With these words he picked up the
sword that Agelaos had dropped when he was being killed, and which
was lying upon the ground. Then he struck Leiodes on the back of his
neck, so that his head fell rolling in the dust while he was yet
speaking.
The minstrel Phemios son of
Terpes - he who had been forced by the suitors to sing to them - now
tried to save his life. He was standing near towards the trap door,
and held his lyre in his hand. He did not know whether to flee out of
the room and sit down by the altar of Zeus that was in the outer
court, and on which both Laertes and Odysseus had offered up the
thigh bones of many an ox, or whether to go straight up to Odysseus
and embrace his knees, but in the end he deemed it best to embrace
Odysseus’ knees. So he laid his lyre on the ground the ground
between the mixing-bowl and the silver-studded seat; then going up to
Odysseus he caught hold of his knees and said, "Odysseus, I beseech
you have mercy on me and spare me. You will be sorry
[akhos] for it afterwards if you kill a bard who can
sing both for gods and men as I can. I make all my lays myself, and
heaven visits me with every kind of inspiration. I would sing to you
as though you were a god, do not therefore be in such a hurry to cut
my head off. Your own son Telemakhos will tell you that I did not
want to frequent your house and sing to the suitors after their
meals, but they were too many and too strong for me, so they made
me."
Telemakhos heard him, and at once
went up to his father. "Hold!" he cried, "the man is guiltless, do
him no hurt; and we will spare Medon too, who was always good to me
when I was a boy, unless Philoitios or Eumaios has already killed
him, or he has fallen in your way when you were raging about the
court."
Medon caught these words of
Telemakhos, for he was crouching under a seat beneath which he had
hidden by covering himself up with a freshly flayed heifer's
hide, so he threw off the hide, went up to Telemakhos, and laid hold
of his knees.
Homer. The Odyssey. Rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original. Samuel Butler. Based on public domain edition, revised by Timothy Power and Gregory Nagy. A. C. Fifield, London. 1900 (?).
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