Book XXIII · Ῥαψωδία ψ

And the old woman went bounding up to the upper room, absolutely buzzing,

to tell her lady that her beloved husband was home, posted up inside,

and her knees were going strong under her, her feet basically tripping over themselves.

She pulled up over her head and hit her with the words:

"Wake up, Penelope, sweet girl, so you can finally clock it

Odysseus is back, he's home, took him forever but he pulled up,

and he merked the suitors, those arrogant clowns, the ones who were trashing

his whole house, eating up his stuff and leaning on his boy."

Then big-brain Penelope came back at her with this:

flip a clever person into a fool, no thoughts head empty,

and they can take some scatterbrain and drop wisdom straight into them.

They've messed you up, they have: before this you had your sense on lock.

Why are you out here mocking me, when my heart's this heavy with grief,

the sweet sleep that pinned me down, wrapped right round my eyelids?

I haven't crashed this deep, not once, since the day Odysseus

shipped off to lay eyes on cursed Ilion, the name I refuse to even say.

Come on now, get back downstairs, take yourself back to the hall.

had pulled up with this story and dragged me out of my sleep,

I'd have sent her packing real cold, straight back inside

the hall: but your old age, that's the one thing saving you here."

Then dear nurse Eurycleia came back at her with this:

Odysseus is back, he's home, exactly like I'm telling you,

the guest, the one they were all disrespecting in the hall.

And Telemachus knew ages ago he was inside,

but he kept his dad's plans locked down, no leaks, playing it smart,

So she said, and her lady lit up and bounced off the bed,

threw her arms round the old woman, the tears spilling off her eyelids,

and finding her voice she hit her with these winged words:

"Come on then, sweet nurse, give it to me straight, zero filter,

how on earth did he lay hands on the shameless suitors,

just him, on his own, when they were always packed in there together?"

Then dear nurse Eurycleia came back at her with this:

"I didn't see it, I didn't hear the play-by-play, just the groaning,

sitting there shook to bits, and the tight-fitted doors held us shut,

right up until your son called me out from the hall,

Telemachus: because his dad had sent him to come fetch me.

And then I found Odysseus standing among the bodies,

piled on top of each other: you'd have been warmed to your soul to see it,

him splattered in blood and gore like a full-on lion fresh off a kill.

But now they're all out there together by the courtyard gates,

heaped up, while he's purifying the gorgeous house,

So come with me, so the two of you can finally step into the joy,

both your dear hearts, after all the awful stuff you've been through.

And now, here it is, the big long-shot wish has actually come true:

he came back himself, alive, to his own hearth, and he found you

every single one of them, he made them pay for it inside his own house."

Then big-brain Penelope came back at her with this:

"Sweet nurse, don't go celebrating just yet, don't get carried away.

You know how welcome that man would be if he showed up in the halls,

but this story you're telling, it just isn't the truth.

Nah, it was one of the immortals who killed off the lordly suitors,

disgusted at their heart-twisting arrogance and their evil deeds.

Because they had zero respect for a single soul walking this earth,

so for their recklessness they caught the worst of it. But Odysseus,

he lost his homecoming far from Achaean soil, and he's gone, the man himself."

Then dear nurse Eurycleia answered her right back:

"My child, what kind of take just slipped past the gate of your teeth,

coming home: your heart stays locked on disbelief, it always has.

Come on then, let me give you another sign, crystal clear,

a scar, the one a boar gashed into him way back with its white tusk:

I clocked it while washing his feet, and I wanted to tell you,

and wouldn't let me say a word, because the man's too cunning to slip.

So come with me: and I'll stake my own life on this,

and if I'm playing you, kill me with the most pitiful death there is."

Then big-brain Penelope answered her right back:

of the gods who live forever, however clued-in you are,

but still, let's go down to my son anyway, so I can see

the suitors lying dead, and the one who did the merking."

Saying this she came down from the upper room, and her heart was

or pull up close and kiss his head and take his hands.

But once she came in and stepped over the stone threshold,

she sat down across from Odysseus, in the glow of the fire,

against the far wall: and he was sitting by a tall pillar,

would say anything to him, now that her eyes had landed on him.

But she sat there a long while in silence, the shock of it flooding her heart:

sometimes she'd lock eyes and really see him, full in the face,

other times she wouldn't know him, with those grim rags on his body.

"My mum, my hard-hearted mum, with this cold heart in your chest,

why are you keeping your distance from dad like this, why not sit

right beside him and ask him things, dig into it, hear him out?

There's no other woman who'd plant herself this far off,

finally made it back in the twentieth year to his homeland:

but your heart's forever harder than stone, fr."

Then big-brain Penelope came back at him with this:

"My child, my soul is just stunned still inside my chest,

I can't even look him straight in the face. But if he really

is Odysseus, and he's really home, then trust, the two of us

will know each other for sure, and better than this: because we've got

signs, the secret ones, the ones only we two know, hidden from everyone else."

and straight away he hit Telemachus with these winged words:

"Telemachus, look, let your mum test me out in the halls

however she wants: she'll come round and see clearer soon enough.

Right now, since I'm grubby and I've got these awful rags on me,

But let's you and me figure out how this lands best for everyone.

Because look, when a man kills just one guy in a community,

even someone with not many avengers left behind to back him,

he still bolts, leaving his people and his homeland behind:

of the young men in Ithaca: that's the part I'm telling you to think hard about."

And big-brain Telemachus came back at him with this:

"You handle that yourself, dear dad: because they say your strategy

is the best out of everyone, no man alive among

And us, we'll fall in right behind you, fully locked in, and I don't reckon

we'll come up short on guts, not while the strength is there to give."

Then big-brain Odysseus answered him with this:

"Alright then, I'll say what I reckon is the smartest play here.

and tell the serving girls in the halls to pick out their clothes:

and let the inspired bard, gripping his clear-ringing lyre,

lead us all into a dance, the playful, springy kind,

so that anyone catching it from outside thinks it's a wedding,

no word about the slaughter of the suitors can get out across town

and travel wide before we've slipped out, the lot of us,

to our own farm out there, thick with trees. And from there

we'll work out whatever winning move the Olympian hands us."

First off they washed up and threw on their fresh tunics,

and the women got dolled up: and the inspired bard took up

his hollow lyre, and stirred up the craving in them

for sweet song and that flawless, springing dance.

of the men dancing and the women in their gorgeous waistbands.

And this is what someone outside the house would say, catching the sound:

"Oh for sure, somebody's finally married the much-courted queen:

the cold one, she couldn't even hold it down for her wedded husband,

That's what somebody would say, but they had no clue how it actually was.

Meanwhile great-hearted Odysseus, in his own house,

got washed by Eurynome the housekeeper and rubbed down with oil,

and she draped a gorgeous cloak round him and a tunic on top:

making him taller to look at and broader, and from his crown

she let his hair come tumbling down in curls, like hyacinth blooms.

And just like when a skilled craftsman pours gold over silver,

a guy that Hephaestus and Pallas Athena themselves

that's how she poured grace all over his head and his shoulders.

And he stepped out of the bath looking like one of the deathless gods:

then he came back and dropped down on the chair he'd risen from,

right across from his wife, and he hit her with the words:

went and put a heart in you harder than any other woman alive:

there's no other woman who'd plant herself this far off,

this stubborn-hearted, from a husband who, after suffering so much,

finally made it back in the twentieth year to his homeland.

on my own at this point: because that one's got a heart of iron in her chest."

Then big-brain Penelope came back at him with this:

"You strange man, it's not that I'm too proud or that I'm brushing you off,

I'm not even shocked, I know full well exactly what you were like

But come on, make up his sturdy bed for him, Eurycleia,

outside the solid bedroom, the one he built himself:

carry the sturdy bedframe out there and throw the bedding on it,

the fleeces and the cloaks and the gleaming, soft blankets."

flared up and snapped at his wife, who knows her own mind:

"Woman, that is genuinely a heart-cutting thing you just said.

Who's gone and moved my bed somewhere else? It'd be a hard job

even for an expert, unless a god himself rolled up

But no man alive, not even some guy in his absolute prime,

could lever that thing loose easy, because there's a massive secret built

right into that crafted bed: and I made it, me, nobody else.

There was an olive tree, the long-leaf kind, grown up inside the courtyard,

I built the bedroom around that tree, finished it off myself,

with close-packed stones, and roofed it over good on top,

and fitted the jointed doors on, snug and tight in the frame.

And then I lopped off the leafy crown of that long-leaf olive,

clean and expert, ran it true against the chalk-line,

shaped it into a bedpost, and bored every hole through with the auger.

Starting from that, I planed the bed down till I'd finished it,

inlaying it with gold and silver and ivory:

So that's the secret I'm laying out for you: and I've got no idea

whether my bed's still rooted where it was, woman, or whether some

man's gone and shifted it, cutting clean through that olive trunk."

So he said, and right there her knees went weak and her dear heart melted,

and bursting into tears she ran straight at him, and threw her arms

around Odysseus's neck, and kissed his head, and got the words out:

"Don't be angry at me, Odysseus, since out of everyone you were always

the one with the most sense: it's the gods who handed us this misery,

getting to enjoy our youth and reach the doorstep of old age.

So please don't be heated at me now, don't hold it against me,

that I didn't fold the second I saw you and welcome you like this.

Because my heart, deep in my chest, was forever

with his words: there's loads of men out there scheming wicked little cons.

Not even Argive Helen, born of Zeus's own line,

would've crawled into bed and love with a foreign man,

if she'd known the warlike sons of the Achaeans were going

But it was a god who pushed her into doing that shameful thing:

she didn't store up that ruin in her own heart beforehand,

that grim blindness, the one the grief first crashed over us from.

But now, since you've laid out the unmistakable signs

just you and me, and one single handmaid, only her,

Actoris, the one my father gave me when I first came here,

the one who guarded the doors of our solid bedroom for us,

you've won my heart over now, hard as it was to crack."

and he cried, holding his loyal wife, the one who knows her own heart.

And just like when land shows up, so welcome, to men swimming for it,

men whose well-built ship Poseidon has smashed apart out at sea,

the ship that the wind and the heavy swell were driving along:

swimming, with the brine crusted thick all over their skin,

and so glad they step onto the land, having dodged the worst of it,

that's how welcome her husband was to her as she gazed at him,

and her white arms just would not come off his neck at all.

if grey-eyed Athena hadn't had another idea in mind.

She held the long night back at the edge of the world, and she held

golden-throned Dawn over the Ocean too, and wouldn't let her yoke

the swift-footed horses that carry the daylight to mortals,

And then big-brain Odysseus said to his wife:

"Woman, we haven't reached the end of all our trials yet,

nah, there's still going to be more grind ahead of us, no measuring it,

loads of it, and rough, and I'm the one who has to see it all through.

that day when I went down inside the house of Hades,

hunting a homecoming for my crew and for me myself.

But come on, woman, let's go to bed, so that finally

we can give ourselves over to sweet sleep, the two of us lying down."

"Your bed's going to be there for you whenever your heart

wants it, since the gods have actually let you make it back

to your well-built home and to your own homeland:

but since you've brought it up, and a god's put it in your head,

later on anyway, and there's no harm in knowing it right now."

Then big-brain Odysseus answered her with this:

"You strange woman, why are you pushing me so hard, urging me

to tell you? Fine, I'll spill it, I won't hold it back.

enjoy it myself, since he told me to set off through loads of mortal cities,

gripping a well-balanced oar in my hands the whole way,

until I reach the people who've got no clue about the sea,

men who don't even eat their food mixed with salt:

or the well-balanced oars that work like wings for the ships.

And he gave me this sign, dead clear, I won't hide it from you:

when another traveller crosses my path and tells me

I've got a winnowing-fan up on my shining shoulder,

and make beautiful offerings to lord Poseidon,

a ram, a bull, and a boar that mounts the sows,

and head back home and offer up sacred hecatombs

to the immortal gods, the ones who hold the wide sky,

right off the sea, the gentlest kind there is, the sort

that'll take me out worn down by a sleek and easy old age, with my people

all prospering around me. He said all this would come true."

Then big-brain Penelope came back at him with this:

then there's hope you'll slip out from under all the bad stuff after all."

So the two of them sat there talking it over with each other:

meanwhile Eurynome and the nurse were getting the bed ready

with soft bedding, under the glow of the burning torches.

the old woman headed back into the house to lie down,

and Eurynome the chamber-maid led the two of them

on their way to bed, a torch in hand the whole time:

and she walked them to the bedroom and headed back. And the two of them, then,

Meanwhile Telemachus and the cowherd and the swineherd

called a halt to their dancing feet, and stopped the women too,

and they bedded down themselves around the shadowy halls.

And once the pair of them had had their fill of the love they craved,

she, the queen among women, all she'd put up with in the halls,

watching that wrecking crew, the suitors, that destructive mob,

the ones who slaughtered so many cattle and fat sheep on her account,

and drew off so much wine from the storage jars:

to other men, and all he'd toughed out himself in his misery,

he told her every bit: and she loved listening, and no sleep

came falling on her eyelids until he'd laid it all out.

He started with how he first took down the Cicones, and then

and all the stuff the Cyclops pulled, and how he got the payback

for his mighty crew, the ones it devoured and showed zero pity:

and how he reached Aeolus, who took him in with open arms

and saw him off, but it just wasn't fated yet for him to make it

and carried him over the fish-filled sea, groaning heavy the whole way:

and how he got to Telepylus in the Laestrygonian land,

who wrecked his ships and his well-greaved crew,

all of them: only Odysseus got away in his black ship.

and how he went down to the dank house of Hades

to consult the ghost of Theban Tiresias

in his many-oared ship, and laid eyes on all his crew,

and his mother, the one who bore him and raised him when he was tiny:

how he reached the Wandering Rocks and dreadful Charybdis

and Scylla, the one no men ever slipped past unharmed:

and how his crew slaughtered the cattle of Helios:

and how Zeus, who thunders on high, struck his swift ship

every last one together, while he alone dodged the grim fates:

and how he reached the island Ogygia and the nymph Calypso,

who kept him there, delulu about being his wife,

in her hollow caves, and looked after him, and kept swearing

but she never once won over the heart in his chest:

and how he reached the Phaeacians after all that suffering,

the ones who honoured him in their hearts like a god

and sent him off in a ship to his own dear homeland,

That was the very last thing he said, just as sweet sleep

came rushing over him, the limb-loosening kind, untying the cares of his heart.

And grey-eyed Athena had another idea in mind:

the moment she reckoned Odysseus, deep in his heart,

straight away she roused golden-throned early-born Dawn

from the Ocean, to bring the light to mortals. And Odysseus got up

out of his soft bed, and gave his wife her instructions:

"Woman, we've both had our fill of trials now, the two of us,

while Zeus and the other gods kept pinning me down with pain,

desperate as I was, far away from my own homeland.

But now, since the two of us have come back to the bed we'd longed for,

look after the property I've got here, all of it, in the halls,

loads of them I'll raid back myself, and the Achaeans

will hand over the rest, till they fill every pen right up.

But for now, I'm heading out to the farm thick with trees

to see my good father, the one who's gutted with grief over me:

right away, the second the sun comes up, the word's going to spread

about the suitors, the ones I killed off inside the halls:

so head up to the upper room with your handmaid women

and sit tight, don't look at anyone, don't go asking questions."

and roused Telemachus and the cowherd and the swineherd,

and told them all to grab their battle-gear in their hands.

And they didn't disobey him, they kitted themselves out in bronze,

swung the doors open, and headed out: Odysseus led the way.

hid them away in night and led them swiftly out of the city.