Then wise Telemachus answered her:  ’Mother mine, as to this matter I count it no blame that thou art angered.  Yet have I knowledge and understanding of each thing, of the good and of the evil; but heretofore I was a child.  Howbeit I cannot devise all things according to wisdom, for these men in their evil counsel drive me from my wits, on this side and on that, and there is none to aid me.  Howsoever this battle between Irus and the stranger did not fall out as the wooers would have had it, but the stranger proved the better man.  Would to Father Zeus and Athene and Apollo, that the wooers in our halls were even now thus vanquished, and wagging their heads, some in the court, and some within the house, and that the limbs of each man were loosened in such fashion as Irus yonder sits now, by the courtyard gates wagging his head, like a drunken man, and cannot stand upright on his feet, nor yet get him home to his own place, seeing that his limbs are loosened!’

Thus they spake one to another.  But Eurymachus spake to Penelope, saying: 

’Daughter of Icarius, wise Penelope, if all the Achaeans in Iasian Argos could behold thee, even a greater press of wooers would feast in your halls from to-morrow’s dawn, since thou dost surpass all women in beauty and stature, and within in wisdom of mind.’

Then wise Penelope answered him:  ’Eurymachus, surely my excellence, both of face and form, the gods destroyed in the day when the Argives embarked for Ilios, and with them went my lord Odysseus.  If but he might come and watch over this my life, greater thus would be my fame and fairer!  But now am I in sorrow; such a host of ills some god has sent against me.  Ah, well do I remember, when he set forth and left his own country, how he took me by the right hand at the wrist and spake, saying: 

’"Lady, methinks that all the goodly-greaved Achaeans will not win a safe return from Troy; for the Trojans too, they say, are good men at arms, as spearsmen, and bowmen, and drivers of fleet horses, such as ever most swiftly determine the great strife of equal battle.  Wherefore I know not if the gods will suffer me to return, or whether I shall be cut off there in Troy; so do thou have a care for all these things.  Be mindful of my father and my mother in the halls, even as now thou art, or yet more than now, while I am far away.  But when thou seest thy son a bearded man, marry whom thou wilt and leave thine own house.”

’Even so did he speak, and now all these things have an end.  The night shall come when a hateful marriage shall find me out, me most luckless, whose good hap Zeus has taken away.  But furthermore this sore trouble has come on my heart and soul; for this was not the manner of wooers in time past.  Whoso wish to woo a good lady and the daughter of a rich man, and vie one with another, themselves bring with them oxen of their own and goodly flocks, a banquet for the friends of the bride, and they give the lady splendid gifts, but do not devour another’s livelihood without atonement.’