s
stranger and ask him if he had tidings of my lord. Therefore, it does
not become thee to revile him.' She spoke to the old nurse who had come
with her, and said, 'Eurycleia, bring to the fire a bench, with a fleece
upon it, that this stranger may sit and tell me his story.'

Eurycleia brought over the bench, and Odysseus sat down near the fire.
Then said the lady Penelope, 'First, stranger, wilt thou tell me who
thou art, and what is thy name, and thy race and thy country?'

Said Odysseus, 'Ask me all thou wilt, lady, but inquire not concerning
my name, or race, or country, lest thou shouldst fill my heart with more
pains than I am able to endure. Verily I am a man of grief. But hast
thou no tale to tell me? We know of thee, Penelope, for thy fame goes up
to heaven, and no one of mortal men can find fault with thee.'

Then said Penelope, 'What excellence I had of face or form departed from
me when my lord Odysseus went from this hall to the wars of Troy. And
since he went a host of ills has beset me. Ah, would that he were here
to watch over my life! The lords of all the islands around--Dulichium
and Same and Zacynthus; and the lords of the land of Ithaka, have come
here and are wooing me against my will. They devour the substance of
this house and my son is being impoverished.'

'Long ago a god put into my mind a device to keep marriage with any of
them away from me. I set up a great web upon my loom and I spoke to the
wooers, saying, "Odysseus is assuredly dead, but I crave that you be not
eager to speed on this marriage with me. Wait until I finish the web I
am weaving. It is a shroud for Odysseus' father, and I make it against
the day when death shall come to him. There will be no woman to care for
Laertes when I have left his son's house, and I would not have such a
hero lie without a shroud, lest the women of our land should blame me
for neglect of my husband's father in his last days.'"

'So I spoke, and they agreed to wait until the web was woven. In the
daytime I wove it, but at night I unravelled the web. So three years
passed away. Then the fourth year came, and my wooers were hard to deal
with. My treacherous handmaidens brought them upon me as I was
unravelling the web. And now I cannot devise any other plan to keep the
marriage away from me. My parents command me to marry one of my wooers.
My son cannot long endure to see the substance of his house and field
being wasted, and the wealth that should b