speak
As thou hast heard by her own kind command.
Then thus Penelope the wise replied.
Oh! if thou art a goddess, and hast heard
A Goddess' voice, rehearse to me the lot
Of that unhappy one, if yet he live 1010
Spectator of the cheerful beams of day,
Or if, already dead, he dwell below.
Whom answer'd thus the fleeting shadow vain.
I will not now inform thee if thy Lord
Live, or live not. Vain words are best unspoken.
So saying, her egress swift beside the bolt
She made, and melted into air. Upsprang
From sleep Icarius' daughter, and her heart
Felt heal'd within her, by that dream distinct
Visited in the noiseless night serene. 1020
Meantime the suitors urged their wat'ry way,
To instant death devoting in their hearts
Telemachus. There is a rocky isle
In the mid sea, Samos the rude between
And Ithaca, not large, named Asteris.
It hath commodious havens, into which
A passage clear opens on either side,
And there the ambush'd Greeks his coming watch'd.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] Hesychius tells us, that the Greecians ornamented with much attention
the front wall of their courts for the admiration of passengers.

[10] +Ophthalmon te bolai+.

[11] Antilochus was his brother.

[12] The son of Aurora, who slew Antilochus, was Memnon.

[13] Because Pisistratus was born after Antilochus had sailed to Troy.

[14] Proteus

[15] Seals, or sea-calves.

[16] From the abruptness of this beginning, Virgil, probably, who has
copied the story, took the hint of his admired exordium.

Nam quis te, juvenum confidentissime, nostras.
Egit adire domos.

[17] Son of Oileus.

[18] +Daitymon+--generally signifies the founder of a feast; but we are
taught by Eustathius to understand by it, in this place, the persons
employed in preparing it.

[19] This transition from the third to the second person belongs to the
original, and is considered as a fine stroke of art in the poet, who
represents Penelope in the warmth of her resentment, forgetting where she
is, and addressing the suitors as if present.

[20] Mistaking, perhaps, the sound of her voice, and imagining that she
sang.--Vide Barnes in loco.

BOOK V

ARGUMENT

Mercury bears to Calypso a command from Jupiter that she dismiss Ulysses.
She, after some remonstrances, promises obedience, and furnishes him with