one too rose up to prophesy. But if thou wouldst obey me, this would be much better: putting the strangers in a many-benched ship, let us send them to the Sicilians, whence one could gain a fit price."
Thus spoke the suitors; but he did not regard their words; but silently looked towards his father, always expecting, when he should at length lay his hands upon the shameless suitors. But prudent Penelope, daughter of Icarus, placing a very beautiful seat opposite, heard the words of each of the men in the palace. They however laughing, prepared a feast, pleasant, and gratifying to the mind, since they had sacrificed very many things: but there could not be another more ungrateful feast, [than that] which the goddess and the noble man were soon about to make; for they first contrived unseemly things.
BOOK XXI.
ARGUMENT.
And then the blue-eyed goddess Minerva put it in the mind of prudent Penelope, daughter of Icarus, to place the bow and the hoary steel for the suitors in the palace of Ulysses as a subject of contest and a beginning of slaughter.[1] And she ascended the lofty stairs of the house; and in her plump[2] hand took a well-bent key, beautiful, of brass: and upon it was a handle of ivory: and she hastened to the farthest chamber with her women attendants; where lay the treasures of the king, both brass, and gold, and much-wrought steel. There lay the unstrung[3] bow, and an arrow-containing quiver,
