The Son (Books 1–3)

Sing to me, Muse, of that man of many turns, who wandered far and wide after he had sacked the holy citadel of Troy. He saw the towns of many peoples and came to know their ways of thinking, and on the sea he endured many griefs in his heart, fighting for his own life and for the homecoming of his comrades. But he could not save them, though he wished it; they were lost by their own recklessness, the fools, for they ate the cattle of the Sun, and the Sun took from them the day of their return. Of these things, goddess, daughter of Zeus, beginning where you will, tell us too.

Now all the others, as many as had escaped sheer destruction, were at home, safe from the war and the sea. But him alone, longing for his return and for his wife, the queenly nymph Calypso, bright among goddesses, held back in her hollow caves, yearning for him to be her husband. And when the year came round in which the gods had spun the thread for him to return home to Ithaca, not even then was he free of trials, even among his own people. All the gods pitied him, except Poseidon, who raged unceasingly against godlike Odysseus until he reached his own land.

But Poseidon had gone to visit the far-off Ethiopians, the farthest of men, to receive a hecatomb of bulls and rams; and the other gods were gathered in the halls of Olympian Zeus. Zeus spoke first among them, for he was thinking of Aegisthus, whom Orestes had killed: "See how mortals blame the gods! They say their evils come from us, when they themselves, by their own folly, suffer beyond their share."

Then grey-eyed Athena answered him: "Father, my heart is torn for wise Odysseus, the ill-fated, who suffers far from his friends on a sea-girt island, the navel of the sea, where a goddess holds him and charms him with soft words to forget Ithaca. But he, longing to see even the smoke leaping up from his own land, wishes to die." And Zeus, the cloud-gatherer, agreed that Odysseus should return. Hermes would go to Calypso; and Athena herself would go to Ithaca, to rouse his son.

She bound beneath her feet her lovely sandals, immortal and golden, which carried her over the sea and the boundless earth with the breath of the wind, and darted down from the peaks of Olympus. She stood in Ithaca, at the gate of the palace of Odysseus, in the likeness of a stranger, Mentes, lord of the Taphians, a bronze spear in her hand.

There she found the proud suitors. They were amusing themselves with draughts before the doors, sitting on the hides of oxen they themselves had slaughtered, while heralds and squires mixed wine and water in bowls and wiped the tables with porous sponges and carved meat in great portions. Prince Telemachus saw the goddess first, for he was sitting among the suitors, sad at heart, picturing his noble father in his mind, how he might come from somewhere and scatter the suitors through the house, and win back his honor and rule over his own. He went straight to the gate, ashamed that a stranger should stand long at the door, and took the stranger's hand, and welcomed him.

When they had eaten, the goddess asked him who these feasters were. And Telemachus told her: they were the princes of Ithaca and the islands around, more than a hundred of them, who wooed his mother Penelope and devoured his house, slaughtering his sheep and his cattle, while his mother neither refused the hateful marriage nor could bring herself to end it. Athena, in Mentes' shape, told him that his father was not dead, but held captive somewhere on a sea-girt island by harsh and savage men; and she advised him: call the Achaeans to assembly; order the suitors to scatter to their homes; then fit out a ship with twenty oarsmen and go to ask for news of your father, to Pylos, to godlike Nestor, and to Sparta, to fair-haired Menelaus. "It is time to put away childish things; you are a child no longer." So spoke the goddess, and she was gone, flying away like a bird; and he knew in his heart that it was a god.

In the hall the famous singer Phemius was singing to the suitors, who sat listening in silence; he sang of the bitter homecoming of the Achaeans from Troy. And from her upper chamber wise Penelope heard his inspired song, and came down the high stairs, with two of her maids, and stood by a pillar of the hall, holding her shining veil before her cheeks, and wept, and said: "Phemius, you know many other songs to charm mortals; sing one of those, and stop this sad song, which always wears away my heart, for unforgettable grief has come upon me above all women, longing for my husband."

But wise Telemachus answered her: "Mother, why do you grudge the faithful singer the right to give pleasure as his heart moves him? It is not singers who are to blame, but Zeus. Men always praise most the newest song. Go to your room and see to your own work, the loom and the distaff; speech shall be for men, and for me most of all; for mine is the power in this house." And she was amazed, and went back to her room, laying her son's wise words to heart. And the suitors bit their lips, marveling at Telemachus, that he spoke so boldly.

At dawn, when rosy-fingered Dawn appeared, the son of Odysseus called the assembly, and spoke, and at last flung his staff to the ground, bursting into tears; and pity seized all the people. But Antinous answered him, the boldest of the suitors. "It is not the suitors who are to blame, but your own mother, who is cunning beyond all women. For three years now, and a fourth is coming on, she has been cheating us. She set up a great loom in her halls and began to weave a robe, and said to us: 'Young men, my suitors, since godlike Odysseus is dead, wait, eager as you are for my marriage, until I finish this robe, a shroud for the hero Laertes, against the time when deadly fate shall lay him low, so that none of the women of the land shall blame me if he lies without a shroud, who had won great possessions.' So she spoke, and our proud hearts consented. And by day she would weave at the great loom, but by night she would unravel it, with torches set beside her. So for three years she deceived us; but when the fourth year came, one of her women, who knew it well, told us, and we caught her unraveling the splendid web."

Zeus sent two eagles flying from the mountain peak. They swooped over the middle of the assembly, wheeling and beating their wings, and tore each other's cheeks and necks with their talons, and darted away to the right. And old Halitherses, who knew the meaning of birds better than any man of his time, declared that Odysseus was near, sowing death and doom for the suitors. But they laughed at him.

So Telemachus went secretly to the shore, and Athena, now in the likeness of Mentor, his father's old friend, found him a swift ship and a crew. Only the old nurse Eurycleia knew of his going, and he made her swear to tell his mother nothing. And grey-eyed Athena sent them a favorable wind, a fresh West Wind singing over the wine-dark sea, and all night long and through the dawn the ship cleaved her way.

At sunrise they came to sandy Pylos, the well-built city of Neleus. On the shore the people were offering black bulls to the dark-haired Earth-shaker, Poseidon. Old Nestor, the horseman of Gerenia, received them graciously; but he knew nothing of Odysseus. He told them instead of the bitter homecomings of the Achaeans, and of Agamemnon, murdered at his own hearth by Aegisthus and his false wife, and of how Orestes avenged him. "So you too, my friend, for I see you are tall and handsome, be brave, so that men yet unborn may speak well of you." When the feast was over, Athena departed in the likeness of a sea eagle, and amazement seized all who saw it; and the old man took Telemachus by the hand and said: "My friend, I do not think you will be a coward or a weakling, if the gods go with you, so young." And he gave him a chariot and his own son Peisistratus for a companion, to go on to Sparta.

(End of Episode 1 — continued in Episode 2: Sparta and Ogygia)