’Endure, my heart; yea, a baser thing thou once didst bear, on that day when the Cyclops, unrestrained in fury, devoured the mighty men of my company; but still thou didst endure till thy craft found a way for thee forth from out the cave, where thou thoughtest to die.’

So spake he, chiding his own spirit within him, and his heart verily abode steadfast in obedience to his word.  But Odysseus himself lay tossing this way and that.  And as when a man by a great fire burning takes a paunch full of fat and blood, and turns it this way and that and longs to have it roasted most speedily, so Odysseus tossed from side to side, musing how he might stretch forth his hands upon the shameless wooers, being but one man against so many.  Then down from heaven came Athene and drew nigh him, fashioned in the likeness of a woman.  And she stood over his head and spake to him, saying: 

’Lo now again, wherefore art thou watching, most luckless of all men living?  Is not this thy house and is not thy wife there within and thy child, such a son as men wish to have for their own?’

Then Odysseus of many counsels answered her saying:  ’Yea, goddess, all this thou hast spoken as is meet.  But my heart within me muses in some measure upon this, how I may stretch forth my hands upon the shameless wooers, being but one man, while they abide ever in their companies within.  Moreover this other and harder matter I ponder in my heart:  even if I were to slay them by thy will and the will of Zeus, whither should I flee from the avengers?  Look well to this, I pray thee.’

Then answered the goddess, grey-eyed Athene:  ’O hard of belief! yea, many there be that trust even in a weaker friend than I am, in one that is a mortal and knows not such craft as mine; but I am a god, that preserve thee to the end, in all manner of toils.  And now I will tell thee plainly; even should fifty companies of mortal men compass us about eager to slay us in battle, even their kine shouldst thou drive off and their brave flocks.  But let sleep in turn come over thee; to wake and to watch all night, this too is vexation of spirit; and soon shalt thou rise from out of thy troubles.’

So she spake and poured slumber upon his eyelids, but for her part the fair goddess went back to Olympus.

While sleep laid hold of him loosening the cares of his soul, sleep that loosens the limbs of men, his good wife awoke and wept as she sat on her soft bed.  But when she had taken her fill of weeping, to Artemis first the fair lady made her prayer: 

’Artemis, lady and goddess, daughter of Zeus, would that even now thou wouldst plant thy shaft within my breast and take my life away, even in this hour!  Or else, would that the stormwind might snatch me up, and bear me hence down the dusky ways, and cast me forth where the back-flowing Oceanus mingles with the sea.  It should be even as when the stormwinds bare away the daughters of Pandareus.  Their father