ggar, he called out as he tethered the calf in the yard, 'Hail,
stranger friend! My eyes fill with tears as I look on thee. For even
now, clad as thou art in rags, thou dost make me think of my master
Odysseus, who may be a wanderer such as thou in friendless lands. Ah,
that he might return and make a scattering of the wooers in his hall.'
Eumaeus the swineherd came up to Philoetius and made the same prayer.
These two, and the ancient woman at the quern, were the only ones of his
servants whom he heard pray for his return.

And now the wooers came into the hall. Philoetius the cattle-herd, and
Melanthius the evil goatherd, went amongst them, handing them bread and
meat and wine. Odysseus stood outside the hall until Telemachus went to
him and brought him within.

Now there was amongst the wooers a man named Ctesippus, and he was the
rudest and the roughest of them all. When he saw Telemachus bringing
Odysseus within he shouted out, 'Here is a guest of Telemachus to whom
some gift is due from us. It will be unseemly if he should get nothing
to-day. Therefore I will bestow this upon him as a token.'

Saying this, Ctesippus took up the foot of a slaughtered ox and flung it
full at Odysseus. Odysseus drew back, and the ox's foot struck the wall.
Then did Odysseus smile grimly upon the wooers.

Said Telemachus, 'Verily, Ctesippus, the cast turned out happily for
thyself. For if thou shouldst have struck my guest, there would have
been a funeral feast instead of a wedding banquet in thy father's house.
Assuredly I should have driven my spear through thee.'

All the wooers were silent when Telemachus spoke these bold words. But
soon they fell laughing at something one of their number said. The guest
from Telemachus' ship, Theoclymenus, was there, and he started up and
went to leave the hall.

'Why dost thou go, my guest?' said Telemachus.

'I see the walls and the beams of the roof sprinkled with blood,' said
Theoclymenus, the second-sighted man. 'I hear the voice of wailing. I
see cheeks wet with tears. The men before me have shrouds upon them. The
courtyard is filled with ghosts.'

So Theoclymenus spoke, and all the wooers laughed at the second-sighted
man, for he stumbled about the hall as if it were in darkness. Then said
one of the wooers, 'Lead that man out of the house, for surely he cannot
tell day from night.'

'I will go from the place,' said Theoclymenus. 'I see death approaching.
Not one of all the compan