light had burned low, and waited to see the face of his wife, for whom
he had left beautiful Calypso. The maidens of Penelope came trooping,
laughing, and cleared away the food and the cups, and put faggots in the
braziers. They were all giddy girls, in love with the handsome wooers,
and one of them, Melantho, bade Ulysses go away, and sleep at the
blacksmith's forge, lest he should be beaten with a torch. Penelope
heard Melantho, whom she had herself brought up, and she rebuked her,
and ordered a chair to be brought for Ulysses. When he was seated, she
asked him who he was, and he praised her beauty, for she was still very
fair, but did not answer her question. She insisted that he should tell
her who he was, and he said that he was a Cretan prince, the younger
brother of Idomeneus, and that he did not go to fight in Troyland. In
Crete he stayed, and met Ulysses, who stopped there on his way to Troy,
and he entertained Ulysses for a fortnight. Penelope wept when she heard
that the stranger had seen her husband, but, as false stories were often
told to her by strangers who came to Ithaca, she asked how Ulysses was
dressed, and what manner of men were with him.
The beggar said that Ulysses wore a double mantle of purple, clasped
with a gold brooch fastened by two safety pins (for these were used at
that time), and on the face of the brooch was a figure of a hound
holding a struggling fawn in his forepaws. (Many such brooches have been
found in the graves in Greece). Beneath his mantle Ulysses wore a
shining smock, smooth and glittering like the skin of an onion. Probably
it was made of silk: women greatly admired it. With him was a squire
named Eurybates, a brown, round-shouldered man.
On hearing all this Penelope wept again and said that she herself had
given Ulysses the brooch and the garments. She now knew that the beggar
had really met Ulysses, and he went on to tell her that, in his
wanderings, he had heard how Ulysses was still alive, though he had lost
all his company, and that he had gone to Dodona in the west of Greece to
ask for advice from the oak tree of Zeus, the whispering oak tree, as to
how he should come home, openly or secretly. Certainly, he said, Ulysses
would return that year.
Penelope was still unable to believe in such good news, but she bade
Eurycleia, the old nurse, wash the feet of the beggar in warm water, so
a foot bath was brought. Ulysses turned his face away from the
firelight, for the nurse said that he was very like her master. As she
washed his legs she noticed the long scar of the wound made by the boar,
when he hunted with his cousins, long ago, before he was married. The
nurse knew him now, and spoke to him in a whisper, calling him by his
name. But he caught her throat with his hand, and asked why she would
cause his death, for the wooers would slay him if they knew who he was.
Eurycleia called him her child, and promised that she would be silent,
and then she went to fetch more hot water, for she had let his foot
fall into the bath and upset it when she found the scar.
When she had washed him, Penelope told the beggar that she could no
longer refuse to marry one of the wooers. Ulysses had left a great bow
in the house, the old bow of King Eurytus, that few could bend, and he
had left twelve iron axes, made with a round opening in the blade of
each. Axes of this shape have been found at Lacedaemon, where Helen
lived, so we know what the axes of Ulysses were like. When he was at
home he used to set twelve of them in a straight line, and shoot an
arrow through the twelve holes in the blades. Penelope therefore
intended, next day, to bring the bow and the axes to the wooers, and to
marry any one of them who could string the bow, and shoot an arrow
through the twelve axes.
'I think,' said the beggar, 'that Ulysses will be here before any of the
wooers have bent his bow.' Then Penelope went to her upper chamber, and
Ulysses slept in an outer gallery of the house on piled-up sheep skins.
There Ulysses lay, thinking how he might destroy all the wooers, and the
Goddess Athene came and comforted him, and, in the morning, he rose and
made his prayer to Zeus, asking for signs of his favour. There came,
first a peal of thunder, and then the voice of a woman, weak and old,
who was grinding corn to make bread for the wooers. All the other women
of the mill had done their work and were asleep, but she was feeble and
the round upper stone of the quern, that she rolled on the corn above
the under stone, was too heavy for her.
She prayed, and said, 'Father Zeus, King of Gods and men, loudly hast
thou thundered. Grant to me my prayer, unhappy as I am. May this be the
last day of the feasting of the wooers in the hall of Ulysses: they
have loosened my knees with cruel labour in grinding barley for them:
may they now sup their last!' Hearing this prayer Ulysses was glad, for
he thought it a lucky sign. Soon the servants were at work, and Eumaeus
came with swine, and was as courteous to the beggar as Melanthius, who
brought some goats, was insolent. The cowherd, called Philoetius, also
arrived; he hated the wooers, and spoke friendly to the beggar. Last
appeared the wooers, and went in to their meal, while Telemachus bade
the beggar sit on a seat just within the hall, and told the servants to
give him as good a share of the food as any of them received. One wooer,
Ctesippus, said: 'His fair share this beggar man has had, as is right,
but I will give him a present over and above it!' Then he picked up the
foot of an ox, and threw it with all his might at Ulysses, who merely
moved aside, and the ox foot struck the wall.
Telemachus rebuked him, and the wooers began to laugh wildly and to
weep, they knew not why, but Theoclymenus, the second-sighted man, knew
that they were all fey men, that is, doomed to die, for such men are gay
without reason. 'Unhappy that you are,' cried Theoclymenus, 'what is
coming upon you? I see shrouds covering you about your knees and about
your faces, and tears are on your cheeks, and the walls and the pillars
of the roof are dripping blood, and in the porch and the court are your
fetches, shadows of yourselves, hurrying hellward, and the sun is
darkened.'
On this all the wooers laughed, and advised him to go out of doors,
where he would see that the sun was shining. 'My eyes and ears serve me
well,' said the second-sighted man, 'but out I will go, seeking no more
of your company, for death is coming on every man of you.' Then he
arose and went to the house of Piraeus, the friend of Telemachus. The
wooers laughed all the louder, as fey men do, and told Telemachus that
he was unlucky in his guests: one a beggar, the other a madman. But
Telemachus kept watching his father while the wooers were cooking a meal
that they did not live to enjoy.
Through the crowd of them came Penelope, holding in her hand the great
bow of Eurytus, and a quiver full of arrows, while her maidens followed,
carrying the chest in which lay the twelve iron axes. She stood up,
stately and scornful, among the wooers, and told them that, as marry she
must, she would take the man who could string the bow and shoot the
arrow through the axes. Telemachus said that he would make the first
trial, and that, if he succeeded, he would not allow any man of the
wooers to take his mother away with him from her own house. Then thrice
he tried to string the bow, and the fourth time he would have strung it,
but Ulysses made a sign to him, and he put it down. 'I am too weak,' he
said, 'let a stronger man achieve this adventure.' So they tried each in
turn, beginning with the man who sat next the great mixing-bowl of wine,
and so each rising in his turn.
First their prophet tried, Leiodes the Seer, who sat next the bowl, but
his white hands were too weak, and he prophesied, saying that the bow
would be the death of all of them. Then Antinous bade the goatherd light
a fire, and bring grease to heat the bow, and make it more supple. They
warmed and greased the bow, and one after another tried to bend it.
Eumaeus and the cowherd went out into the court, and Ulysses followed
them. 'Whose side would you two take,' he asked, 'if Ulysses came home?
Would you fight for him or for the wooers?' 'For Ulysses!' they both
cried, 'and would that he was come indeed!' 'He is come, and I am he!'
said Ulysses. Then he promised to give them lands of their own if he was
victorious, and he showed them the scar on his thigh that the boar dealt
with his white tusk, long ago. The two men kissed him and shed tears of
joy, and Ulysses said that he would go back first into the hall, and
that they were to follow him. He would ask to be allowed to try to bend
the bow, and Eumaeus, whatever the wooers said, must place it in his
hands, and then see that the women were locked up in their own separate
hall. Philoetius was to fasten the door leading from the courtyard into
the road. Ulysses then went back to his seat in the hall, near the door,
and his servants followed.
Eurymachus was trying in vain to bend the bow, and Antinous proposed to
put off the trial till next day, and then sacrifice to the God Apollo,
and make fresh efforts. They began to drink, but Ulysses asked to be
allowed to try if he could string the bow. They told him that wine had
made him impudent, and threatened to put him in a ship and send him to
King Echetus, an ogre, who would cut him to pieces. But Penelope said
that the beggar must try his strength; not that she would marry him, if
he succeeded. She would only give him new clothes, a sword, and a spear,
and send him wherever he wanted to go. Telemachus cried out that the bow
was his own; he would make a present of it to the beggar if he chose;
and he bade his mother join her maidens, and work at her weaving. She
was amazed to hear her son speak like the master of the house, and she
went upstairs with her maidens to her own room.
Eumaeus was carrying the bow to Ulysses, when the wooers made such an
uproar that he laid it down, in fear for his life. But Telemachus
threatened to punish him if he did not obey his master, so he placed the
bow in the hands of Ulysses, and then went and told Eurycleia to lock
the women servants up in their own separate hall. Philoetius slipped
into the courtyard, and made the gates fast with a strong rope, and then
came back, and watched Ulysses, who was turning the bow this way and
that, to see if the horns were still sound, for horns were then used in
bow making. The wooers were mocking him, but suddenly he bent and strung
the great bow as easily as a harper fastens a new string to his harp. He
tried the string, and it twanged like the note of a swallow. He took up
an arrow that lay on the table (the others were in the quiver beside
him), he fitted it to the string, and from the chair where he sat he
shot it through all the twelve axe heads. 'Your guest has done you no
dishonour, Telemachus,' he said, 'but surely it is time to eat,' and he
nodded. Telemachus drew his sword, took a spear in his left hand, and
stood up beside Ulysses.
IX
THE SLAYING OF THE WOOERS
Ulysses let all his rags fall down, and with one leap he reached the
high threshold, the door being behind him, and he dropped, the arrows
from the quiver at his feet. 'Now,' he said, 'I will strike another mark
that no man yet has stricken!' He aimed the arrow at Antinous, who was
drinking out of a golden cup. The arrow passed clean through the throat
of Antinous; he fell, the cup rang on the ground, and the wooers leaped
up, looking round the walls for shields and spears, but the walls were
bare.
'Thou shalt die, and vultures shall devour thee,' they shouted, thinking
the beggar had let the arrow fly by mischance.
'Dogs!' he answered, 'ye said that never should I come home from Troy;
ye wasted my goods, and insulted my wife, and had no fear of the Gods,
but now the day of death has come upon you! Fight or flee, if you may,
but some shall not escape!'
'Draw your blades!' cried Eurymachus to the others; 'draw your blades,
and hold up the tables as shields against this man's arrows. Have at
him, and drive him from the doorway.' He drew his own sword, and leaped
on Ulysses with a cry, but the swift arrow pierced his breast, and he
fell and died. Then Amphinomus rushed towards Ulysses, but Telemachus
sent his spear from behind through his shoulders. He could not draw
forth the spear, but he ran to his father, and said, 'Let me bring
shields, spears, and helmets from the inner chamber, for us, and for the
swineherd and cowherd.' 'Go!' said Ulysses, and Telemachus ran through a
narrow doorway, down a gallery to the secret chamber, and brought four
shields, four helmets, and eight spears, and the men armed themselves,
while Ulysses kept shooting down the wooers. When his arrows were spent
he armed himself, protected by the other three. But the goatherd,
Melanthius, knew a way of reaching the armoury, and he climbed up, and
brought twelve helmets, spears, and shields to the wooers.
[Illustration: ULYSSES SHOOTS THE FIRST ARROW AT THE WOOERS.]
Ulysses thought that one of the women was showering down the weapons
into the hall, but the swineherd and cowherd went to the armoury,
through the doorway, as Telemachus had gone, and there they caught
Melanthius, and bound him like a bundle, with a rope, and, throwing the
rope over a rafter, dragged him up, and fastened him there, and left him
swinging. Then they ran back to Ulysses, four men keeping the doorway
against all the wooers that were not yet slain. But the Goddess Athene
appeared to Ulysses, in the form of Mentor, and gave him courage. He
needed it, for the wooers, having spears, threw them in volleys, six at
a time, at the four. They missed, but the spears of the four slew each
his man. Again the wooers threw, and dealt two or three slight wounds,
but the spears of the four were winged with death. They charged,
striking with spear and sword, into the crowd, who lost heart, and flew
here and there, crying for mercy and falling at every blow. Ulysses slew
the prophet, Leiodes, but Phemius, the minstrel, he spared, for he had
done no wrong, and Medon, a slave, crept out from beneath an ox hide,
where he had been lying, and asked Telemachus to pity him, and Ulysses
sent him and the minstrel into the courtyard, where they sat trembling.
All the rest of the wooers lay dead in heaps, like heaps of fish on the
sea shore, when they have been netted, and drawn to land.
Then Ulysses sent Telemachus to bring Eurycleia, who, when she came and
saw the wooers dead, raised a scream of joy, but Ulysses said 'it is an
unholy thing to boast over dead men.' He bade Telemachus and the
servants carry the corpses into the courtyard, and he made the women
wash and clean the hall, and the seats, and tables, and the pillars.
When all was clean, they took Melanthius and slew him, and then they
washed themselves, and the maidens who were faithful to Penelope came
out of their rooms, with torches in their hands, for it was now night,
and they kissed Ulysses with tears of joy. These were not young women,
for Ulysses remembered all of them.
Meanwhile old Eurycleia ran to tell Penelope all the good news: up the
stairs to her chamber she ran, tripping, and falling, and rising, and
laughing for joy. In she came and awakened Penelope, saying:
'Come and see what you have long desired: Ulysses in his own house, and
all the wicked wooers slain by the sword.' 'Surely you are mad, dear
nurse,' said Penelope, 'to waken me with such a wild story. Never have I
slept so sound since Ulysses went to that ill Ilios, never to be named.
Angry would I have been with any of the girls that wakened me with such
a silly story; but you are old: go back to the women's working room.'
The good nurse answered: 'Indeed, I tell you no silly tale. Indeed he is
in the hall; he is that poor guest whom all men struck and insulted, but
Telemachus knew his father.'
Then Penelope leaped up gladly, and kissed the nurse, but yet she was
not sure that her husband had come, she feared that it might be some God
disguised as a man, or some evil man pretending to be Ulysses. 'Surely
Ulysses has met his death far away,' she said, and though Eurycleia
vowed that she herself had seen the scar dealt by the boar, long ago,
she would not be convinced. 'None the less,' she said, 'let us go and
see my son, and the wooers lying dead, and the man who slew them.' So
they went down the stairs and along a gallery on the ground floor that
led into the courtyard, and so entered the door of the hall, and crossed
the high stone threshold on which Ulysses stood when he shot down
Antinous. Penelope went up to the hearth and sat opposite Ulysses, who
was leaning against one of the four tall pillars that supported the
roof; there she sat and gazed at him, still wearing his rags, and still
not cleansed from the blood of battle. She did not know him, and was
silent, though Telemachus called her hard of belief and cold of heart.
'My child,' she said, 'I am bewildered, and can hardly speak, but if
this man is Ulysses, he knows things unknown to any except him and me.'
Then Ulysses bade Telemachus go to the baths and wash, and put on fresh
garments, and bade the maidens bring the minstrel to play music, while
they danced in the hall. In the town the friends and kinsfolk of the
wooers did not know that they were dead, and when they heard the music
they would not guess that anything strange had happened. It was
necessary that nobody should know, for, if the kinsfolk of the dead men
learned the truth, they would seek to take revenge, and might burn down
the house. Indeed, Ulysses was still in great danger, for the law was
that the brothers and cousins of slain men must slay their slayers, and
the dead were many, and had many clansmen.
Now Eurynome bathed Ulysses himself, and anointed him with oil, and clad
him in new raiment, so that he looked like himself again, full of
strength and beauty. He sat down on his own high seat beside the fire,
and said: 'Lady, you are the fairest and most cruel Queen alive. No
other woman would harden her heart against her husband, come home
through many dangers after so many years. 'Nurse,' he cried to
Eurycleia, 'strew me a bed to lie alone, for her heart is hard as iron.'
Now Penelope put him to a trial. 'Eurycleia,' she said, 'strew a bed for
him outside the bridal chamber that he built for himself, and bring the
good bedstead out of that room for him.'
'How can any man bring out that bedstead?' said Ulysses, 'did I not make
it with my own hands, with a standing tree for the bedpost? No man could
move that bed unless he first cut down the tree trunk.'
Then at last Penelope ran to Ulysses and threw her arms round his neck,
kissing him, and said: 'Do not be angry, for always I have feared that
some strange man of cunning would come and deceive me, pretending to be
my lord. But now you have told me the secret of the bed, which no mortal
has ever seen or knows but you and I, and my maiden whom I brought from
my own home, and who kept the doors of our chamber.' Then they embraced,
and it seemed as if her white arms would never quite leave their hold on
his neck.
Ulysses told her many things, all the story of his wanderings, and how
he must wander again, on land, not on the sea, till he came to the
country of men who had never seen salt. 'The Gods will defend you and
bring you home to your rest in the end,' said Penelope, and then they
went to their own chamber, and Eurynome went before them with lighted
torches in her hands, for the Gods had brought them to the haven where
they would be.
X
THE END
With the coming of the golden dawn Ulysses awoke, for he had still much
to do. He and Telemachus and the cowherd and Eumaeus put on full armour,
and took swords and spears, and walked to the farm where old Laertes,
the father of Ulysses, lived among his servants and worked in his
garden. Ulysses sent the others into the farmhouse to bid the old
housekeeper get breakfast ready, and he went alone to the vines, being
sure that his father was at work among them.
There the old man was, in his rough gardening clothes, with leather
gloves on, and patched leather leggings, digging hard. His servants had
gone to gather loose stones to make a rough stone dyke, and he was all
alone. He never looked up till Ulysses went to him, and asked him whose
slave he was, and who owned the garden. He said that he was a stranger
in Ithaca, but that he had once met the king of the island, who declared
that one Laertes was his father.
Laertes was amazed at seeing a warrior all in mail come into his garden,
but said that he was the father of Ulysses, who had long been unheard of
and unseen. 'And who are you?' he asked. 'Where is your own country?'
Ulysses said that he came from Sicily, and that he had met Ulysses five
years ago, and hoped that by this time he had come home.
Then the old man sat down and wept, and cast dust on his head, for
Ulysses had not arrived from Sicily in five long years; certainly he
must be dead. Ulysses could not bear to see his father weep, and told
him that he was himself, come home at last, and that he had killed all
the wooers.
But Laertes asked him to prove that he really was Ulysses, so he showed
the scar on his leg, and, looking round the garden, he said: 'Come, I
will show you the very trees that you gave me when I was a little boy
running about after you, and asking you for one thing or another, as
children do. These thirteen pear trees are my very own; you gave them to
me, and mine are these fifty rows of vines, and these forty fig trees.'
Then Laertes was fainting for joy, but Ulysses caught him in his arms
and comforted him. But, when he came to himself, he sighed, and said:
'How shall we meet the feud of all the kin of the slain men in Ithaca
and the other islands?' 'Be of good courage, father,' said Ulysses. 'And
now let us go to the farmhouse and breakfast with Telemachus.'
So Laertes first went to the baths, and then put on fresh raiment, and
Ulysses wondered to see him look so straight and strong. 'Would I were
as strong as when I took the castle of Nericus, long ago,' said the old
man, 'and would that I had been in the fight against the wooers!' Then
all the old man's servants came in, overjoyed at the return of Ulysses,
and they breakfasted merrily together.
By this time all the people in the town knew that the wooers had been
slain, and they crowded to the house of Ulysses in great sorrow, and
gathered their dead and buried them, and then met in the market place.
The father of Antinous, Eupeithes, spoke, and said that they would all
be dishonoured if they did not slay Ulysses before he could escape to
Nestor's house in Pylos. It was in vain that an old prophet told them
that the young men had deserved their death. The most of the men ran
home and put on armour, and Eupeithes led them towards the farm of
Laertes, all in shining mail. But the Gods in heaven had a care for
Ulysses, and sent Athene to make peace between him and his subjects.
She did not come too soon, for the avengers were drawing near the
farmhouse, which had a garrison of only twelve men: Ulysses, Laertes,
Telemachus, the swineherd, the cowherd, and servants of Laertes. They
all armed themselves, and not choosing to defend the house, they went
boldly out to meet their enemies. They encouraged each other, and
Laertes prayed to Athene, and then threw his spear at Eupeithes. The
spear passed clean through helmet and through head, and Eupeithes fell
with a crash, and his armour rattled as he fell. But now Athene
appeared, and cried: 'Hold your hands, ye men of Ithaca, that no more
blood may be shed, and peace may be made.' The foes of Ulysses, hearing
the terrible voice of the Goddess, turned and fled, and Ulysses uttered
his war-cry, and was rushing among them, when a thunderbolt fell at his
feet, and Athene bade him stop, lest he should anger Zeus, the Lord of
Thunder. Gladly he obeyed, and peace was made with oaths and with
sacrifice, peace in Ithaca and the islands.
Here ends the story of Ulysses, Laertes' son, for we do not know
anything about his adventures when he went to seek a land of men who
never heard of the sea, nor eat meat savoured with salt.
THE FLEECE OF GOLD
I
THE CHILDREN OF THE CLOUD
While Troy still stood fast, and before King Priam was born, there was a
king called Athamas, who reigned in a country beside the Grecian sea.
Athamas was a young man, and was unmarried; because none of the
princesses who then lived seemed to him beautiful enough to be his wife.
One day he left his palace and climbed high up into a mountain,
following the course of a little river. He came to a place where a great
black rock stood on one side of the river, jutting into the stream.
Round the rock the water flowed deep and dark. Yet, through the noise of
the river, the king thought he heard laughter and voices like the voices
of girls. So he climbed very quietly up the back of the rock, and,
looking over the edge, there he saw three beautiful maidens bathing in a
pool, and splashing each other with the water. Their long yellow hair
covered them like cloaks and floated behind them on the pool. One of
them was even more beautiful than the others, and as soon as he saw her
the king fell in love with her, and said to himself, 'This is the wife
for me.'