Then the steadfast goodly Odysseus answered him:  ’My friend, since it is indeed my right to answer thee withal, of a truth my heart is rent as I hear your words, such infatuate deeds ye say the wooers devise in the halls, in despite of thee, a man so noble.  Say, dost thou willingly submit thee to oppression, or do the people through the township hate thee, obedient to the voice of a god?  Or hast thou cause to blame thy brethren, in whose battle a man puts trust, even if a great feud arise?  Ah, would that I had the youth, as now I have the spirit, and were either the son of noble Odysseus or Odysseus’ very self, {*} straightway then might a stranger sever my head from off my neck, if I went not to the halls of Odysseus, son of Laertes, and made myself the bane of every man among them!  But if they should overcome me by numbers, being but one man against so many, far rather would I die slain in mine own halls, than witness for ever these unseemly deeds, strangers shamefully entreated, and men haling the handmaidens in foul wise through the fair house, and wine drawn wastefully and the wooers devouring food all recklessly without avail, at a work that knows no ending.’

{* We omit line 101, which spoils the sense of the passage, and was rejected by antiquity.}

Then wise Telemachus answered him, saying:  ’Yea now, stranger I will plainly tell thee all.  There is no grudge and hatred borne my by the whole people, neither have I cause to blame my brethren, in whose battle a man puts trust, even if a great feud arise.  For thus, as thou seest, Cronion has made us a house of but one heir.  Arceisius got him one only son Laertes, and one only son Odysseus was begotten of his father, and Odysseus left me the only child of his getting in these halls, and had no joy of me; wherefore now are foemen innumerable in the house.  For all the noblest that are princes in the islands, in Dulichium and Same and wooded Zacynthus, and as many as lord it in rocky Ithaca, all these woo my mother and waste my house.  But as for her she neither refuseth the hated bridal, nor hath the heart to make and end; so they devour and minish my house; and ere long will they make havoc likewise of myself.  Howbeit these things surely lie on the knees of the gods.  Nay, father, but do thou go with haste and tell the constant Penelope that she hath got me safe and that I am come up out of Pylos.  As for me, I will tarry here, and do thou return hither when thou hast told the tidings to her alone; but of the other Achaeans let no man learn it, for there be many that devise mischief against me.’

Then didst thou make answer, swineherd Eumaeus:  ’I mark, I heed, all this thou speakest to one with understanding.  But come, declare me this and tell it plainly; whether or no I shall go the same road with tidings to Laertes, that hapless man, who till lately, despite his great sorrow for Odysseus’ sake, yet had oversight of the tillage, and did eat and drink with the thralls in his house, as often as his heart within him bade him.  But now, from the day that thou wentest in thy ship to Pylos, never to this hour, they say, hath he so much as eaten and drunken, nor looked to the labours of the field, but with groaning and lamentation he sits sorrowing, and the flesh wastes away about his bones.’