be
beggar-in-chief, and have the post to himself. Ulysses asked the wooers
to give him fair play, and not to interfere, and then he stripped his
shoulders, and kilted up his rags, showing strong arms and legs. As for
Irus he began to tremble, but Antinous forced him to fight, and the two
put up their hands. Irus struck at the shoulder of Ulysses, who hit him
with his right fist beneath the ear, and he fell, the blood gushing from
his mouth, and his heels drumming in the ground, and Ulysses dragged him
from the doorway and propped him against the wall of the court, while
the wooers laughed. Then Ulysses spoke gravely to Amphinomus, telling
him that it would be wise in him to go home, for that if Ulysses came
back it might not be so easy to escape his hands.

After sunset Ulysses spoke so fiercely to the maidens of Penelope, who
insulted him, that they ran to their own rooms, but Eurymachus threw a
footstool at him. He slipped out of the way, and the stool hit the
cupbearer and knocked him down, and all was disorder in the hall. The
wooers themselves were weary of the noise and disorder, and went home to
the houses in the town where they slept. Then Telemachus and Ulysses,
being left alone, hid the shields and helmets and spears that hung on
the walls of the hall in an armoury within the house, and when this was
done Telemachus went to sleep in his own chamber, in the courtyard, and
Ulysses waited till Penelope should come into the hall.

Ulysses sat in the dusky hall, where the wood in the braziers that gave
light had burned low, and waited to see the face of his wife, for whom
he had left beautiful Calypso. The maidens of Penelope came trooping,
laughing, and cleared away the food and the cups, and put faggots in the
braziers. They were all giddy girls, in love with the handsome wooers,
and one of them, Melantho, bade Ulysses go away, and sleep at the
blacksmith's forge, lest he should be beaten with a torch. Penelope
heard Melantho, whom she had herself brought up, and she rebuked her,
and ordered a chair to be brought for Ulysses. When he was seated, she
asked him who he was, and he praised her beauty, for she was still very
fair, but did not answer her question. She insisted that he should tell
her who he was, and he said that he was a Cretan prince, the younger
brother of Idomeneus, and that he did not go to fight in Troyland. In
Crete he stayed, and met Ulysses, who stopped there on his way to Troy,
and he enterta