Book XXIII

The old nurse, exulting, climbed to the upper chamber to tell her mistress her beloved husband was now within. Her knees grew nimble, her feet flew fast beneath her. She stood above the queen’s head and spoke these words to her: “Awake, Penelope, my dear child, and see with your own eyes the sight you have longed for through all your passing days. Odysseus has come—he is home, though late was his returning. He has slain the arrogant suitors, the men who plagued your house, devoured your wealth, and brought such violence on your son.”

Then wise Penelope spoke to her in answer: “Dear nurse, the gods have made you mad—they who can turn the shrewdest mind to foolishness, and just as well can guide the witless to the ways of sense. It is they who have undone you; your mind was sound before. Why do you mock me, when my heart is steeped in sorrow, by telling these wild tales and rousing me from sleep, from the sweet sleep that had bound and veiled my loving eyes? I have not slept so deeply since the day Odysseus sailed off to see that Evil Ilium, a name not to be uttered. But come now, go downstairs, return to the great hall. If any other of the women who serve me here had come with such a story and awakened me, I would have sent her packing with a stinging word back to the hall. Your old age alone has served you well.”

Then her dear nurse, Eurycleia, answered her in turn: “I do not mock you, dearest child, but speak the solemn truth. Odysseus has come; he has reached his home, just as I say. He is the stranger whom all of them dishonored in the hall. Telemachus has known for some time now that he was here, but with great prudence he concealed his father’s purpose, until he could avenge the violence of those high-handed men.”

So she spoke, and Penelope’s heart leaped up. She sprang from bed and threw her arms around the old nurse, while tears streamed from her eyes, and finding her voice, she spoke to her in winged words: “Then come, dear nurse, and tell me this unerringly: if he has truly come home, as you now declare, how did he lay his hands upon the shameless suitors, he, all alone, while they forever thronged the halls within?”

Then her dear nurse, Eurycleia, answered her in turn: “I did not see, I did not ask; I only heard the groans of dying men. We huddled in a recess of the strong-walled rooms, terrified, behind the close-barred, well-fitted doors, until at last your son called me from the great hall— Telemachus, sent by his father to summon me. There I found Odysseus standing among the slaughtered dead; they lay all around him, covering the hard-packed earth, piled one on top of another. The sight would have warmed your heart. Now they are all heaped up by the courtyard gates, while he purifies the glorious hall with burning sulfur, having kindled a great fire. He sent me forth to call you. So come, that the hearts of you both may enter into joy, for you have suffered many sorrows. Now at long last your deepest wish has been fulfilled: he has come home alive to his own hearth, and found both you and his son within his halls. And the suitors who did him wrong— he has paid them all back in his own house.”

But wise Penelope spoke to her in answer: “Dear nurse, do not yet exult with triumphant laughter. You know yourself how welcome his return would be to all within these halls, but most of all to me and to the son we bore. But this tale you tell cannot be true. No, some immortal god has slain the lordly suitors, enraged by their heart-galling insolence and wicked deeds. For they showed no respect to any man on earth, no matter if he were base or noble, who came among them. So for their own blind folly they have suffered evil. But Odysseus— he lost his path home far from Achaea, and he himself is lost.”

Then her dear nurse, Eurycleia, answered her in turn: “My child, what word has escaped the barrier of your teeth? You say your husband, who is here beside the hearth, will never come home—your heart is ever a fortress of disbelief. But come, I will give you another sign, one clear as day: the scar, that a boar once gave him with its white tusk. I knew it while I washed his feet, and I wished to tell you, but he seized my chin with his hands and in his cunning would not let me speak. But follow me. I will stake my own life on this: if I deceive you, then kill me by the most piteous death.”

Then wise Penelope spoke to her in answer: “Dear nurse, it is hard to fathom the designs of the everlasting gods, however shrewd one is. But let us go to my son, nonetheless, so I may see the suitors lying dead, and the one who killed them.”

So she spoke and descended from the upper rooms, her heart torn with uncertainty: should she stand apart and question her dear husband, or go to him, and kiss his head, and take his hands? When she had entered and crossed the stone threshold, she sat down opposite Odysseus in the firelight, against the other wall. He sat beside a tall pillar, his eyes cast down, waiting to see if his noble wife would speak to him, now that her eyes had seen him. But she sat for a long time in silence, astonishment gripping her heart. Now she would gaze upon his face and seem to know him, now she would fail to know him, clad in his wretched rags. Then Telemachus rebuked her, and spoke his word and named her: “My mother, cruel mother, you with your hardened heart! Why do you keep such distance from my father? Why not sit beside him, asking questions, speaking to him now? No other woman would have the heart to stand so aloof, to keep apart from a husband who, after so much suffering, has come in the twentieth year back to his native land. But your heart is always harder than a stone.”

Then wise Penelope spoke to him in answer: “My child, the heart within my breast is stunned to silence. I cannot speak a word to him, or ask a question, or even look him in the face. But if this is truly Odysseus, and he has come home, then we two shall know each other, and more surely. For we have secret signs that only we two know, hidden from all the world.”

So she spoke, and a smile touched the lips of much-enduring, divine Odysseus, and at once he spoke to Telemachus in winged words: “Telemachus, let your mother test me in these halls; soon enough she will know me better than she does now. But because I am foul with grime and wear these wretched rags, she scorns me and will not yet say that I am he. But we must consider how this will all end for the best. For even a man who kills a single person in the land, one who leaves behind him no great host of avengers, must flee, abandoning his kinsmen and his native soil. But we have slain the pillars of the city, the men who were the finest of all the youth in Ithaca. I urge you to consider this.”

Then wise Telemachus answered him in turn: “You must see to this yourself, dear father, for your counsel is famed as the best among all men. No other mortal could ever hope to contend with you. We will follow you with eager hearts, and I declare we will not lack for courage, with all the strength we have.”

Then resourceful Odysseus answered him and said: “Then I shall tell you what seems the best course to me. First, you must wash and put on fresh tunics, and bid the serving-women in the halls to take up their finest robes. Then let the divine bard, holding his clear-voiced lyre, lead for us the steps of joyful dancing, so anyone who hears from outside will say a wedding is underway— whether walking on the road or dwelling in a house nearby. The wide-spread rumor of the suitors’ slaughter must not reach the town before we ourselves can get outside the walls and reach our well-wooded farm. And there we shall consider what gain the Olympian puts into our hands.”

So he spoke, and they heard his words and readily obeyed. First they bathed and put on fresh tunics, and the women adorned themselves. The divine bard took up his hollow lyre and stirred in them a longing for sweet song and for flawless, graceful dancing. And the great house resounded with the beat of feet of men at play and of the fair-girdled women. And one who listened from outside the house would say: “Ah, someone has at last married the much-courted queen. Heartless woman, she could not bring herself to guard the great house of her wedded husband steadfastly until he should return.” So someone might say, not knowing what had come to pass.

Meanwhile, the great-hearted Odysseus, in his own house, was bathed by the housekeeper Eurynome and anointed with oil, and she cast a beautiful cloak and tunic about him. Then from his head Athena shed down a wealth of beauty, making him seem taller and broader to the eye. From his head she made the curling locks flow down, like hyacinth flowers. As when a master craftsman overlays silver with gold, one whom Hephaestus and Pallas Athena have taught all manner of skills, and his finished work is full of grace, so did she pour grace upon his head and his shoulders. He came from the bath looking like one of the immortals and sat again on the high seat from which he had risen, opposite his wife, and spoke a word to her: “Strange woman, to you beyond all other women the dwellers on Olympus have given an unyielding heart. No other woman would have the will to stand so aloof from her husband who, after suffering many sorrows, has come in the twentieth year back to his native land. But come, nurse, make up a bed for me, so I may lie down alone. For the heart in her breast is surely made of iron.”

Then wise Penelope spoke to him in answer: “Strange man, I am not proud, nor do I look on you with scorn, nor am I lost in wonder. I know too well the man you were when you went from Ithaca aboard your long-oared ship. But come, Eurycleia, make up the solid bed for him, outside the chamber he himself built with his own hands. Take the sturdy bedstead out, and lay the bedding on it: the fleeces, the cloaks, and the shining coverlets.”

So she spoke, putting her husband to the test. But Odysseus, shaken, cried out to his wife of the constant mind: “Woman, that word you have spoken is a knife to my heart! Who has moved my bed? It would be a hard task indeed, even for a master craftsman, unless a god himself came down and with ease, if he so willed, set it in another place. But no living man, not in the prime of his strength, could ever hope to shift it, for a great secret is built into that well-wrought bed, a secret I forged, and no one else. An olive tree grew there, with its long leaves, inside the courtyard, full-grown and flourishing, its trunk as thick as a pillar. Around it I built my chamber, walling it stone by stone, and roofed it well from above, and hung the close-fitting, jointed doors. Then I lopped the leafy crown from the long-leaved olive, and hewed the trunk from the root up, and smoothed it with my bronze adze, skillfully and well, and trued it to the line, and shaped it into a bedpost, and bored it all through with an auger. Beginning with this, I built my bed until it was finished, inlaying it with gold and silver and ivory, and stretched across it ox-hide straps, bright with crimson. This is the sign I declare to you. But I do not know, woman, if my bed still stands where it was, or if some man has moved it now, by cutting the olive trunk at its base.”

So he spoke, and her knees gave way and her own heart melted as she knew the signs Odysseus had told her, steadfast and true. Weeping, 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, for in all other things you are the wisest of men. The gods gave us a life of sorrow, for they begrudged us our joy, to stay by each other’s side and cross the threshold of old age. But do not be angry with me now, or hold it against me that I did not embrace you at once, the moment I saw you. For the heart in my breast was always rigid with fear that some mortal man might come and deceive me with his words; for many men plot for wicked advantage. Not even Argive Helen, daughter of Zeus, would have joined in love and sleep with a man from a foreign land if she had known that the warrior sons of the Achaeans would one day bring her home again to her own dear country. It was a god who drove her to that shameless act; not till then did she lay the seed of that ruin in her heart, the bitter ruin from which our own grief first arose. But now, since you have told me the clear signs of our own bed, which no other mortal has ever seen— only you and I, and one serving-woman alone, Actoris, whom my father gave me when I first came here, the one who guarded the doors of our well-built chamber— now you persuade my heart, unbending as it is.”

So she spoke, and in him she stirred a still greater longing for tears, and he wept, holding his heart’s delight, his constant wife. And as when the sight of land is welcome to swimmers whose well-built ship Poseidon has smashed on the open sea, driven on by the wind and the heavy waves, and a few have escaped the gray sea and swum to shore, the salt brine crusted thick upon their skin, and they climb onto the land, grateful to have escaped disaster; so welcome to her was the sight of her husband, and from his neck her white arms would not let go. And rosy-fingered Dawn would have found them weeping there, had not the goddess, gray-eyed Athena, planned otherwise. She held the long night back at its ending, and Dawn herself she held on her golden throne beside the stream of Ocean, and would not let her yoke the swift-footed horses that bring light to men, Lampus and Phaethon, the colts that draw the chariot of Dawn.

And then to his wife spoke resourceful Odysseus: “O woman, we have not yet come to the end of all our trials. There is still a measureless labor left for me to do, long and hard, which I must bring to its completion. For so the spirit of Tiresias prophesied to me on that day I went down into the house of Hades, seeking a way home for my companions and myself. But come, let us go to our bed, woman, so that now at last, lying down, we may take our pleasure in sweet sleep.”

Then wise Penelope spoke to him in answer: “Your bed will be ready for you whenever your own heart desires it, since the gods have brought you back to your well-built house and your own native land. But since you have thought of it, and a god has put it in your heart, come, tell me of this trial, since I know I will learn of it later, and to know it now is no worse thing.”

Then resourceful Odysseus answered her and said: “Strange woman, why do you urge me so, and press me to speak? But I will tell you, and I will hide nothing. Yet your heart will not rejoice, as I myself do not rejoice, for he commanded me to travel to many cities of men, carrying a well-made oar in my hands, until I should come to a people who know nothing of the sea, men who eat their food unsalted; nor do they know of ships with their crimson-painted cheeks, or the well-shaped oars that are the wings of ships. And he told me this sign, clear to be seen, and I will not hide it: whenever another traveler, meeting me, should say that I carry a winnowing-fan on my bright shoulder, then, he commanded, I must plant my oar in the earth and make fine sacrifice to the lord Poseidon— a ram, a bull, and a breeding-boar, a mate of sows— and then go home, and offer sacred hecatombs to the immortal gods who hold the wide heavens, to all of them in order. And death will come to me far from the sea, a death so gentle, that will take me when I am worn with sleek old age, and my people around me will be prosperous. All this, he said, will come to pass.”

Then wise Penelope spoke to him in answer: “If indeed the gods are granting you a better old age, then there is hope that you will find escape from your sorrows.”

So they spoke such words to one another. Meanwhile Eurynome and the nurse prepared their bed with soft coverings, under the light of blazing torches. And when, hurrying, they had spread the sturdy bed, the old nurse went back to her own room to lie down, and Eurynome, the chambermaid, led them on their way to the bed, holding a torch in her hands. When she had led them to the chamber, she went back. And they, with joy, came to the rites of their ancient bed. Then Telemachus, the cowherd, and the swineherd stopped their feet from dancing, and made the women stop, and they themselves lay down to sleep in the shadowy halls.

But the two, when they had taken their joy of lovely passion, took their pleasure in stories, speaking to one another. She, the divine among women, told of all she had endured in the halls, watching the ruinous throng of suitors, who for her sake had slaughtered so many cattle and fat sheep, and so much wine was drained from the storage jars. And Zeus-born Odysseus told of all the woes he had laid on other men, and all he had suffered in his misery. He told her everything, and she delighted in listening, and sleep did not fall upon her eyelids until he had told the whole tale.

He began with how he first subdued the Cicones, and then came to the rich land of the Lotus-Eaters; and all the Cyclops did, and how he took vengeance for his brave companions, whom the beast ate and did not pity; and how he came to Aeolus, who received him kindly and sent him on his way; but it was not yet his fate to reach his home, for a storm snatched him up again and carried him, groaning heavily, out over the fish-filled sea; and how he came to Telepylus of the Laestrygonians, who destroyed his ships and all his well-greaved comrades; Odysseus alone escaped in his black ship. And he told of Circe’s cunning and her many wiles, and how he went down to the moldering house of Hades to consult the spirit of Theban Tiresias in his many-benched ship, and saw all his companions and his mother, who bore him and raised him as a child; and how he heard the song of the clear-voiced Sirens, and how he came to the Wandering Rocks, and terrible Charybdis, and Scylla, whom no men ever escape unharmed; and how his companions killed the cattle of the Sun; and how Zeus, who thunders on high, struck his swift ship with a blazing thunderbolt, and his noble companions perished all together, while he alone escaped the evil fates; and how he came to the island Ogygia and the nymph Calypso, who kept him there in her hollow caves, longing for him to be her husband, and fed him, and said she would make him immortal and ageless for all his days; but she never persuaded the heart within his breast; and how, after much suffering, he came to the Phaeacians, who in their hearts honored him like a god and sent him on a ship to his own native land, giving him bronze and gold and clothing in abundance. This was the last word he spoke, when sweet sleep that loosens the limbs fell upon him, easing the cares of his heart.

Then the goddess, gray-eyed Athena, planned another thing. When she thought that Odysseus in his heart had taken his fill of his wife’s love and of sleep, at once she roused from Ocean the golden-throned Dawn, the early-born, to bring light to men. And Odysseus arose from his soft bed and gave his wife this command: “O woman, we two have now had our fill of many trials, you here, weeping for my long and sorrowful return, and I, whom Zeus and the other gods kept bound in grief, far from my own native land, though I longed for it. But now that we both have come to our longed-for bed, you must look after the wealth that is mine in these halls. As for the flocks the arrogant suitors have devoured, many I will take myself as plunder, and the Achaeans will give me others, until they have filled all my pens. But now I must go to our well-wooded farm, to see my noble father, who grieves for me constantly. And to you, woman, I give this charge, wise though you are: at once, with the rising sun, a rumor will go out about the suitors, whom I have killed in our halls. Go up to the upper chamber with your serving-women and stay there; see no one, and ask no questions.”

He spoke, and settled the fine armor on his shoulders, and roused Telemachus, the cowherd, and the swineherd, and ordered them all to take their weapons of war in hand. They did not disobey him, but armed themselves in bronze, opened the doors, and went out, Odysseus leading them. Light was already on the earth, but Athena hid them in darkness and led them swiftly from the city.