Penelope then spoke to him.  “Antinous,” said she, “it is not right that you should ill-treat any guest of Telemachus who comes to this house.  If the stranger should prove strong enough to string the mighty bow of Ulysses, can you suppose that he would take me home with him and make me his wife?  Even the man himself can have no such idea in his mind:  none of you need let that disturb his feasting; it would be out of all reason.”

“Queen Penelope,” answered Eurymachus, “we do not suppose that this man will take you away with him; it is impossible; but we are afraid lest some of the baser sort, men or women among the Achaeans, should go gossiping about and say, ’These suitors are a feeble folk; they are paying court to the wife of a brave man whose bow not one of them was able to string, and yet a beggarly tramp who came to the house strung it at once and sent an arrow through the iron.’  This is what will be said, and it will be a scandal against us.”

“Eurymachus,” Penelope answered, “people who persist in eating up the estate of a great chieftain and dishonouring his house must not expect others to think well of them.  Why then should you mind if men talk as you think they will?  This stranger is strong and well-built, he says moreover that he is of noble birth.  Give him the bow, and let us see whether he can string it or no.  I say—­and it shall surely be—­that if Apollo vouchsafes him the glory of stringing it, I will give him a cloak and shirt of good wear, with a javelin to keep off dogs and robbers, and a sharp sword.  I will also give him sandals, and will see him sent safely wherever he wants to go.”

Then Telemachus said, “Mother, I am the only man either in Ithaca or in the islands that are over against Elis who has the right to let any one have the bow or to refuse it.  No one shall force me one way or the other, not even though I choose to make the stranger a present of the bow outright, and let him take it away with him.  Go, then, within the house and busy yourself with your daily duties, your loom, your distaff, and the ordering of your servants.  This bow is a man’s matter, and mine above all others, for it is I who am master here.”

She went wondering back into the house, and laid her son’s saying in her heart.  Then going upstairs with her handmaids into her room, she mourned her dear husband till Minerva sent sweet sleep over her eyelids.

The swineherd now took up the bow and was for taking it to Ulysses, but the suitors clamoured at him from all parts of the cloisters, and one of them said, “You idiot, where are you taking the bow to?  Are you out of your wits?  If Apollo and the other gods will grant our prayer, your own boarhounds shall get you into some quiet little place, and worry you to death.”

Eumaeus was frightened at the outcry they all raised, so he put the bow down then and there, but Telemachus shouted out at him from the other side of the cloisters, and threatened him saying, “Father Eumaeus, bring the bow on in spite of them, or young as I am I will pelt you with stones back to the country, for I am the better man of the two.  I wish I was as much stronger than all the other suitors in the house as I am than you, I would soon send some of them off sick and sorry, for they mean mischief.”