Noemon then went back to his
father's house, but Antinoos and Eurymakhos were very angry.
They told the others to leave off competing [athlos],
and to come and sit down along with themselves. When they came,
Antinoos son of Eupeithes spoke in anger. His heart was black with
rage, and his eyes flashed fire as he said:
"Good heavens, this voyage of
Telemakhos is a very serious matter; we had made sure that it would
come to nothing, but the young man has got away in spite of us, and
with a crew picked [krînô] from the best
of the dêmos, too. He will be giving us trouble
presently; may Zeus destroy him with violence
[biê] before he is full grown. Find me a ship,
therefore, with a crew of twenty men, and I will lie in wait for him
in the straits between Ithaca and Samos; he will then rue the day
that he set out to try and get news of his father."
Thus did he speak, and the others
applauded his saying; they then all of them went inside the
buildings.
It was not long ere Penelope came
to know what the suitors were plotting; for a man servant, Medon,
overheard them from outside the outer court as they were laying their
schemes within, and went to tell his mistress. As he crossed the
threshold of her room Penelope said: "Medon, what have the suitors
sent you here for? Is it to tell the maids to leave their
master's business and cook dinner for them? I wish they may
neither woo nor dine henceforward, neither here nor anywhere else,
but let this be the very last time, for the waste you all make of my
son's estate. Did not your fathers tell you when you were
children how good Odysseus had been to them - never doing anything
high-handed, nor speaking harshly to anybody in the
dêmos? Such is the justice [dikê]
of divine kings: they may take a fancy to one man and dislike
another, but Odysseus never did an unjust thing by anybody - which
shows what bad hearts you have, and that there is no such thing as
gratitude [kharis] left in this world."
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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