ined Ulysses for a fortnight. Penelope wept when she heard
that the stranger had seen her husband, but, as false stories were often
told to her by strangers who came to Ithaca, she asked how Ulysses was
dressed, and what manner of men were with him.

The beggar said that Ulysses wore a double mantle of purple, clasped
with a gold brooch fastened by two safety pins (for these were used at
that time), and on the face of the brooch was a figure of a hound
holding a struggling fawn in his forepaws. (Many such brooches have been
found in the graves in Greece). Beneath his mantle Ulysses wore a
shining smock, smooth and glittering like the skin of an onion. Probably
it was made of silk: women greatly admired it. With him was a squire
named Eurybates, a brown, round-shouldered man.

On hearing all this Penelope wept again and said that she herself had
given Ulysses the brooch and the garments. She now knew that the beggar
had really met Ulysses, and he went on to tell her that, in his
wanderings, he had heard how Ulysses was still alive, though he had lost
all his company, and that he had gone to Dodona in the west of Greece to
ask for advice from the oak tree of Zeus, the whispering oak tree, as to
how he should come home, openly or secretly. Certainly, he said, Ulysses
would return that year.

Penelope was still unable to believe in such good news, but she bade
Eurycleia, the old nurse, wash the feet of the beggar in warm water, so
a foot bath was brought. Ulysses turned his face away from the
firelight, for the nurse said that he was very like her master. As she
washed his legs she noticed the long scar of the wound made by the boar,
when he hunted with his cousins, long ago, before he was married. The
nurse knew him now, and spoke to him in a whisper, calling him by his
name. But he caught her throat with his hand, and asked why she would
cause his death, for the wooers would slay him if they knew who he was.
Eurycleia called him her child, and promised that she would be silent,
and then she went to fetch more hot water, for she had let his foot
fall into the bath and upset it when she found the scar.

When she had washed him, Penelope told the beggar that she could no
longer refuse to marry one of the wooers. Ulysses had left a great bow
in the house, the old bow of King Eurytus, that few could bend, and he
had left twelve iron axes, made with a round opening in the blade of
each. Axes of this shape have been found at