cattle, sheep, and swine; they drank the wine,
and amused themselves with Penelope's maidens, of whom she had many.
Nobody could stop them; they would never go away, they said, till
Penelope chose one of them to be her husband, and King of the island,
though Telemachus was the rightful prince.

Penelope at last promised that she would choose one of them when she had
finished a great shroud of linen, to be the death shroud of old Laertes
when he died. All day she wove it, but at night, when her wooers had
gone (for they did not sleep in her house), she unwove it again. But one
of her maidens told this to the wooers, so she had to finish the shroud,
and now they pressed her more than ever to make her choice. But she kept
hoping that Ulysses was still alive, and would return, though, if he
did, how was he to turn so many strong young men out of his house?

The Goddess of Wisdom, Athene, had always favoured Ulysses, and now she
spoke up among the Gods, where they sat, as men say, in their holy
heaven. Not by winds is it shaken, nor wet with rain, nor does the snow
come thither, but clear air is spread about it cloudless, and the white
light floats over it. Athene told how good, wise, and brave Ulysses was,
and how he was kept in the isle of Calypso, while men ruined his wealth
and wooed his wife. She said that she would herself go to Ithaca, and
make Telemachus appeal to all the people of the country, showing how
evilly he was treated, and then sail abroad to seek news of his father.
So Athene spoke, and flashed down from Olympus to Ithaca, where she took
the shape of a mortal man, Mentes, a chief of the Taphians. In front of
the doors she found the proud wooers playing at draughts and other games
while supper was being made ready. When Telemachus, who was standing
apart, saw the stranger, he went to him, and led him into the house, and
treated him kindly, while the wooers ate and drank, and laughed noisily.

Then Telemachus told Athene (or, as he supposed, the stranger), how
evilly he was used, while his father's white bones might be wasting on
an unknown shore or rolling in the billows of the salt sea. Athene said,
or Mentes said, that he himself was an old friend of Ulysses, and had
touched at Ithaca on his way to Cyprus to buy copper. 'But Ulysses,' he
said, 'is not dead; he will certainly come home, and that speedily. You
are so like him, you must be his son.' Telemachus replied that he was,
and Mentes was full of ang