’Stranger, I will make bold first to ask thee this:  who art thou of the sons of men, and whence?  Where is thy city, and where are they that begat thee?’

And Odysseus of many counsels answered her and said:  ’Lady, no one of mortal men in the wide world could find fault with thee, for lo, thy fame goes up to the wide heaven, as doth the fame of a blameless king, one that fears the gods and reigns among many men and mighty, maintaining right, and the black earth bears wheat and barley, and the trees are laden with fruit, and the sheep bring forth and fail not, and the sea gives store of fish, and all out of his good guidance, and the people prosper under him.  Wherefore do thou ask me now in thy house all else that thou wilt, but inquire not concerning my race and mine own country, lest as I think thereupon thou fill my heart the more with pains, for I am a man of many sorrows.  Moreover it beseems me not to sit weeping and wailing in another’s house, for it is little good to mourn always without ceasing, lest perchance one of the maidens, or even thyself, be angry with me and say that I swim in tears, as one that is heavy with wine.’

Then wise Penelope answered him, and said:  ’Stranger, 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 and fairer thus would be my fame!  But now am I in sorrow, such a host of ills some god has sent against me.  For all the noblest that are princes in the isles, in Dulichium and Same and wooded Zacynthus, and they that dwell around even in clear-seen Ithaca, these are wooing me against my will, and devouring the house.  Wherefore I take no heed of strangers, nor suppliants, nor at all of heralds, the craftsmen of the people.  But I waste my heart away in longing for Odysseus; so they speed on my marriage and I weave a web of wiles.  First some god put it into my heart to set up a great web in the halls, and thereat to weave a robe fine of woof and very wide; and anon I spake among them, saying:  “Ye princely youths, my wooers, now that goodly Odysseus is dead, do ye abide patiently, how eager soever to speed on this marriage of mine, till I finish the robe.  I would not that the threads perish to no avail, even this shroud for the hero Laertes, against the day when the ruinous doom shall bring him low, of death that lays men at their length.  So shall none of the Achaean women in the land count it blame in me, as well might be, were he to lie without a winding sheet, a man that had gotten great possessions.”