 |
Antinoos alone spoke to him in answer:
"High-spoken intemperate Telemachos, what accusations
you have made to our shame, trying to turn opinion against us!
And yet you have no cause to blame the Achaian suitors,
but it is your own dear mother, and she is greatly resourceful.
And now it is the third year, and will be the fourth year presently,
since she has been denying the desires of the Achaians.
For she holds out hope to all, and makes promises to each man,
sending us messages, but her mind has other intentions.
And here is another strategem of her heart's devising.
She set up a great loom in her palace, and set to weaving
a web of threads long and fine. Then she said to us:
'Young men, my suitors, now that great Odysseus has perished,
wait, though you are eager to marry me, until I finish
this web, so that my weaving will not be useless and wasted.
This is a shroud for the hero Laertes, for when the destructive
doom of death which lays men low shall take him, lest any
Achaian woman in this neighbourhood hold it against me
that a man of many conquests lies with no sheet to wind him.'
So she spoke, and the proud heart in us was persuaded.
Thereafter in the daytime she would weave at her great loom,
but in the night she would have torches set by, and undo it.
So for three years she was secret in her design, convincing
the Achaians, but when the fourth year came with the seasons returning,
one of her women, who knew the whole of the story, told us,
and we found her in the act of undoing her glorious weaving.
So, against her will and by force, she had to finish it." |
