Lacedaemon, where Helen
lived, so we know what the axes of Ulysses were like. When he was at
home he used to set twelve of them in a straight line, and shoot an
arrow through the twelve holes in the blades. Penelope therefore
intended, next day, to bring the bow and the axes to the wooers, and to
marry any one of them who could string the bow, and shoot an arrow
through the twelve axes.

'I think,' said the beggar, 'that Ulysses will be here before any of the
wooers have bent his bow.' Then Penelope went to her upper chamber, and
Ulysses slept in an outer gallery of the house on piled-up sheep skins.

There Ulysses lay, thinking how he might destroy all the wooers, and the
Goddess Athene came and comforted him, and, in the morning, he rose and
made his prayer to Zeus, asking for signs of his favour. There came,
first a peal of thunder, and then the voice of a woman, weak and old,
who was grinding corn to make bread for the wooers. All the other women
of the mill had done their work and were asleep, but she was feeble and
the round upper stone of the quern, that she rolled on the corn above
the under stone, was too heavy for her.

She prayed, and said, 'Father Zeus, King of Gods and men, loudly hast
thou thundered. Grant to me my prayer, unhappy as I am. May this be the
last day of the feasting of the wooers in the hall of Ulysses: they
have loosened my knees with cruel labour in grinding barley for them:
may they now sup their last!' Hearing this prayer Ulysses was glad, for
he thought it a lucky sign. Soon the servants were at work, and Eumaeus
came with swine, and was as courteous to the beggar as Melanthius, who
brought some goats, was insolent. The cowherd, called Philoetius, also
arrived; he hated the wooers, and spoke friendly to the beggar. Last
appeared the wooers, and went in to their meal, while Telemachus bade
the beggar sit on a seat just within the hall, and told the servants to
give him as good a share of the food as any of them received. One wooer,
Ctesippus, said: 'His fair share this beggar man has had, as is right,
but I will give him a present over and above it!' Then he picked up the
foot of an ox, and threw it with all his might at Ulysses, who merely
moved aside, and the ox foot struck the wall.

Telemachus rebuked him, and the wooers began to laugh wildly and to
weep, they knew not why, but Theoclymenus, the second-sighted man, knew
that they were all fey men, that is, doomed to die, for such m