Then Athene came among them in the likeness of Mentor, and Ulysses knew her and rejoiced.  “Mentor,” he shouted, “help me in my need, for we are comrades from of old.”  And the wooers sent up another shout, “Do not listen to him, Mentor; or your turn will come when he is slain.”  But Athene taunted Ulysses and spurred him to the fight:  “Have you lost your strength and courage, Ulysses?  It was not thus you did battle for Helen in the ten years’ war at Troy.  Is it so hard to face the suitors in your own house and home?  Come, stand by me, and see if Mentor forgets old friendship.”  Yet she left the victory still uncertain, that she might prove his courage to the full.  She turned herself into a swallow and flew up into the roof and perched on a blackened rafter overhead.

Then the wooers took courage, when they saw that Mentor was gone, and that the four stood alone in the doorway.  And one of them said to the rest, “Let six of us hurl our spears together at Ulysses.  If once he falls, there will be little trouble with the rest.”  So they flung their spears as he bade them; but all of them missed the mark.  Then Ulysses gave the word to his men, and they all took steady aim and threw, and each one killed his man; and the wooers fell back into the farther end of the hall, while the four dashed on together and drew out their spears from the bodies of the slain.  Once more the suitors hurled, and Telemachus and the swineherd were wounded; but the other spears fell wide.  Then at last Athene lifted her shield of war high overhead,—­the shield that brings death to men,—­and panic seized the wooers, and they fled through the hall like a drove of cattle when the gadfly stings them.  But the four leapt on them like vultures swooping from the clouds; and they fled left and right through the hall, but there was no escape.

Only Phemius, the minstrel, whom the wooers had forced to sing before them, sprang forward and clasped the knees of Ulysses and said, “Have mercy on me, Ulysses:  you would not slay a minstrel, who gladdens the hearts of Gods and men?  The princes forced me here against my will.”

And Telemachus heard and said to his father, “Do not hurt him, for he is not to blame:  and let us save the herald too, if he is yet alive, for he took care of me when I was a child.”

Now the herald had hidden himself under a stool and pulled an ox-hide over him, and when he heard this he crept out and clasped the knees of Telemachus and begged that he would plead for him.  “Have no fear,” said Ulysses; “my son has saved your life.  Go out, you and the minstrel, and wait in the courtyard, for I have other work to do within.”  So the two went out into the courtyard, and sat down beside the altar, looking for their death each moment.