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10
TELEMACHUS CHALLENGES THE SUITORS.
[ODYSSEY

fellow means no harm by singing the ill-fated return of the Danaans, for people always applaud the latest songs most warmly. Make up your mind to it and bear it; Ulysses is not the only man who never came back from Troy, but many another went down as well as he. Go, then, within the house and busy yourselves with your daily duties, your loom, your distaff, and the ordering of your servants; for speech is man's matter, and mine above all others[1]—for it is I who am master here."

360She went wondering back into the house, and laid her son's saying in her heart. Then, going upstairs with her handmaids into her room, she mourned her dear husband till Minerva shed sweet sleep over her eyes. But the suitors were clamorous throughout the covered cloisters,[2] and prayed each one that he might be her bed fellow.

368Then Telemachus spoke, "Shameless," he cried, "and insolent suitors, let us feast at our pleasure now, and let there be no brawling, for it is a rare thing to hear a man with such a divine voice as Phemius has; but in the morning meet me in full assembly that I may give you formal notice to depart, and feast at one another's houses, turn and turn about, at your own cost. If on the other hand you choose to persist in spunging upon one man, heaven help me, but Jove shall reckon with you in full, and when you fall in my father's house there shall be no man to avenge you."


  1. cf. Il. VI. 490—495. In the Iliad it is "war," not "speech," that is a man's matter. It argues a certain hardness, or at any rate dislike of the Iliad, on the part of the writer of the Odyssey, that she should have adopted Hector's farewell to Andromache here, as elsewhere in the poem, for a scene of such far inferior pathos.
  2. μέγαρα σκιοέντα. The whole open court with the covered cloister running round it was called μέγαρον, or μέγαρα, but the covered part was distinguished by being called "shady" or "shadow-giving." It was in this part that the tables for the suitors were laid. The Fountain Court at Hampton Court may serve as an illustration (save as regards the use of arches instead of wooden supports and rafters) and the arrangement is still common in Sicily. The usual translation "shadowy" or "dusky" halls, gives a false idea of the scene.