The Odyssey, Homer, Book XX Lines 65-104

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This online edition was prepared by Marissa Marinello

Introduction:

This passage is near the ending of the Odyssey, after Odysseus has returned to Ithaca dressed in disguise in beggars garb, and is acting as such in his own home. Penelope, Odysseys’ grief stricken wife, has yet to realize that the beggar in her home is in fact her long lost husband. She weeps herself to sleep every night after she endures yet another day of thinking her husband is dead or still lost at sea after his ten year battle at the Trojan war, and his ten year journey home; which was prolonged by the spiteful Poseidon. Penelope is currently housing numerous suitors, all of whom waiting for her to accept one of them for marriage, while she does all she can to delay taking a new husband. In this passage, Odysseus has been a stranger in his own home for quite some time now and is finally ready to take his revenge against the men attempting to steal his wife and plotting against his son, Telemachus. Athena, his most trusted goddess whom was with him throughout his whole journey, assures him he will succeed in all his endeavors against the suitors. At the same time, Penelope is overwhelmed with pain and longing for her dear Odysseus, begging the goddesses to put her out of her misery and grief.

Book XX Lines 1-72
Off in the entrance-hall the great king made his bed,
spreading out on the ground the raw hide of an ox,
heaping over it fleece from sheep the suitors
butchered day and night, then Eurynome threw
a blanket over him, once he’d nestled down.
And there Odysseus lay …
plotting within himself the suitors’ death—
awake, alert, as the women slipped from the house,
the maids who whored in the suitors’ beds each night,
tittering, linking arms and frisking as before.
The master’s anger rose inside his chest,
torn in thought, debating, head and heart—
should he up and rush them, kill them one and all
or let them rut with their lovers one last time?
The heart inside him growled low with rage, as a bitch mounting over her weak, defenseless puppies
growls, facing a stranger, bristling for a showdown—
so he growled from his depths, hackles rising at their outrage.
But he struck his chest and curbed his fighting heart:
“Bear up, old heart! You’ve borne worse, far worse,
that day when the Cyclops, man-mountain, bolted
your hardy comrades down. But you held fast—
Nobody but your cunning pulled you through
the monster’s cave you thought would be your death.”
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,
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? … when close to his side she came,
Athena sweeping down from the sky in a woman’s build
and hovering at his head, the goddess spoke:
“Why still awake? The unluckiest man alive!
Here is your house, your wife at home, your son,
as fine a boy as one could hope to have.”
“True,”
the wily fighter replied, “how right you are, goddess,
but still this worry haunts me, heart and soul—
how can I get these shameless suitors in my clutches?
Single-handed, braving an army always camped inside.
There’s another worry, that haunts me even more.
What if I kill them—thanks to you and Zeus—
how do I run from under their avengers?
Show me the way, I ask you.”
“Impossible man!”
Athena bantered, the goddess’ eyes ablaze.
“Others are quick to trust a weaker comrade,
some poor mortal, far less cunning than I.
But I am a goddess, look, the very one who guards you in all your trials to the last.
I tell you this straight out:
even if fifty bands of mortal fighters
closed around us, hot to kill us off in battle,
still you could drive away their herds and sleek flocks!
So, surrender to sleep at last. What a misery,
keeping watch through the night, wide awake—
you’ll soon come up from under all your troubles.”
With that she showered sleep across his eyes
and back to Olympus went the lustrous goddess.
As soon as sleep came on him, loosing his limbs,
slipping the toils of anguish from his mind,
his devoted wife awoke and,
sitting up in her soft bed, returned to tears.
When the queen had wept to her heart’s content
she prayed to the Huntress, Artemis, first of all:
“Artemis—goddess, noble daughter of Zeus, if only
you’d whip an arrow through my breast and tear my life out,
now, at once! Or let some whirlwind pluck me up
and sweep me away along those murky paths and
fling me down where the Ocean River running
round the world rolls back upon itself!
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