Page 346 - the-odyssey

astor said, ‘No one should take offence at what has just
been said, nor gainsay it, for it is quite reasonable. Leave
off, therefore, ill-treating the stranger, or any one else of the
servants who are about the house; I would say, however, a
friendly word to Telemachus and his mother, which I trust
may commend itself to both. ‘As long,’ I would say, ‘as you
had ground for hoping that Ulysses would one day come
home, no one could complain of your waiting and suffer-
ing {160} the suitors to be in your house. It would have been
better that he should have returned, but it is now sufficiently
clear that he will never do so; therefore talk all this quietly
over with your mother, and tell her to marry the best man,
and the one who makes her the most advantageous offer.
Thus you will yourself be able to manage your own inheri-
tance, and to eat and drink in peace, while your mother will
look after some other man’s house, not yours.’’
To this Telemachus answered, ‘By Jove, Agelaus, and
by the sorrows of my unhappy father, who has either per-
ished far from Ithaca, or is wandering in some distant land,
I throw no obstacles in the way of my mother’s marriage; on
the contrary I urge her to choose whomsoever she will, and
I will give her numberless gifts into the bargain, but I dare
not insist point blank that she shall leave the house against
her own wishes. Heaven forbid that I should do this.’
Minerva now made the suitors fall to laughing immod-
erately, and set their wits wandering; but they were laughing
with a forced laughter. Their meat became smeared with
blood; their eyes filled with tears, and their hearts were
heavy with forebodings. Theoclymenus saw this and said,