Book XXIII

1And the old woman climbed to the upper room, laughing aloud,¹

to tell her mistress that her own dear husband was in the house;

her knees were pumping fast, her feet stumbled with hurry.

She stood over Penelope's head and spoke to her:

5"Wake, Penelope, dear child — so you can see

with your own eyes what you have longed for all your days!

Odysseus is here — he has come home — however late.

And he has killed the lordly suitors, the men who plagued

his house, and ate his goods, and bullied his son."

10Then watchful-minded Penelope answered her:

"Dear nurse, the gods have made you mad. The gods can strike²

even the full of sense to foolishness,

and set the empty-headed on the road of wisdom:

they have unstrung you. Your mind was straight before.

15Why do you mock me, when my heart is all one grief,

telling wild tales — and shake me out of the sleep,

the sweet sleep that had bound me, folding my eyelids under?

I have not slept so sound since the day Odysseus

went to look on Evil-Ilium, never to be named.³

20Go on — down with you now, back to the hall.

If any other of my women had come to me

with news like this, and shaken me out of sleep,

I would soon have sent her packing back to the hall

and roughly. You — your old age spares you that, at least."

25Then the dear nurse Eurycleia answered her:

"I do not mock you, dear child. It is true:

Odysseus is here — he has come home, just as I tell you —

the stranger, the one they all dishonored in the hall.

Telemachus knew long since that he was here,⁴

30but kept his father's purposes hidden, cool of head,

till he should punish the violence of those overbearing men."

So she spoke; and Penelope, all joy, sprang out of bed

and clung to the old woman, tears spilling from her eyelids,

and lifting her voice she spoke winged words to her:

35"Come then, dear nurse — tell me truly:

if he has really come home, as you say he has,

how did he lay his hands on the shameless suitors —

one man alone, when they were always in there in a pack?"

Then the dear nurse Eurycleia answered her:

40"I did not see, I did not ask. I heard only the groaning⁵

of men being killed. We sat in the corner of our strong-built

quarters, struck dumb — the close-fitted doors held us in —

until the hour your son called me out of the hall,

Telemachus: his father had sent him to call me.

45And then I found Odysseus standing among the bodies

of the slain; and they, around him, on the trodden floor

lay heaped on one another. It would have warmed your heart —⁶

Now they are all together at the courtyard gates,

50and he is purging the beautiful house with sulfur,⁷

and has built a great fire; and he sent me to call you.

Come with me now — so both of you can set your dear hearts

in the way of gladness at last: you have suffered so much evil.

Now, this time, the long desire is accomplished:

55he has come himself, alive, to his own hearth; and he has found you

and his son still in the halls; and the men who wronged him,

the suitors — he has punished them all in his own house."

Then watchful-minded Penelope answered her:

"Dear nurse — no crowing yet. Hold back your laughter.

60You know how welcome the sight of him would be

to everyone in this house — most of all to me and to our son.

But this tale cannot be true, not as you tell it:

no — some one of the immortals has killed the lordly suitors,⁸

outraged at their heart-stinging insolence and their evil deeds.

65For they honored nobody on this earth,

bad man or good, whoever came among them;

so through their own blind folly they have suffered. But Odysseus —

far away he has lost his homecoming, lost out of Achaea; he himself is lost."

Then the dear nurse Eurycleia answered her:

70"My child, what a word has slipped the fence of your teeth!⁹

Your husband is here — at his own hearthside — and you declare

he will never come home! Your heart was always unbelieving.

Come then — I will give you another sign, and a plain one:

the scar the boar dealt him long ago with its white tusk.

75I found it as I washed him, and I wanted to tell you —

you yourself — but he clapped his hand across my mouth

and would not let me speak: his mind is full of cunning.¹⁰

But come. And I will stake my own life on it:

if I am deceiving you, kill me by the most pitiful death there is."

80Then watchful-minded Penelope answered her:

"Dear nurse — the counsels of the gods who are forever:

it is hard for you to fathom them, sharp-witted as you are.¹¹

But even so, let us go down to my son, so I may see

the suitors dead — and the man who killed them."

85So speaking she went down from the upper room; and her heart

churned: should she question her dear husband from a distance,

or go to him, and take his head and hands, and kiss them?¹²

And when she came in, and crossed the stone threshold,

she sat down opposite Odysseus, in the light of the fire,

90against the other wall. And he, by the tall pillar,

sat looking at the ground, waiting to learn whether

his strong-built wife would speak to him, once her eyes had seen.

But she sat a long while silent, wonder flooding her heart:

with her eyes now she would gaze at him, full in the face;

95now fail to know him — in the bad clothes on his body.¹³

And Telemachus rebuked her, and spoke a word, and named her:

"Mother mine — no mother! — with your unbending heart,¹⁴

why do you hold apart from my father so? Why not

sit close beside him, and question him, and ask him everything?

100No other woman would harden her heart like this,

and stand apart from a husband who, after suffering much,

came in the twentieth year to his own fatherland.

But your heart is harder than stone — as it has always been."

Then watchful-minded Penelope answered him:

105"My child, the heart in my breast is stunned to stillness:

I cannot speak one word to him, cannot ask a question,

cannot look him in the face. But if he is truly

Odysseus — if he has come home — then surely we two

shall know one another, and better than anyone: for we have

110signs between us — hidden signs, that we two know and no one else."¹⁵

So she spoke; and much-enduring noble Odysseus smiled,¹⁶

and quickly he spoke winged words to Telemachus:

"Telemachus — let your mother test me in the halls

as she will: she will soon see more clearly.

115Now, because I am filthy, and the clothes on my body are bad,

she holds me cheap, and will not yet say I am the man.

But we — let us think how this can come out best.

For a man who has killed even one man in the land —

one man, with few behind him to avenge him after —

120goes into exile, leaving his kin and his fathers' country.

And we have killed the prop of the city — far the noblest

of the young men in Ithaca. Think on that, I say."¹⁷

Then clear-headed Telemachus answered him:

"You look to it yourself, dear father. Yours, they say,

125is the best mind among mankind: no mortal man

could set himself against you there.

As for us — we are with you, blazing for it; and I say we shall not

come short in courage, such strength as is in us."¹⁸

Then Odysseus of the many designs answered him:

130"Then I will say how it seems best to me.

First: bathe yourselves, and put clean tunics on,

and tell the serving-women in the halls to dress;

and let the godlike singer, with the clear lyre in his hands,

lead us all in the steps of the playful dance —

135so that anyone who hears it from outside will say, 'A wedding!' —¹⁹

a passer-by on the road, or one of our neighbors round about —

so that the wide rumor of the suitors' killing does not run

down through the town before we can get away

out to our orchard-farm among the trees. There, after,

140we shall see what profit the Olympian puts into our hands."

So he spoke; and they listened well and obeyed.

First they bathed themselves, and put clean tunics on,

and the women dressed; and the godlike singer took up

the hollow lyre, and woke in all of them the craving

145for the sweetness of song and the blameless dance.

And the great house rang around them to the footfalls

of men at play and fair-belted women dancing;

and a man would say, hearing it from outside the house:

"So! Someone has married the much-wooed queen at last.

150Hard woman — she had not the heart to keep her wedded

husband's great house through to the end, until he came."²⁰

So a man would say. And they did not know how things stood.

And meanwhile, inside his house, great-hearted Odysseus

was bathed by the housekeeper Eurynome, and rubbed with oil,

155and she put a beautiful mantle round him, and a tunic;

and over him, from the head down, Athena poured great beauty:

taller to look at, and broader, and down from his head

she made the locks flow in curls, like the hyacinth flower.

As when a man lays gold over silver — a craftsman

160whom Hephaestus and Pallas Athena have taught

art of every kind, and he finishes works full of grace —

so she poured grace over his head and shoulders.²¹

Out of the bath he came, in build like the immortals,

and sat back down on the chair from which he had risen,

165opposite his wife, and spoke his word to her:

"Strange woman! To you beyond all womankind²²

the dwellers on Olympus gave an unyielding heart.

No other woman would harden her heart like this,

and stand apart from a husband who, after suffering much,

170came in the twentieth year to his own fatherland.²³

Well then, nurse — make me up a bed, so I can lie down

by myself at least. The heart in this one's breast is iron."

Then watchful-minded Penelope answered him:

"Strange man! I am not being proud, and I am not slighting you —

175nor am I too much amazed. I know very well what you were

when you went from Ithaca on your long-oared ship.²⁴

Well then — Eurycleia: make up the packed bedstead for him

outside the well-built bridal chamber — the bed he made

with his own hands. Move the packed bedstead out there for him,

180and pile the bedding on: the fleeces, the cloaks, the shining blankets."²⁵

So she spoke — testing her husband. And Odysseus

flared out in anger at his true-hearted wife:

"Woman — that is a wounding word you have spoken!²⁶

Who has set my bed somewhere else? That would be hard

185even for a skilled workman — unless a god in person came

and set it down, at his easy will, in some other place:

no living mortal man, not one in his best young strength,

could lightly lever it aside. For a great sign is built

into that worked bed — and I made it: I, no other man.

190A bush of olive grew inside the courtyard fence, long-leaved,

full-grown and flourishing, its trunk thick as a pillar.

Around it I built our chamber, and I worked at it till it was done —

close-set stone; and I roofed it well above,

and hung the jointed doors on it, close-fitting.

195Then — and only then — I cut back the long-leaved olive's crown,

trimmed the trunk up from the root, and with the bronze I planed it

smooth all round, with skill, and trued it to the line:

a bedpost worked from the living tree. And I bored it all with the auger,

and starting from that post I planed out the bed, until I finished,

200inlaying it with gold and silver and ivory,

and I stretched across its frame an oxhide strap, bright with crimson.²⁷

There is our sign — I show it to you. What I do not know,

woman, is whether my bed still stands fast, or by now

some man has cut the olive off at the root and moved it."²⁸

205So he spoke; and her knees went slack where she sat, and her dear heart,

as she recognized the tokens Odysseus described so surely;²⁹

and bursting into tears she ran straight to him, and threw

her arms around Odysseus' neck, and kissed his head, and said:

"Do not be angry with me, Odysseus — you who in everything

210understood the most of men. It was the gods who gave us sorrow —

the gods, who begrudged that we two, staying side by side,

should have the joy of our youth and come to the doorsill of old age.³⁰

But do not be angry with me now, do not hold it against me

that at first, when I saw you, I did not welcome you like this.

215For always the heart here in my breast kept shivering:

terror that some man would come and cheat me with his talk —

and men enough there are who plot such wicked profits.³¹

Not even Argive Helen, daughter of Zeus,

would have joined in love and bed with a man from another land

220had she known that the warlike sons of the Achaeans

would carry her home again to her own dear country.

A god it was who stirred her to the shameful thing she did;

and not until too late did she lay to heart that folly,

the ruinous folly from which grief first came — to us as well.³²

225But now — now you have told over the plain tokens

of our own bed, which no other mortal has laid eyes on:

only you and I, and one single serving-woman,

Actoris, whom my father gave me when I first came here,

who kept the door of our close-built bridal chamber —

230now you persuade my heart, unbending as it is."³³

So she spoke; and in him she stirred a still greater longing to weep,

and he wept, holding the wife of his heart, the true, the steadfast.

And as when land shows welcome to men swimming for it —

men whose well-made ship Poseidon has smashed

235on the open sea, driving it under wind and heavy wave,

and few of them swim clear of the gray sea to the shore,

their bodies caked with all the brine of it,

and glad at last they step on land, escaped from evil:

so welcome was her husband to her, as her eyes gazed at him,

240and she could not once let her white arms go from his neck.³⁴

And Dawn of the fingers of rose would have risen on their weeping,

had not the goddess thought of one thing more — gray-eyed Athena:

she held the long night back at the world's edge, and penned

gold-throned Dawn at Ocean, and would not let her yoke

245her quick-footed horses that carry the light to men,

Lampus and Phaethon, the colts that draw the Dawn.³⁵

And then Odysseus of the many designs spoke to his wife:

"Lady — we have not yet come to the end of every trial:

there is still to be one labor past all measure,

250long and hard, and I must carry it through to the last.

For so the ghost of Teiresias prophesied to me

the day I went down into the house of Hades

seeking a homecoming for my companions and myself.

But come, wife — let us go to bed, so that at last

255we can lie down and take the sweetness of our sleep."³⁶

Then watchful-minded Penelope answered him:

"Your bed is there for you whenever your heart

wishes it — now that the gods have brought you home

to your own well-built house and your fathers' land.

260But since you have thought of it — since a god has put it in your heart —

come, tell me the trial: for I shall hear of it later

anyway, I think, and it is no worse to know it now."³⁷

Then Odysseus of the many designs answered her:

"Strange woman — why do you press me so, and order me

265to speak? Well, I will tell it, and hide nothing.

Your heart will take no joy in it; no more does mine:

for he ordered me on through many towns of mortals yet,

traveling with a well-shaped oar in my hands,

until I come to men who know nothing of the sea,

270men who eat no food that is mixed with salt,

who know nothing of red-cheeked ships,

nothing of well-shaped oars, which are wings for ships.

And he told me a sign, unmistakable. I will not hide it from you:

when another traveler, meeting me on the road,

275says I carry a winnowing-fan on my shining shoulder,

then and there he ordered me to fix the oar in the earth

and offer fine victims to the lord Poseidon —

a ram, a bull, and a boar that has mounted sows —

and turn away home, and offer holy hecatombs

280to the deathless gods who hold wide heaven,

to all of them, each in order. And death will come to me

from the sea, so gentle a death, and take me

worn down under sleek old age; and around me the peoples

will be prosperous. All this, he said, will be accomplished."³⁸

285Then watchful-minded Penelope answered him:

"If the gods are really bringing on a better old age,

then there is hope there will be an escape from our evils."³⁹

So they spoke to one another of such things.

And meanwhile Eurynome and the nurse made up the bed

290with soft coverings, under the light of blazing torches.

And when they had spread the packed bedstead, working quickly,

the old woman went away to her own room to sleep,

and Eurynome the chamber-woman led them on

their way to bed, a torch in her hands;

295she brought them to the chamber, and went back. And they —

glad, they came to the rite of their own old bed.⁴⁰

And Telemachus and the cowherd and the swineherd

rested their feet from the dance, and rested the women,

and lay down to sleep themselves through the shadowy halls.

300And when the two had taken their fill of the loveliness of love,

they took their pleasure in words, telling each other everything:

she, the shining among women, all she had endured in the halls,

watching that deadly crowd of suitor-men

who on her account kept slaughtering so many beasts,

305oxen and fat sheep, while the wine drained out of the jars by the vatful;

and Zeus-born Odysseus, all the sorrows he had dealt

to other men, and all he had toiled through in his own grief —

he told it all; and she delighted in the listening,

and no sleep fell upon her eyelids till he had told everything.⁴¹

310He began with how he beat the Cicones first, and came

from there to the rich plowland of the Lotus-eaters;

and all the Cyclops did, and how he took the price from him

for the brave companions he had eaten without pity;

and how he came to Aeolus, who received him kindly

315and sent him on — but it was not yet his portion to reach

his own dear country: the storm-wind snatched him up again

and drove him, groaning heavily, over the fish-filled sea;

and how he came to Telepylus of the Laestrygonians,

who destroyed his ships and all his strong-greaved companions —

320all of them: Odysseus alone got clear in his black ship;

and he told her Circe's guile and her many wiles,

and how he went down into the dank house of Hades

to consult the ghost of Theban Teiresias,

in his many-benched ship, and saw all his companions,

325and his mother, who bore him and reared him when he was little;

and how he heard the voice of the thronging Sirens,

and came to the Clashing Rocks, and dread Charybdis,

and Scylla, whom men have never yet slipped past unhurt;

and how his companions killed the cattle of the Sun;

330and how Zeus who thunders on high struck the fast ship

with a smoking bolt, and his brave companions perished

all together — and he alone escaped the evil fates;

and how he came to the island of Ogygia and the nymph Calypso,

who kept him there, aching to have him for her husband,

335in her hollow caves, and fed him, and kept promising

to make him deathless and ageless all his days —

yet she never persuaded the heart in his breast;

and how, after much suffering, he came to the Phaeacians,

who honored him from the heart, like a god,

340and sent him home with a ship to his own dear country,

with gifts of bronze and gold and clothing in plenty.⁴²

That was the last word he spoke, as the sweet sleep

that unstrings the limbs leapt on him, loosing the cares of his heart.⁴³

Then the goddess thought of one thing more, gray-eyed Athena:

345when she judged that Odysseus in his heart had taken

his fill of the bed of his wife, and his fill of sleep,

at once she roused the gold-throned early-born one out of Ocean,

to carry her light to mankind. And Odysseus rose

from the soft bed, and laid this charge on his wife:

350"Lady — by now we have had our fill of trials,

the two of us both: you here, weeping over

my homecoming with all its cares, while Zeus and the other gods

nailed me in pain far from my own country, straining home.⁴⁴

Now that we both have come to the bed we longed for,

355you must care for the property I have inside the halls;

as for the flocks the overweening suitors wasted —

many I will raid back myself, and the Achaeans

will give the rest, until they fill up every fold.⁴⁵

But now I am going out to the orchard-farm and its trees,

360to see my noble father, who grieves for me so hard.

And on you, wife, I lay this charge — wise as you are:

with the rising sun the story will be out and running —

the suitors, the men I killed here in the halls.

Go up to the upper room with your attendant women

365and sit there. Look at no one. Ask no questions."⁴⁶

He spoke, and drew the beautiful armor over his shoulders,

and roused Telemachus and the cowherd and the swineherd,

and told them all to take up weapons of war in their hands.

They did not disobey: they harnessed themselves in bronze,

370and opened the doors, and went out; and Odysseus led.

By now the light was over the earth; but Athena

hid them in night, and led them quickly out of the town.⁴⁷