The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy. Padraic Colum
shine out of your eyes. Speak now to me and tell me what I should do to save the house of Odysseus from ruin. And tell me too if you think it possible that my father should still be in life.'
The stranger looked at him with his grey, clear, wonderfully-shining eyes. 'Art thou verily the son of Odysseus?' said he.
'Verily, I am the son of Odysseus,' said Telemachus.
'As I look at you,' said the stranger, 'I mark your head and eyes, and I know they are such a head and such eyes as Odysseus had. Well, being the son of such a man, and of such a woman as the lady Penelope, your spirit surely shall find a way of destroying those wooers who would destroy your house.'
'Already,' said Telemachus, 'your gaze and your speech make me feel equal to the task of dealing with them.'
'I think,' said the stranger, 'that Odysseus, your father, has not perished from the earth. He may yet win home through labors and perils. But you should seek for tidings of him. Harken to me now and I shall tell you what to do.
'To-morrow summon a council of all the chief men of the land of Ithaka, and stand up in that council and declare that the time has come for the wooers who waste your substance to scatter, each man to his own home. And after the council has been held I would have you voyage to find out tidings of your father, whether he still lives and where he might be. Go to Pylos first, to the home of Nestor, that old King who was with your father in the war of Troy. Beg Nestor to give you whatever tidings he has of Odysseus. And from Pylos go to Sparta, to the home of Menelaus and Helen, and beg tidings of your father from them too. And if you get news of his being alive, return: It will be easy for you then to endure for another year the wasting of your substance by those wooers. But if you learn that your father, the renowned Odysseus, is indeed dead and gone, then come back, and in your own country raise a great funeral mound to his memory, and over it pay all funeral rites. Then let your mother choose a good man to be her husband and let her marry him, knowing for a certainty that Odysseus will never come back to his own house. After that something will remain for you to do: You will have to punish those wooers who destroy the goods your father gathered and who insult his house by their presence. And when all these things have been done, you, Telemachus, will be free to seek out your own fortune: you will rise to fame, for I mark that you are handsome and strong and most likely to be a wise and valiant man. But now I must fare on my journey.'
The stranger rose up from where he sat and went with Telemachus from the hall and through the court and to the outer gate. Telemachus said: 'What you have told me I shall not forget. I know you have spoken out of a wise and a friendly heart, and as a father to his son.'
The stranger clasped his hands and went through the gate. And then, as he looked after him Telemachus saw the stranger change in his form. He became first as a woman, tall, with fair hair and a spear of bronze in her hand. And then the form of a woman changed too. It changed into a great sea-eagle that on wide wings rose up and flew high through the air. Telemachus knew then that his visitor was an immortal and no other than the goddess Athene who had been his father's friend.
III
hen Telemachus went back to the hall those who were feasting there had put the wine-cups from them and were calling out for Phemius, the minstrel, to come and sing some tale to delight them. And as he went amongst them one of the wooers said to another, 'The guest who was with him has told Telemachus something that has changed his bearing. Never before did I see him hold himself so proudly. Mayhap he has spoken to him of the return of his father, the renowned Odysseus.'
Phemius came and the wooers called upon him to sing them a tale. And the minstrel, in flowing verse, began the tale of the return of the Kings and Princes from Troy, and of how some god or goddess put a trouble upon them as they left the City they had taken. And as the minstrel began the tale, Penelope, Telemachus' lady-mother, was coming down the stairs with two hand-maids beside her. She heard the words he sang, and she stood still in her grief and drew her veil across her face. 'O Phemius,' she cried, 'cease from that story that ever wastes my heart—the story that has brought me sorrow and that leaves me comfortless all my days! O Phemius, do you not know other tales of men and gods that you might sing in this hall for the delight of my noble wooers?'
The minstrel would have ceased when Penelope spoke thus to him, but Telemachus went to the stairway where his lady-mother stood, and addressed her.
'My lady-mother,' said he, 'why should you not let the minstrel delight the company with such songs as the spirit moves him to give us? It is no blame to him if he sings of that which is sorrowful to us. As for you, my mother, you must learn to endure that story, for long will it be sung and far and wide. And you are not the only one who is bereaved—many another man besides Odysseus lost the happy day of his homecoming in the war of Troy.'
Penelope, his lady-mother, looked in surprise at the youth who spoke to her so wisely. Was this indeed Telemachus who before had hardly lifted his head? And as she looked at him again she saw that he carried his head—that head of his that was so like Odysseus'—high and proudly. She saw that her son was now indeed a man. Penelope spoke no word to him, for a new thought had come into her mind. She turned round on the stairs and went back with her hand-maids to the chamber where her loom and her distaff were. And as she went up the stairway and away from them her wooers muttered one to the other that she would soon have to choose one of them for her husband.
Telemachus turned to those who were standing at the tables and addressed them. 'Wooers of my mother,' he said, 'I have a word to say to you.'
'By the gods, youth,' said one of the wooers, 'you must tell us first who he is who has made you so high and proud of speech.'
'Surely,' said another, 'he who has done that is the stranger who was with him. Who is he? Why did he come here, and of what land has he declared himself to be?'
'Why did he not stay so that we might look at him and speak to him?' said another of the wooers.
'These are the words I would say to you. Let us feast now in peace, without any brawling amongst us, and listen to the tale that the minstrel sings to us,' said Telemachus. 'But to-morrow let us have a council made up of the chief men of this land of Ithaka. I shall go to the council and speak there. I shall ask that you leave this house of mine and feast on goods that you yourselves have gathered. Let the chief men judge whether I speak in fairness to you or not. If you do not heed what I will say openly at the council, before all the chief men of our land, then let it be on your own heads what will befall you.'
All the wooers marvelled that Telemachus spoke so boldly. And one said, 'Because his father, Odysseus, was king, this youth thinks he should be king by inheritance. But may Zeus, the god, never grant that he be king.'
Then said Telemachus, 'If the god Zeus should grant that I be King, I am ready to take up the Kingship of the land of Ithaka with all its toils and all its dangers.' And when Telemachus said that he looked like a young king indeed.
But they sat in peace and listened to what the minstrel sang. And when evening came the wooers left the hall and went each to his own house. Telemachus rose and went to his chamber. Before him there went an ancient woman who had nursed him as a child—Eurycleia was her name. She carried burning torches to light his way. And when they were in his chamber Telemachus took off his soft doublet and put it in Eurycleia's hands, and she smoothed it out and hung it on the pin at his bed-side. Then she went out and she closed the door behind with its handle of silver and she pulled the thong that bolted the door on the other side. And all night long Telemachus lay wrapped in his fleece of wool and thought on what he would say at the council next day, and on the goddess Athene and what she had put into his heart to do, and on the journey that was before him to Nestor in Pylos and to Menelaus and Helen in Sparta.