord Apollo,
while modesty kept each goddess to her mansion.
The immortals, givers of all good things, stood at the gates,
369 and uncontrollable laughter burst from the happy gods
370 when they saw the god of fire’s subtle, cunning work.
One would glance at his neighbor, laughing out,
“A bad day for adultery! Slow outstrips the Swift.”
“Look how limping Hephaestus conquers War,
He placed the silver-studded sword in Odysseus’ hands
with a burst of warm words: “Farewell, stranger, sir —
if any remark of mine gave you offense,
may stormwinds snatch it up and sweep it off!
Out of the morning mist they came against us —
60 packed as the leaves and spears that flower forth in spring —
and Zeus presented us with disaster, me and my comrades
doomed to suffer blow on mortal blow.
* our squadron reached the land of the Lotus-eaters,
95 people who eat the lotus, mellow fruit and flower...
to scout out who might live there —men like us perhaps,
who live on bread? So off they went and soon enough
they mingled among the natives, Lotus-eaters, Lotus-eaters
104 who had no notion of killing my companions, not at all,
they simply gave them the lotus to taste instead . . .
Any crewmen who ate the lotus, the honey-sweet fruit,
107 lost all desire to send a message back, much less return,
300 But since we’ve chanced on you, we’re at your knees
in hopes of a warm welcome, even a guest-gift,
the sort that hosts give strangers. That’s the custom.
* as wine came spurting, flooding up from his gullet
with chunks of human flesh —he vomited, blind drunk.
420 Now, at last, I thrust our stake in a bed of embers
to get it red-hot and rallied all my comrades:
‘Courage —no panic, no one hang back now!’
And green as it was, just as the olive stake
was about to catch fire —the glow terrific, yes —
* So we seized our stake with its fiery tip
and bored it round and round in the giant’s eye
till blood came boiling up around that smoking shaft
and the hot blast singed his brow and eyelids round the core
and the broiling eyeball burst —
its crackling roots blazed
and hissed —
as a blacksmith plunges a glowing ax or adze
in an ice-cold bath and the metal screeches steam
440 and its temper hardens —that’s the iron’s strength —
so the eye of the Cyclops sizzled round that stake!
just step your mast and spread your white sail wide —
sit back and the North Wind will speed you on your way.
But once your vessel has cut across the Ocean River
you will raise a desolate coast and Persephone’s Grove,
560 her tall black poplars, willows whose fruit dies young.
Beach your vessel hard by the Ocean’s churning shore
and make your own way down to the moldering House of Death.
563 And there into Acheron, the Flood of Grief, two rivers flow,
the torrent River of Fire, the wailing River of Tears
that branches off from Styx, the Stream of Hate,
and a stark crag looms
where the two rivers thunder down and meet.
So I said, and it broke my shipmates’ hearts.
They sank down on the ground, moaning, tore their hair.
But it gained us nothing —what good can come of grief?
* ‘True, true,’ Agamemnon’s ghost kept pressing on,
500 ‘so even your own wife —never indulge her too far.
Never reveal the whole truth, whatever you may know;
just tell her a part of it, be sure to hide the rest.
Not that you, Odysseus, will be murdered by your wife...
the time for trusting women’s gone forever!
The other crag is lower —you will see, Odysseus —
though both lie side-by-side, an arrow-shot apart.
Atop it a great fig-tree rises, shaggy with leaves,
115 beneath it awesome Charybdis gulps the dark water down.
Three times a day she vomits it up, three times she gulps it down,
* great Odysseus woke from sleep on native ground at last —
he’d been away for years —but failed to know the land
for the goddess Pallas Athena, Zeus’s daughter,
showered mist over all, so under cover
she might change his appearance head to foot
as she told him every peril he’d meet at home —
keep him from being known by wife, townsmen, friends,
220 till the suitors paid the price for all their outrage.
And so to the king himself all Ithaca looked strange . . .
* “Always the same, your wary turn of mind,”
Athena exclaimed, her glances flashing warmly.
“That’s why I can’t forsake you in your troubles —
you are so winning, so worldly-wise, so self-possessed!
Anyone else, come back from wandering long and hard,
would have hurried home at once, delighted to see
380 his children and his wife. Oh, but not you,
it’s not your pleasure to probe for news of them —
you must put your wife to the proof yourself!
90 Then coating the meat with white barley groats
and mixing honeyed wine in a carved wooden bowl,
he sat down across from his guest, inviting warmly,
“Eat up now, my friend. It’s all we slaves have got,
scrawny pork, while the suitors eat the fatted hogs —
it was always oarswept ships that thrilled my heart,
and wars, and the long polished spears and arrows,
dreadful gear that makes the next man cringe.
I loved them all —god planted that love inside me.
260 Each man delights in the work that suits him best.
Tramping about the world —there’s nothing worse for a man.
But the fact is that men put up with misery
to stuff their cursed bellies.
* We two will keep to the shelter here, eat and drink
and take some joy in each other’s heartbreaking sorrows,
sharing each other’s memories. Over the years, you know,
450 a man finds solace even in old sorrows, true, a man
who’s weathered many blows and wandered many miles.
* But still not convinced that it was his father,
Telemachus broke out, wild with disbelief,
220 “No, you’re not Odysseus! Not my father!
Just some spirit spellbinding me now —
to make me ache with sorrow all the more.
Impossible for a mortal to work such marvels,
They cried out, shrilling cries, pulsing sharper
than birds of prey —eagles, vultures with hooked claws —
when farmers plunder their nest of young too young to fly.
* and I urge the boy to have no fear of death,
not from the suitors at least.
What comes from the gods —there’s no escaping that.”
Encouraging, all the way, but all the while
plotting the prince’s murder in his mind . . .
the king burst out, ‘How shameful! That’s the bed
of a brave man of war they’d like to crawl inside,
those spineless, craven cowards!
Weak as the doe that beds down her fawns
in a mighty lion’s den —her newborn sucklings —
then trails off to the mountain spurs and grassy bends
to graze her fill, but back the lion comes to his own lair
and the master deals both fawns a ghastly bloody death,
* 319 It was Argos, long-enduring Odysseus’ dog
320 he trained as a puppy once, but little joy he got
since all too soon he shipped to sacred Troy.
In the old days young hunters loved to set him
coursing after the wild goats and deer and hares.
But now with his master gone he lay there, castaway,
on piles of dung from mules and cattle, heaps collecting
out before the gates till Odysseus’ serving-men
could cart it off to manure the king’s estates.
Infested with ticks, half-dead from neglect,
here lay the hound, old Argos.
330 But the moment he sensed Odysseus standing by
he thumped his tail, nuzzling low, and his ears dropped,
though he had no strength to drag himself an inch
toward his master. Odysseus glanced to the side
and flicked away a tear, hiding it from Eumaeus,
he said, “Now take these to the stranger, tell him too
380 to make the rounds of the suitors, beg from one and all.
Bashfulness, for a man in need, is no great friend.”
* 600 if only Odysseus came back home to native soil now,
he and his son would avenge the outrage of these men —like that!”
602 At her last words Telemachus shook with a lusty sneeze
like a thunderclap resounding up and down the halls.
The queen was seized with laughter, calling out
to Eumaeus winged words: “Quickly, go!
Bring me this stranger now, face-to-face!
150 Of all that breathes and crawls across the earth,
our mother earth breeds nothing feebler than a man.
So long as the gods grant him power, spring in his knees,
he thinks he will never suffer affliction down the years.
But then, when the happy gods bring on the long hard times,
bear them he must, against his will, and steel his heart.
Our lives, our mood and mind as we pass across the earth,
turn as the days turn . . .
as the father of men and gods makes each day dawn.
* Up with you now, my good old Eurycleia,
407 come and wash your master’s . . . equal in years.
Odysseus must have feet and hands like his by now —
hardship can age a person overnight.”
463 so let his name be Odysseus . . .
the Son of Pain, a name he’ll earn in full.
630 “Ah my friend,” seasoned Penelope dissented,
“dreams are hard to unravel, wayward, drifting things —
not all we glimpse in them will come to pass . . .
633 Two gates there are for our evanescent dreams,
one is made of ivory, the other made of horn.
Those that pass through the ivory cleanly carved
are will-o’-the-wisps, their message bears no fruit.
The dreams that pass through the gates of polished horn
are fraught with truth, for the dreamer who can see them.
* So he forced his spirit into submission,
the rage in his breast reined back —unswerving,
all endurance. But he himself kept tossing, turning,
intent as a cook before some white-hot blazing fire
who rolls his sizzling sausage back and forth,
30 packed with fat and blood —keen to broil it quickly,
tossing, turning it, this way, that way —so he cast about:
how could he get these shameless suitors in his clutches,
one man facing a mob?
So they mocked, but Odysseus, mastermind in action,
once he’d handled the great bow and scanned every inch,
then, like an expert singer skilled at lyre and song —
who strains a string to a new peg with ease,
making the pliant sheep-gut fast at either end —
so with his virtuoso ease Odysseus strung his mighty bow.
Quickly his right hand plucked the string to test its pitch
and under his touch it sang out clear and sharp as a swallow’s cry.
Horror swept through the suitors, faces blanching white,
460 and Zeus cracked the sky with a bolt, his blazing sign,
(Eurymachus:) This man will never restrain his hands, invincible hands —
now that he’s seized that polished bow and quiver, look,
he’ll shoot from the sill until he’s killed us all!
So fight —call up the joy of battle! Swords out!
Tables lifted —block his arrows winging death!
Charge him, charge in a pack —
he smashed the ground with his forehead, writhing in pain,
both feet flailing out, and his high seat tottered —
the mist of death came swirling down his eyes.
A killing look, and the wry soldier answered,
“Only a priest, a prophet for this mob, you say?
How hard you must have prayed in my own house
that the heady day of my return would never dawn —
340 my dear wife would be yours, would bear your children!
For that there’s no escape from grueling death —you die!”
* But he found them one and all in blood and dust . . .
great hauls of them down and out like fish that fishermen
410 drag from the churning gray surf in looped and coiling nets
and fling ashore on a sweeping hook of beach —some noble catch
heaped on the sand, twitching, lusting for fresh salt sea
but the Sungod hammers down and burns their lives out . . .
so the suitors lay in heaps, corpse covering corpse.
“Child,” the devoted old nurse protested,
“what nonsense you let slip through your teeth.
Here’s your husband, warming his hands at his own hearth,
80 here —and you, you say he’ll never come home again,
always the soul of trust! All right, this too —
I’ll give you a sign, a proof that’s plain as day.
* And Athena crowned the man with beauty, head to foot,
made him taller to all eyes, his build more massive,
yes, and down from his brow the great goddess
ran his curls like thick hyacinth clusters
full of blooms. As a master craftsman washes
gold over beaten silver —a man the god of fire
180 and Queen Athena trained in every fine technique —
and finishes off his latest effort, handsome work . . .
so she lavished splendor over his head and shoulders now.
* There was a branching olive-tree inside our court,
grown to its full prime, the bole like a column, thickset.
Around it I built my bedroom, finished off the walls
with good tight stonework, roofed it over soundly
and added doors, hung well and snugly wedged.
Then I lopped the leafy crown of the olive,
220 clean-cutting the stump bare from roots up,
planing it round with a bronze smoothing-adze —
I had the skill —I shaped it plumb to the line to make
my bedpost, bored the holes it needed with an auger.
Working from there I built my bed, start to finish,
I gave it ivory inlays, gold and silver fittings,
wove the straps across it, oxhide gleaming red.
There’s our secret sign, I tell you, our life story!
Joy, warm as the joy that shipwrecked sailors feel
when they catch sight of land —Poseidon has struck
their well-rigged ship on the open sea with gale winds
and crushing walls of waves, and only a few escape, swimming,
struggling out of the frothing surf to reach the shore,
their bodies crusted with salt but buoyed up with joy
as they plant their feet on solid ground again,
spared a deadly fate. So joyous now to her
270 the sight of her husband, vivid in her gaze,
* Amphimedon’s ghost called back. “Lord of men, Agamemnon,
I remember it all, your majesty, as you say,
and I will tell you, start to finish now,
the story of our death,
the brutal end contrived to take us off.
We were courting the wife of Odysseus, gone so long.
She neither spurned nor embraced a marriage she despised,
no, she simply planned our death, our black doom!
This was her latest masterpiece of guile:
140 she set up a great loom in the royal halls
and she began to weave, and the weaving finespun,
210 “Happy Odysseus!”
Agamemnon’s ghost cried out. “Son of old Laertes —
mastermind —what a fine, faithful wife you won!..
A far cry from the daughter of Tyndareus, Clytemnestra —
220 what outrage she committed, killing the man she married once! —
yes, and the song men sing of her will ring with loathing.
She brands with a foul name the breed of womankind,
even the honest ones to come!”
So they traded stories,
the two ghosts standing there in the House of Death,
But tell me, please —in no uncertain terms —
320 how many years ago did you host the man,
that unfortunate guest of yours, my son . . .
there was a son, or was he all a dream?
That most unlucky man, whom now, I fear,
But then, when the wheeling seasons brought the year around,
20 that year spun out by the gods when he should reach his home,
25 Poseidon had gone to visit the Ethiopians worlds away,
Ethiopians off at the farthest limits of mankind,
And young Telemachus cautiously replied,
“I’ll try, my friend, to give you a frank answer.
249 Mother has always told me I’m his son, it’s true,
250 but I am not so certain. Who, on his own,
has ever really known who gave him life?
If only that Odysseus sported with these suitors,
a blood wedding, a quick death would take the lot!
think hard, reach down deep in your heart and soul
for a way to kill these suitors in your house,
340 by stealth or in open combat.
341 You must not cling to your boyhood any longer —
*400 Bards are not to blame —
Zeus is to blame. He deals to each and every
laborer on this earth whatever doom he pleases.
Why fault the bard if he sings the Argives’ harsh fate?
It’s always the latest song, the one that echoes last
in the listeners’ ears, that people praise the most.
So by day she’d weave at her great and growing web —
by night, by the light of torches set beside her,
she would unravel all she’d done. Three whole years
she deceived us blind, seduced us with this scheme . . .
Then, when the wheeling seasons brought the fourth year on,
120 one of her women, in on the queen’s secret, told the truth
But I’ll cry out to the everlasting gods in hopes
that Zeus will pay you back with a vengeance —all of you
destroyed in my house while I go scot-free myself!”
260 Think: not one of the people whom he ruled
remembers Odysseus now, that godlike man,
and kindly as a father to his children!
106 More than all other men, that man was born for pain.
Don’t soften a thing, from pity, respect for me —
once the winds had driven you that far off course,
into a sea so vast not even cranes could wing their way
in one year’s flight
“Look, Pisistratus —joy of my heart, my friend —
80 the sheen of bronze, the blaze of gold and amber,
silver, ivory too, through all this echoing mansion!
Surely Zeus’s court on Olympus must be just like this,
the grief that numbs the spirit gluts us quickly —
for none of all those comrades, pained as I am,
do I grieve as much for one . . .
that man who makes sleep hateful, even food,
surely he’s Telemachus! The boy that hero left
160 a babe in arms at home when all you Achaeans
fought at Troy, launching your headlong battles
just for my sake, shameless whore that I was.”
* 253 potent gifts from Polydamna the wife of Thon,
a woman of Egypt, land where the teeming soil
bears the richest yield of herbs in all the world:
many health itself when mixed in the wine,
and many deadly poison.
Every man is a healer there, more skilled
than any other men on earth —Egyptians born
260 of the healing god himself.
* in the wooden horse where all our best encamped,
our champions armed with bloody death for Troy . . .
when along you came, Helen —roused, no doubt,
by a dark power bent on giving Troy some glory,
309 and dashing Prince Deiphobus squired your every step.
310 Three times you sauntered round our hollow ambush,
feeling, stroking its flanks,
challenging all our fighters, calling each by name —
yours was the voice of all our long-lost wives!...
but Odysseus clamped his great hands on the man’s mouth
and shut it, brutally —yes, he saved us all,
holding on grim-set till Pallas Athena
lured you off at last.”
brooding now . . . would her fine son escape his death
or go down at her overweening suitors’ hands?
Her mind in torment, wheeling
like some lion at bay, dreading gangs of hunters
890 closing their cunning ring around him for the finish.
Four springs in a row, bubbling clear and cold,
running side-by-side, took channels left and right.
80 Soft meadows spreading round were starred with violets,
81 lush with beds of parsley. Why, even a deathless god
who came upon that place would gaze in wonder,
* The queenly nymph sought out the great Odysseus —
the commands of Zeus still ringing in her ears —
and found him there on the headland, sitting, still,
weeping, his eyes never dry, his sweet life flowing away
with the tears he wept for his foiled journey home,
170 since the nymph no longer pleased. In the nights, true,
he’d sleep with her in the arching cave —he had no choice —
* Working away at speed
he put up half-decks pinned to close-set ribs
and a sweep of gunwales rounded off the sides.
280 He fashioned the mast next and sank its yard in deep
and added a steering-oar to hold her right on course,
then he fenced her stem to stern with twigs and wicker,
bulwark against the sea-surge, floored with heaps of brush.
And lustrous Calypso came again, now with bolts of cloth
to make the sail, and he finished that off too, expertly.
Braces, sheets and brails —he rigged all fast on board,
then eased her down with levers into the sunlit sea.
360 Pell-mell the rollers tossed her along down-current,
wild as the North Wind tossing thistle along the fields
at high harvest —dry stalks clutching each other tightly —
so the galewinds tumbled her down the sea, this way, that way,
now the South Wind flinging her over to North to sport with,
now the East Wind giving her up to West to harry on and on.
* 178 once I saw the like —in Delos, beside Apollo’s altar —
the young slip of a palm-tree springing into the light.
180 There I’d sailed, you see, with a great army in my wake,
out on the long campaign that doomed my life to hardship.
That vision! Just as I stood there gazing, rapt, for hours . . .
no shaft like that had ever risen up from the earth —
so now I marvel at you, my lady: rapt, enthralled,
too struck with awe to grasp you by the knees
250 But despite my misery, let me finish dinner.
The belly’s a shameless dog, there’s nothing worse.
Always insisting, pressing, it never lets us forget —
destroyed as I am, my heart racked with sadness,
sick with anguish, still it keeps demanding,
‘Eat, drink!’ It blots out all the memory
of my pain, commanding, ‘Fill me up!’
* “I’m hardly a man for reckless, idle anger.
Balance is best in all things. (Alcinous )
Poseidon god of the earthquake came, and Hermes came,
the running god of luck, and the Archer, lord Apollo,
while modesty kept each goddess to her mansion.
The immortals, givers of all good things, stood at the gates,
369 and uncontrollable laughter burst from the happy gods
370 when they saw the god of fire’s subtle, cunning work.
One would glance at his neighbor, laughing out,
“A bad day for adultery! Slow outstrips the Swift.”
“Look how limping Hephaestus conquers War,
He placed the silver-studded sword in Odysseus’ hands
with a burst of warm words: “Farewell, stranger, sir —
if any remark of mine gave you offense,
may stormwinds snatch it up and sweep it off!
Out of the morning mist they came against us —
60 packed as the leaves and spears that flower forth in spring —
and Zeus presented us with disaster, me and my comrades
doomed to suffer blow on mortal blow.
* our squadron reached the land of the Lotus-eaters,
95 people who eat the lotus, mellow fruit and flower...
to scout out who might live there —men like us perhaps,
who live on bread? So off they went and soon enough
they mingled among the natives, Lotus-eaters, Lotus-eaters
104 who had no notion of killing my companions, not at all,
they simply gave them the lotus to taste instead . . .
Any crewmen who ate the lotus, the honey-sweet fruit,
107 lost all desire to send a message back, much less return,
300 But since we’ve chanced on you, we’re at your knees
in hopes of a warm welcome, even a guest-gift,
the sort that hosts give strangers. That’s the custom.
* as wine came spurting, flooding up from his gullet
with chunks of human flesh —he vomited, blind drunk.
420 Now, at last, I thrust our stake in a bed of embers
to get it red-hot and rallied all my comrades:
‘Courage —no panic, no one hang back now!’
And green as it was, just as the olive stake
was about to catch fire —the glow terrific, yes —
* So we seized our stake with its fiery tip
and bored it round and round in the giant’s eye
till blood came boiling up around that smoking shaft
and the hot blast singed his brow and eyelids round the core
and the broiling eyeball burst —
its crackling roots blazed
and hissed —
as a blacksmith plunges a glowing ax or adze
in an ice-cold bath and the metal screeches steam
440 and its temper hardens —that’s the iron’s strength —
so the eye of the Cyclops sizzled round that stake!
just step your mast and spread your white sail wide —
sit back and the North Wind will speed you on your way.
But once your vessel has cut across the Ocean River
you will raise a desolate coast and Persephone’s Grove,
560 her tall black poplars, willows whose fruit dies young.
Beach your vessel hard by the Ocean’s churning shore
and make your own way down to the moldering House of Death.
563 And there into Acheron, the Flood of Grief, two rivers flow,
the torrent River of Fire, the wailing River of Tears
that branches off from Styx, the Stream of Hate,
and a stark crag looms
where the two rivers thunder down and meet.
So I said, and it broke my shipmates’ hearts.
They sank down on the ground, moaning, tore their hair.
But it gained us nothing —what good can come of grief?
* ‘True, true,’ Agamemnon’s ghost kept pressing on,
500 ‘so even your own wife —never indulge her too far.
Never reveal the whole truth, whatever you may know;
just tell her a part of it, be sure to hide the rest.
Not that you, Odysseus, will be murdered by your wife...
the time for trusting women’s gone forever!
The other crag is lower —you will see, Odysseus —
though both lie side-by-side, an arrow-shot apart.
Atop it a great fig-tree rises, shaggy with leaves,
115 beneath it awesome Charybdis gulps the dark water down.
Three times a day she vomits it up, three times she gulps it down,
* great Odysseus woke from sleep on native ground at last —
he’d been away for years —but failed to know the land
for the goddess Pallas Athena, Zeus’s daughter,
showered mist over all, so under cover
she might change his appearance head to foot
as she told him every peril he’d meet at home —
keep him from being known by wife, townsmen, friends,
220 till the suitors paid the price for all their outrage.
And so to the king himself all Ithaca looked strange . . .
* “Always the same, your wary turn of mind,”
Athena exclaimed, her glances flashing warmly.
“That’s why I can’t forsake you in your troubles —
you are so winning, so worldly-wise, so self-possessed!
Anyone else, come back from wandering long and hard,
would have hurried home at once, delighted to see
380 his children and his wife. Oh, but not you,
it’s not your pleasure to probe for news of them —
you must put your wife to the proof yourself!
90 Then coating the meat with white barley groats
and mixing honeyed wine in a carved wooden bowl,
he sat down across from his guest, inviting warmly,
“Eat up now, my friend. It’s all we slaves have got,
scrawny pork, while the suitors eat the fatted hogs —
it was always oarswept ships that thrilled my heart,
and wars, and the long polished spears and arrows,
dreadful gear that makes the next man cringe.
I loved them all —god planted that love inside me.
260 Each man delights in the work that suits him best.
Tramping about the world —there’s nothing worse for a man.
But the fact is that men put up with misery
to stuff their cursed bellies.
* We two will keep to the shelter here, eat and drink
and take some joy in each other’s heartbreaking sorrows,
sharing each other’s memories. Over the years, you know,
450 a man finds solace even in old sorrows, true, a man
who’s weathered many blows and wandered many miles.
* But still not convinced that it was his father,
Telemachus broke out, wild with disbelief,
220 “No, you’re not Odysseus! Not my father!
Just some spirit spellbinding me now —
to make me ache with sorrow all the more.
Impossible for a mortal to work such marvels,
They cried out, shrilling cries, pulsing sharper
than birds of prey —eagles, vultures with hooked claws —
when farmers plunder their nest of young too young to fly.
* and I urge the boy to have no fear of death,
not from the suitors at least.
What comes from the gods —there’s no escaping that.”
Encouraging, all the way, but all the while
plotting the prince’s murder in his mind . . .
the king burst out, ‘How shameful! That’s the bed
of a brave man of war they’d like to crawl inside,
those spineless, craven cowards!
Weak as the doe that beds down her fawns
in a mighty lion’s den —her newborn sucklings —
then trails off to the mountain spurs and grassy bends
to graze her fill, but back the lion comes to his own lair
and the master deals both fawns a ghastly bloody death,
* 319 It was Argos, long-enduring Odysseus’ dog
320 he trained as a puppy once, but little joy he got
since all too soon he shipped to sacred Troy.
In the old days young hunters loved to set him
coursing after the wild goats and deer and hares.
But now with his master gone he lay there, castaway,
on piles of dung from mules and cattle, heaps collecting
out before the gates till Odysseus’ serving-men
could cart it off to manure the king’s estates.
Infested with ticks, half-dead from neglect,
here lay the hound, old Argos.
330 But the moment he sensed Odysseus standing by
he thumped his tail, nuzzling low, and his ears dropped,
though he had no strength to drag himself an inch
toward his master. Odysseus glanced to the side
and flicked away a tear, hiding it from Eumaeus,
he said, “Now take these to the stranger, tell him too
380 to make the rounds of the suitors, beg from one and all.
Bashfulness, for a man in need, is no great friend.”
* 600 if only Odysseus came back home to native soil now,
he and his son would avenge the outrage of these men —like that!”
602 At her last words Telemachus shook with a lusty sneeze
like a thunderclap resounding up and down the halls.
The queen was seized with laughter, calling out
to Eumaeus winged words: “Quickly, go!
Bring me this stranger now, face-to-face!
150 Of all that breathes and crawls across the earth,
our mother earth breeds nothing feebler than a man.
So long as the gods grant him power, spring in his knees,
he thinks he will never suffer affliction down the years.
But then, when the happy gods bring on the long hard times,
bear them he must, against his will, and steel his heart.
Our lives, our mood and mind as we pass across the earth,
turn as the days turn . . .
as the father of men and gods makes each day dawn.
* Up with you now, my good old Eurycleia,
407 come and wash your master’s . . . equal in years.
Odysseus must have feet and hands like his by now —
hardship can age a person overnight.”
463 so let his name be Odysseus . . .
the Son of Pain, a name he’ll earn in full.
630 “Ah my friend,” seasoned Penelope dissented,
“dreams are hard to unravel, wayward, drifting things —
not all we glimpse in them will come to pass . . .
633 Two gates there are for our evanescent dreams,
one is made of ivory, the other made of horn.
Those that pass through the ivory cleanly carved
are will-o’-the-wisps, their message bears no fruit.
The dreams that pass through the gates of polished horn
are fraught with truth, for the dreamer who can see them.
* So he forced his spirit into submission,
the rage in his breast reined back —unswerving,
all endurance. But he himself kept tossing, turning,
intent as a cook before some white-hot blazing fire
who rolls his sizzling sausage back and forth,
30 packed with fat and blood —keen to broil it quickly,
tossing, turning it, this way, that way —so he cast about:
how could he get these shameless suitors in his clutches,
one man facing a mob?
So they mocked, but Odysseus, mastermind in action,
once he’d handled the great bow and scanned every inch,
then, like an expert singer skilled at lyre and song —
who strains a string to a new peg with ease,
making the pliant sheep-gut fast at either end —
so with his virtuoso ease Odysseus strung his mighty bow.
Quickly his right hand plucked the string to test its pitch
and under his touch it sang out clear and sharp as a swallow’s cry.
Horror swept through the suitors, faces blanching white,
460 and Zeus cracked the sky with a bolt, his blazing sign,
(Eurymachus:) This man will never restrain his hands, invincible hands —
now that he’s seized that polished bow and quiver, look,
he’ll shoot from the sill until he’s killed us all!
So fight —call up the joy of battle! Swords out!
Tables lifted —block his arrows winging death!
Charge him, charge in a pack —
he smashed the ground with his forehead, writhing in pain,
both feet flailing out, and his high seat tottered —
the mist of death came swirling down his eyes.
A killing look, and the wry soldier answered,
“Only a priest, a prophet for this mob, you say?
How hard you must have prayed in my own house
that the heady day of my return would never dawn —
340 my dear wife would be yours, would bear your children!
For that there’s no escape from grueling death —you die!”
* But he found them one and all in blood and dust . . .
great hauls of them down and out like fish that fishermen
410 drag from the churning gray surf in looped and coiling nets
and fling ashore on a sweeping hook of beach —some noble catch
heaped on the sand, twitching, lusting for fresh salt sea
but the Sungod hammers down and burns their lives out . . .
so the suitors lay in heaps, corpse covering corpse.
“Child,” the devoted old nurse protested,
“what nonsense you let slip through your teeth.
Here’s your husband, warming his hands at his own hearth,
80 here —and you, you say he’ll never come home again,
always the soul of trust! All right, this too —
I’ll give you a sign, a proof that’s plain as day.
* And Athena crowned the man with beauty, head to foot,
made him taller to all eyes, his build more massive,
yes, and down from his brow the great goddess
ran his curls like thick hyacinth clusters
full of blooms. As a master craftsman washes
gold over beaten silver —a man the god of fire
180 and Queen Athena trained in every fine technique —
and finishes off his latest effort, handsome work . . .
so she lavished splendor over his head and shoulders now.
* There was a branching olive-tree inside our court,
grown to its full prime, the bole like a column, thickset.
Around it I built my bedroom, finished off the walls
with good tight stonework, roofed it over soundly
and added doors, hung well and snugly wedged.
Then I lopped the leafy crown of the olive,
220 clean-cutting the stump bare from roots up,
planing it round with a bronze smoothing-adze —
I had the skill —I shaped it plumb to the line to make
my bedpost, bored the holes it needed with an auger.
Working from there I built my bed, start to finish,
I gave it ivory inlays, gold and silver fittings,
wove the straps across it, oxhide gleaming red.
There’s our secret sign, I tell you, our life story!
Joy, warm as the joy that shipwrecked sailors feel
when they catch sight of land —Poseidon has struck
their well-rigged ship on the open sea with gale winds
and crushing walls of waves, and only a few escape, swimming,
struggling out of the frothing surf to reach the shore,
their bodies crusted with salt but buoyed up with joy
as they plant their feet on solid ground again,
spared a deadly fate. So joyous now to her
270 the sight of her husband, vivid in her gaze,
* Amphimedon’s ghost called back. “Lord of men, Agamemnon,
I remember it all, your majesty, as you say,
and I will tell you, start to finish now,
the story of our death,
the brutal end contrived to take us off.
We were courting the wife of Odysseus, gone so long.
She neither spurned nor embraced a marriage she despised,
no, she simply planned our death, our black doom!
This was her latest masterpiece of guile:
140 she set up a great loom in the royal halls
and she began to weave, and the weaving finespun,
210 “Happy Odysseus!”
Agamemnon’s ghost cried out. “Son of old Laertes —
mastermind —what a fine, faithful wife you won!..
A far cry from the daughter of Tyndareus, Clytemnestra —
220 what outrage she committed, killing the man she married once! —
yes, and the song men sing of her will ring with loathing.
She brands with a foul name the breed of womankind,
even the honest ones to come!”
So they traded stories,
the two ghosts standing there in the House of Death,
But tell me, please —in no uncertain terms —
320 how many years ago did you host the man,
that unfortunate guest of yours, my son . . .
there was a son, or was he all a dream?
That most unlucky man, whom now, I fear,
