Sirs! ye are mad, and can no longer eat
Or drink in peace; some daemon troubles you.
But since ye all have feasted, to your homes 510
Go now, and, at your pleasure, to your beds;
Soonest were best, but I thrust no man hence.
He ceased; they gnawing stood their lips, aghast
With wonder that Telemachus in his speech
Such boldness used. Then rose Amphinomus,
Brave son of Nisus offspring of the King
Aretus, and the assembly thus address'd.
My friends! let none with contradiction thwart
And rude reply words rational and just;
Assault no more the stranger, nor of all 520
The servants of renown'd Ulysses here
Harm any. Come. Let the cup-bearer fill
To all, that due libation made, to rest
We may repair at home, leaving the Prince
To accommodate beneath his father's roof
The stranger, for he is the Prince's guest.
He ended, whose advice none disapproved.
The Hero Mulius then, Dulichian-born,
And herald of Amphinomus, the cup
Filling, dispensed it, as he stood, to all; 530
They, pouring forth to the Immortals, quaff'd
The luscious bev'rage, and when each had made
Libation, and such measure as he would
Of wine had drunk, then all to rest retired.

FOOTNOTES:

[79] Tradition says that Echetus, for a love-affair, condemned his
daughter to lose her eyes, and to grind iron barley-grains, while her
lover was doomed to suffer what Antinoues threatens to Irus. F.

[80] This seems the sort of laughter intended by the word +Achreion+.

[81] From Iaesus, once King of Peloponnesus.

BOOK XIX

ARGUMENT

Ulysses and Telemachus remove the arms from the hall to an upper-chamber.
The Hero then confers with Penelope, to whom he gives a fictitious
narrative of his adventures. Euryclea, while bathing Ulysses, discovers
him by a scar on his knee, but he prevents her communication of that
discovery to Penelope.

They went, but left the noble Chief behind
In his own house, contriving by the aid
Of Pallas, the destruction of them all,
And thus, in accents wing'd, again he said.
My son! we must remove and safe dispose
All these my well-forged implements of war;
And should the suitors, missing them, enquire
Where are they? thou shalt answer smoothly thus--
I have convey'd them from the reach of smoke,
For they