 |
After a bath, Athene enhances Odysseus' good looks, and he returns to Penelope:
Then, looking like an immortal, he strode forth from the bath,
and came back then and sat on the chair from which he had risen,
opposite his wife, and now he spoke to her, saying:
"You are so strange. The gods, who have their homes on Olympos,
have made your heart more stubborn than for the rest of womankind.
No other woman, with spirit as stubborn as yours, would keep back
as you are doing from the husband who, after much suffering,
came at last in the twentieth year back to his own country.
Come then, nurse, make me up a bed, so that I can use it
here; for this woman has a heart of iron within her."
Circumspect Penelope said to him in answer:
"You are so strange. I am not being proud, nor indifferent,
nor puzzled beyond need, but I know very well what you looked like
when you went in the ship with the sweeping oars from Ithaka.
Come then, Eurykleia, and make up a firm bed for him
outside the well-fashioned chamber: that very bed that he himself
built. Put the firm bed here outside for him, and cover it
over with fleeces and blankets, and with shining coverlets."
So she spoke to her husband, trying him out, but Odysseus
spoke in anger to his virtuous-minded lady:
"What you have said, dear lady, has hurt my heart deeply. What man
has put my bed in another place?" |
