"I will tell Penelope," answered
Odysseus, "nothing but what is strictly true. I know all about her
husband, and have been partner with him in affliction, but I am
afraid of passing through this crowd of cruel suitors, for their
overweening pride [hubris] and violent insolence
[biê] reach heaven. Just now, moreover, as I was
going about the house without doing any harm, a man gave me a blow
that hurt me very much, but neither Telemakhos nor any one else
defended me. Tell Penelope, therefore, to be patient and wait till
sundown. Let her give me a seat close up to the fire, for my clothes
are worn very thin - you know they are, for you have seen them ever
since I first asked you to help me - she can then ask me about the
return of her husband."
The swineherd went back when he
heard this, and Penelope said as she saw him cross the threshold,
"Why do you not bring him here, Eumaios? Is he afraid that some one
will ill-treat him, or is he shy of coming inside the house at all?
Beggars should not be shamefaced."
To this you answered, O swineherd
Eumaios, "The stranger is quite reasonable. He is avoiding the
outrageous [hubris] suitors, and is only doing what
any one else would do. He asks you to wait till sundown, and it will
be much better, my lady, that you should have him all to yourself,
when you can hear him and talk to him as you will."
"The man is no fool," answered
Penelope, "it would very likely be as he says, for there are no such
abominable people in the whole world as these men are."
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.