Then Ulysses answered, “Madam, wife of Ulysses, since you persist in asking me about my family, I will answer, no matter what it costs me:  people must expect to be pained when they have been exiles as long as I have, and suffered as much among as many peoples.  Nevertheless, as regards your question I will tell you all you ask.  There is a fair and fruitful island in mid-ocean called Crete; it is thickly peopled and there are ninety cities in it:  the people speak many different languages which overlap one another, for there are Achaeans, brave Eteocretans, Dorians of three-fold race, and noble Pelasgi.  There is a great town there, Cnossus, where Minos reigned who every nine years had a conference with Jove himself. {152} Minos was father to Deucalion, whose son I am, for Deucalion had two sons Idomeneus and myself.  Idomeneus sailed for Troy, and I, who am the younger, am called Aethon; my brother, however, was at once the older and the more valiant of the two; hence it was in Crete that I saw Ulysses and showed him hospitality, for the winds took him there as he was on his way to Troy, carrying him out of his course from cape Malea and leaving him in Amnisus off the cave of Ilithuia, where the harbours are difficult to enter and he could hardly find shelter from the winds that were then raging.  As soon as he got there he went into the town and asked for Idomeneus, claiming to be his old and valued friend, but Idomeneus had already set sail for Troy some ten or twelve days earlier, so I took him to my own house and showed him every kind of hospitality, for I had abundance of everything.  Moreover, I fed the men who were with him with barley meal from the public store, and got subscriptions of wine and oxen for them to sacrifice to their heart’s content.  They stayed with me twelve days, for there was a gale blowing from the North so strong that one could hardly keep one’s feet on land.  I suppose some unfriendly god had raised it for them, but on the thirteenth day the wind dropped, and they got away.”

Many a plausible tale did Ulysses further tell her, and Penelope wept as she listened, for her heart was melted.  As the snow wastes upon the mountain tops when the winds from South East and West have breathed upon it and thawed it till the rivers run bank full with water, even so did her cheeks overflow with tears for the husband who was all the time sitting by her side.  Ulysses felt for her and was sorry for her, but he kept his eyes as hard as horn or iron without letting them so much as quiver, so cunningly did he restrain his tears.  Then, when she had relieved herself by weeping, she turned to him again and said:  “Now, stranger, I shall put you to the test and see whether or no you really did entertain my husband and his men, as you say you did.  Tell me, then, how he was dressed, what kind of a man he was to look at, and so also with his companions.”