Page:Homer. The Odyssey (IA homerodyssey00collrich).pdf/121

attempt, sanguine of success, he meets a look from his father which checks his hand. Ulysses foresees that should his son succeed where the others fail, and so claim what they are really seeking, the royal power of Ithaca, the whole band might suddenly unite against him, and so frustrate his present scheme of vengeance. Reluctantly, at his father's sign, the youth lays down the bow, and professes to lament the weakness of his degenerate hand. One after another the rival princes in turn strive to bend it, but in vain; even Antinous and Eurymachus, notably the best among them, fail to move the string, though the bow is warmed by the fire and rubbed well with melted fat to make it more pliable. Antinous finds plausible excuse for the failure—they have profaned the festival of Apollo by this contest; it shall be renewed under better auspices on the morrow. Then the seeming beggar (who meanwhile has made himself known as their true lord to Eumæus and another faithful retainer, the herdsman Philœtius) makes request that he may try his hand upon this wondrous bow. Loud and coarse is the abuse which Antinous and his fellows shower upon him for his audacity; but Telemachus exerts the authority in his mother's house which his uninvited guests seem never quite to make up their minds to dispute when it is firmly claimed, and the weapon is given into the hands of its true owner. He handles it gently and lovingly, turning it over and over to see whether it has in any way suffered by time or decay, and brings notes from the tight-strained bow-string, "shrill and sweet as the voice of the swallow." At last he fits an arrow to the notch, and, not