’Lo you now, how vainly mortal men do blame the gods!  For of us they say comes evil, whereas they even of themselves, through the blindness of their own hearts, have sorrows beyond that which is ordained.  Even as of late Aegisthus, beyond that which was ordained, took to him the wedded wife of the son of Atreus, and killed her lord on his return, and that with sheer doom before his eyes, since we had warned him by the embassy of Hermes the keen-sighted, the slayer of Argos, that he should neither kill the man, nor woo his wife.  For the son of Atreus shall be avenged at the hand of Orestes, so soon as he shall come to man’s estate and long for his own country.  So spake Hermes, yet he prevailed not on the heart of Aegisthus, for all his good will; but now hath he paid one price for all.’

And the goddess, grey-eyed Athene, answered him, saying:  ’O father, our father Cronides, throned in the highest; that man assuredly lies in a death that is his due; so perish likewise all who work such deeds!  But my heart is rent for wise Odysseus, that hapless one, who far from his friends this long while suffereth affliction in a seagirt isle, where is the navel of the sea, a woodland isle, and therein a goddess hath her habitation, the daughter of the wizard Atlas, who knows the depths of every sea, and himself upholds the tall pillars which keep earth and sky asunder.  His daughter it is that holds the hapless man in sorrow:  and ever with soft and guileful tales she is wooing him to forgetfulness of Ithaca.  But Odysseus yearning to see if it were but the smoke leap upwards from his own land, hath a desire to die.  As for thee, thine heart regardeth it not at all, Olympian!  What! did not Odysseus by the ships of the Argives make thee free offering of sacrifice in the wide Trojan land?  Wherefore wast thou then so wroth with him, O Zeus?’

And Zeus the cloud-gatherer answered her, and said, ’My child, what word hath escaped the door of thy lips?  Yea, how should I forget divine Odysseus, who in understanding is beyond mortals and beyond all men hath done sacrifice to the deathless gods, who keep the wide heaven?  Nay, but it is Poseidon, the girdler of the earth, that hath been wroth continually with quenchless anger for the Cyclops’ sake whom he blinded of his eye, even godlike Polyphemus whose power is mightiest amongst all the Cyclopes.  His mother was the nymph Thoosa, daughter of Phorcys, lord of the unharvested sea, and in the hollow caves she lay with Poseidon.  From that day forth Poseidon the earth-shaker doth not indeed slay Odysseus, but driveth him wandering from his own country.  But come, let us here one and all take good counsel as touching his returning, that he may be got home; so shall Poseidon let go his displeasure, for he will in no wise be able to strive alone against all, in despite of all the deathless gods.’