of the
well-builded roof, holding up her glistening tire before her face; and a
faithful maiden stood on either side of her." She begs Phemius to cease
from this sorrowful strain, which wastes her heart within her breast,
since to her, above all women, hath come a sorrow comfortless, because
she holds in constant memory so dear a head,--even that man whose fame
is noised abroad from Hellas to mid-Argos. Telemachus gently rebukes his
mother for interrupting the song of the minstrel, and bids her return to
her chamber and to her own housewiferies, the loom and distaff, and bid
the handmaids ply their tasks. Then in amaze she goes back to her
chamber, for she lays up the wise saying of her son in her heart. She
ascends to the upper chamber with the women, her handmaids, and there
bewails Odysseus, her dear lord, till gray-eyed Athena casts sweet sleep
upon her eyelids.

Telemachus begins to assert himself before the violent suitors. When
night falls and each goes to his own house to lie down to rest, the
young prince is attended to his chamber by the aged Euryclea, who had
nursed him when a little one. She bears the burning torches, and
prepares the chamber for her young master; and when he takes off his
soft doublet, she folds and smooths it and hangs it on a pin by the
jointed bedstead. Then she goes forth from the room, and there, all
night long, wrapped in a fleece of wool, Telemachus meditates in his
heart upon the journey that Athena has shown him.

The next day, after a stormy meeting of the assembly, Telemachus
secretly sets sail for Pylus, accompanied by the goddess Athena, in the
form of Mentor. Only Euryclea, the youth's faithful nurse, knows of his
journey, and she has taken a great oath not to reveal it to his mother
till the eleventh or twelfth day. Nestor graciously receives Telemachus
at Pylus, and, as he himself has no news of Odysseus, sends him on to
Sparta, to King Menelaus, in the company of his own son, Pisistratus.
The young men are graciously received by Menelaus and Helen, and
Telemachus learns that Odysseus was a captive on an island of the deep
in the halls of the nymph Calypso.

Meanwhile, the suitors in Ithaca learn of Telemachus's departure and lay
an ambush to intercept him on his return. Discreet Penelope, too, learns
by chance of his absence, and of the plots of the wooers, and her heart
melts within her at the thought of danger to her child. The good nurse
Euryclea tells her of Telemach