Thus did they converse. Meanwhile
Eurynome and the nurse took torches and made the bed ready with soft
coverlets; as soon as they had laid them, the nurse went back into
the house to go to her rest, leaving the bed chamber woman Eurynome
to show Odysseus and Penelope to bed by torch light. When she had
conducted them to their room she went back, and they then came
joyfully to the rites of their own old bed. Telemakhos, Philoitios,
and the swineherd now left off dancing, and made the women leave off
also. They then laid themselves down to sleep in the
cloisters.
When Odysseus and Penelope had
had their fill of love they fell talking with one another. She told
him how much she had to bear in seeing the house filled with a crowd
of wicked suitors who had killed so many sheep and oxen on her
account, and had drunk so many casks of wine. Odysseus in his turn
told her what he had suffered, and how much trouble he had himself
given to other people. He told her everything, and she was so
delighted to listen that she never went to sleep till he had ended
his whole story.
He began with his victory over
the Kikones, and how he thence reached the fertile land of the
Lotus-eaters. He told her all about the Cyclops and how he had
punished him for having so ruthlessly eaten his brave comrades; how
he then went on to Aeolus, who received him hospitably and furthered
him on his way, but even so he was not to reach home, for to his
great grief a gale carried him out to sea again; how he went on to
the Laestrygonian city Telepylos, where the people destroyed all his
ships with their crews, save himself and his own ship only. Then he
told of cunning Circe and her craft, and how he sailed to the chill
house of Hades, to consult the ghost [psukhê] of
the Theban seer Teiresias, and how he saw his old comrades in arms,
and his mother who bore him and brought him up when he was a child;
how he then heard the wondrous singing of the Sirens, and went on to
the wandering rocks and terrible Charybdis and to Scylla, whom no man
had ever yet passed in safety; how his men then ate the cattle of the
sun-god, and how Zeus therefore struck the ship with his
thunderbolts, so that all his men perished together, himself alone
being left alive; how at last he reached the Ogygian island and the
nymph Calypso, who kept him there in a cave, and fed him, and wanted
him to marry her, in which case she intended making him immortal so
that he should never grow old, but she could not persuade him to let
her do so; and how after much suffering he had found his way to the
Phaeacians, who had treated him as though he had been a god, and sent
him back in a ship to his own country after having given him gold,
bronze, and raiment in great abundance. This was the last thing about
which he told her, for here a deep sleep took hold upon him and eased
the burden of his sorrows.
Then Athena thought of another
matter. When she deemed that Odysseus had had enough both of his wife
and of repose, she bade gold-enthroned Dawn rise out of Okeanos that
she might shed light upon humankind. On this, Odysseus rose from his
comfortable bed and said to Penelope, "Wife, we have both of us had
our full share of trials [athlos], you, here, in
lamenting my absence, and I in being prevented from getting home
[nostos] though I was longing all the time to do so.
Now, however, that we have at last come together, take care of the
property that is in the house. As for the sheep and goats which the
wicked suitors have eaten, I will take many myself by force from
other people, and will compel the Achaeans to make good the rest till
they shall have filled all my yards. I am now going to the wooded
lands out in the country to see my father who has so long been
grieved on my account, and to yourself I will give these
instructions, though you have little need of them. At sunrise it will
at once get abroad that I have been killing the suitors; go upstairs,
therefore, and stay there with your women. See nobody and ask no
questions."
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