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The Odyssey

Assembly of the People of Ith... - 2

The Gods in Council--Miverva's Visit to Ithaca--The Challenge from Telemachus to the Suitors.



Now Neptune had gone off to the Ethiopians, who are at the world's end, and lie in two halves, the one looking West and the other East.[1] He had gone there to accept a hecatomb of sheep and oxen, and was enjoying himself at his festival; but the other gods met in the house of Olympian Jove, and the sire of gods and men spoke first. At that moment he was thinking of Aegisthus, who had been killed by Agamemnon's son Orestes; so he said to the other gods:


Then Minerva said, "Father, son of Saturn, King of kings, it served Aegisthus right, and so it would any one else who does as he did; but Aegisthus is neither here nor there; it is for Ulysses that my heart bleeds, when I think of his sufferings in that lonely sea-girt island, far away, poor man, from all his friends. It is an island covered with forest, in the very middle of the sea, and a goddess lives there, daughter of the magician Atlas, who looks after the bottom of the ocean, and carries the great columns that keep heaven and earth asunder. This daughter of Atlas has got hold of poor unhappy Ulysses, and keeps trying by every kind of blandishment to make him forget his home, so that he is tired of life, and thinks of nothing but how he may once more see the smoke of his own chimneys. You, sir, take no heed of this, and yet when Ulysses was before Troy did he not propitiate you with many a burnt sacrifice? Why then should you keep on being so angry with him?"

And Jove said, "My child, what are you talking about? How can I forget Ulysses than whom there is no more capable man on earth, nor more liberal in his offerings to the immortal gods that live in heaven? Bear in mind, however, that Neptune is still furious with Ulysses for having blinded an eye of Polyphemus king of the Cyclopes. Polyphemus is son to Neptune by the nymph Thoosa, daughter to the sea-king Phorcys; therefore though he will not kill Ulysses outright, he torments him by preventing him from getting home. Still, let us lay our heads together and see how we can help him to return; Neptune will then be pacified, for if we are all of a mind he can hardly stand out against us."




He led the way as he spoke, and Minerva followed him. When they were within he took her spear and set it in the spear-stand against a strong bearing-post along with the many other spears of his unhappy father, and he conducted her to a richly decorated seat under which he threw a cloth of damask. There was a footstool also for her feet,[2] and he set another seat near her for himself, away from the suitors, that she might not be annoyed while eating by their noise and insolence, and that he might ask her more freely about his father.






And Minerva said, "There is no fear of your race dying out yet, while Penelope has such a fine son as you are. But tell me, and tell me true, what is the meaning of all this feasting, and who are these people? What is it all about? Have you some banquet, or is there a wedding in the family--for no one seems to be bringing any provisions of his own? And the guests--how atrociously they are behaving; what riot they make over the whole house; it is enough to disgust any respectable person who comes near them."










She went wondering back into the house, and laid her son's saying in her heart. Then, going upstairs with her handmaids into her room, she mourned her dear husband till Minerva shed sweet sleep over her eyes. But the suitors were clamorous throughout the covered cloisters[11], and prayed each one that he might be her bed fellow.


The suitors bit their lips as they heard him, and marvelled at the boldness of his speech. Then, Antinous, son of Eupeithes, said, "The gods seem to have given you lessons in bluster and tall talking; may Jove never grant you to be chief in Ithaca as your father was before you."




The suitors then returned to their singing and dancing until the evening; but when night fell upon their pleasuring they went home to bed each in his own abode.[12] Telemachus's room was high up in a tower[13] that looked on to the outer court; hither, then, he hied, brooding and full of thought. A good old woman, Euryclea, daughter of Ops, the son of Pisenor, went before him with a couple of blazing torches. Laertes had bought her with his own money when she was quite young; he gave the worth of twenty oxen for her, and shewed as much respect to her in his household as he did to his own wedded wife, but he did not take her to his bed for he feared his wife's resentment.[14] She it was who now lighted Telemachus to his room, and she loved him better than any of the other women in the house did, for she had nursed him when he was a baby. He opened the door of his bed room and sat down upon the bed; as he took off his shirt[15] he gave it to the good old woman, who folded it tidily up, and hung it for him over a peg by his bed side, after which she went out, pulled the door to by a silver catch, and drew the bolt home by means of the strap.[16] But Telemachus as he lay covered with a woollen fleece kept thinking all night through of his intended voyage and of the counsel that Minerva had given him.


Black races are evidently known to the writer as stretching all across Africa, one half looking West on to the Atlantic, and the other East on to the Indian Ocean.


The original use of the footstool was probably less to rest the feet than to keep them (especially when bare) from a floor which was often wet and dirty.


The [Greek] or seat, is occasionally called "high," as being higher than the [Greek] or low footstool. It was probably no higher than an ordinary chair is now, and seems to have had no back.


Temesa was on the West Coast of the toe of Italy, in what is now the gulf of Sta Eufemia. It was famous in remote times for its copper mines, which, however, were worked out when Strabo wrote.


i.e. "with a current in it"--see illustrations and map near the end of bks. v. and vi. respectively.


Reading [Greek] for [Greek], cf. "Od." iii. 81 where the same mistake is made, and xiii. 351 where the mountain is called Neritum, the same place being intended both here and in book xiii.


It is never plausibly explained why Penelope cannot do this, and from bk. ii. it is clear that she kept on deliberately encouraging the suitors, though we are asked to believe that she was only fooling them.


See note on "Od." i. 365.


Middle Argos means the Peleponnese which, however, is never so called in the "Iliad". I presume "middle" means "middle between the two Greek-speaking countries of Asia Minor and Sicily, with South Italy"; for that parts of Sicily and also large parts, though not the whole of South Italy, were inhabited by Greek-speaking races centuries before the Dorian colonisations can hardly be doubted. The Sicians, and also the Sicels, both of them probably spoke Greek.


cf. "Il." vi. 490-495. In the "Iliad" it is "war," not "speech," that is a man's matter. It argues a certain hardness, or at any rate dislike of the "Iliad" on the part of the writer of the "Odyssey," that she should have adopted Hector's farewell to Andromache here, as elsewhere in the poem, for a scene of such inferior pathos.


[Greek] The whole open court with the covered cloister running round it was called [Greek], or [Greek], but the covered part was distinguished by being called "shady" or "shadow-giving". It was in this part that the tables for the suitors were laid. The Fountain Court at Hampton Court may serve as an illustration (save as regards the use of arches instead of wooden supports and rafters) and the arrangement is still common in Sicily. The usual translation "shadowy" or "dusky" halls, gives a false idea of the scene.


The reader will note the extreme care which the writer takes to make it clear that none of the suitors were allowed to sleep in Ulysses' house.


See Appendix; g, in plan of Ulysses' house.


I imagine this passage to be a rejoinder to "Il." xxiii. 702-705 in which a tripod is valued at twelve oxen, and a good useful maid of all work at only four. The scrupulous regard of Laertes for his wife's feelings is of a piece with the extreme jealousy for the honour of woman, which is manifest throughout the "Odyssey".


[Greek] "The [Greek], or tunica, was a shirt or shift, and served as the chief under garment of the Greeks and Romans, whether men or women." Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, under "Tunica".


Doors fastened to all intents and purposes as here described may be seen in the older houses at Trapani. There is a slot on the outer side of the door by means of which a person who has left the room can shoot the bolt. My bedroom at the Albergo Centrale was fastened in this way.

Assembly of the People of Ith... - 2

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