With this Telemakhos dashed his
staff to the ground and burst into tears. Every one was very sorry
for him, but they all sat still and no one ventured to make him an
angry answer, save only Antinoos, who spoke thus:
"Telemakhos, insolent braggart
that you are, how dare you try to throw the blame upon us suitors? We
are not the ones who are responsible [aitioi] but your
mother is, for she knows many kinds of kerdos. This three
years past, and close on four, she has been driving us out of our
minds, by encouraging each one of us, and sending him messages that
say one thing but her noos means other things. And then there
was that other trick she played us. She set up a great tambour frame
in her room, and began to work on an enormous piece of fine fabric.
‘Sweet hearts,’ said she, ‘Odysseus is indeed dead,
still do not press me to marry again immediately, wait - for I would
not have skill in weaving perish unrecorded - till I have completed a
shroud for the hero Laertes, to be in readiness against the time when
death shall take him. He is very rich, and the women of the
dêmos will talk if he is laid out without a
shroud.’
"This was what she said, and we
assented; whereon we could see her working on her great web all day
long, but at night she would unpick the stitches again by torchlight.
She fooled us in this way for three years and we never found her out,
but as time [hôra] wore on and she was now in
her fourth year, one of her maids who knew what she was doing told
us, and we caught her in the act of undoing her work, so she had to
finish it whether she would or no. The suitors, therefore, make you
this answer, that both you and the Achaeans may understand -
‘Send your mother away, and bid her marry the man of her own and
of her father's choice’; for I do not know what will happen
if she goes on plaguing us much longer with the airs she gives
herself on the score of the accomplishments Athena has taught her,
and because she knows so many kinds of kerdos. We never yet
heard of such a woman; we know all about Tyro, Alkmene, Mycene, and
the famous women of old, but they were nothing to your mother, any
one of them. It was not fair of her to treat us in that way, and as
long as she continues in the mind [noos] with which
heaven has now endowed her, so long shall we go on eating up your
estate; and I do not see why she should change, for she gets all the
honor and glory [kleos], and it is you who pay for it,
not she. Understand, then, that we will not go back to our lands,
neither here nor elsewhere, till she has made her choice and married
some one or other of us."
Telemakhos answered, "Antinoos,
how can I drive the mother who bore me from my father's house?
My father is abroad and we do not know whether he is alive or dead.
It will be hard on me if I have to pay Ikarios the large sum which I
must give him if I insist on sending his daughter back to him. Not
only will he deal rigorously with me, but some daimôn
will also punish me; for my mother when she leaves the house will
call on the Erinyes to avenge her; besides, it will result in
nemesis for me among men, and I will have nothing to say to
it. If you choose to take offense at this, leave the house and feast
elsewhere at one another's houses at your own cost turn and turn
about. If, on the other hand, you elect to persist in sponging upon
one man, heaven help me, but Zeus shall reckon with you in full, and
when you fall in my father's house there shall be no man to
avenge you."
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