buried rather than married in this house.  So let me have no more unseemly behaviour from any of you, for I am grown up now to the knowledge of good and evil and understand what is going on, instead of being the child that I have been heretofore.  I have long seen you killing my sheep and making free with my corn and wine:  I have put up with this, for one man is no match for many, but do me no further violence.  Still, if you wish to kill me, kill me; I would far rather die than see such disgraceful scenes day after day—­guests insulted, and men dragging the women servants about the house in an unseemly way.”

They all held their peace till at last Agelaus son of Damastor 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 suffering {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 inheritance, 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 perished 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 immoderately, 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, “Unhappy men, what is it that ails you?  There is a shroud of darkness drawn over you from head to foot, your cheeks are wet with tears; the air is alive with wailing voices; the walls and roof-beams drip blood; the gate of the cloisters and the court beyond them are full of ghosts trooping down into the night of hell; the sun is blotted out of heaven, and a blighting gloom is over all the land.”

Thus did he speak, and they all of them laughed heartily.  Eurymachus then said, “This stranger who has lately come here has lost his senses.  Servants, turn him out into the streets, since he finds it so dark here.”