’Within thine own heart rejoice, old nurse, and be still, and cry not aloud; for it is an unholy thing to boast over slain men.  Now these hath the destiny of the gods overcome, and their own cruel deeds, for they honoured none of earthly men, neither the bad nor yet the good, that came among them.  Wherefore they have met a shameful death through their own infatuate deeds.  But come, tell me the tale of the women in my halls, which of them dishonour me, and which be guiltless.’

Then the good nurse Eurycleia answered him:  ’Yea now, my child, I will tell thee all the truth.  Thou hast fifty women-servants in thy halls, that we have taught the ways of housewifery, how to card wool and to bear bondage.  Of these twelve in all have gone the way of shame, and honour not me, nor their lady Penelope.  And Telemachus hath but newly come to his strength, and his mother suffered him not to take command over the women in this house.  But now, let me go aloft to the shining upper chamber, and tell all to thy wife, on whom some god hath sent a sleep.’

And Odysseus of many counsels answered her saying:  ’Wake her not yet, but bid the women come hither, who in time past behaved themselves unseemly.’

So he spake, and the old wife passed through the hall, to tell the women and to hasten their coming.  Then Odysseus called to him Telemachus, and the neatherd, and the swineherd, and spake to them winged words: 

’Begin ye now to carry out the dead, and bid the women help you, and thereafter cleanse the fair high seats and the tables with water and porous sponges.  And when ye have set all the house in order, lead the maidens without the stablished hall, between the vaulted room and the goodly fence of the court, and there slay them with your long blades, till they shall have all given up the ghost and forgotten the love that of old they had at the bidding of the wooers, in secret dalliance.’

Even so he spake, and the women came all in a crowd together, making a terrible lament and shedding big tears.  So first they carried forth the bodies of the slain, and set them beneath the gallery of the fenced court, and propped them one on another; and Odysseus himself hasted the women and directed them, and they carried forth the dead perforce.  Thereafter they cleansed the fair high seats and the tables with water and porous sponges.  And Telemachus, and the neatherd, and the swineherd, scraped with spades the floor of the well-builded house, and, behold, the maidens carried all forth and laid it without the doors.

Now when they had made an end of setting the hall in order, they led the maidens forth from the stablished hall, and drove them up in a narrow space between the vaulted room and the goodly fence of the court, whence none might avoid; and wise Telemachus began to speak to his fellows, saying:  ’God forbid that I should take these women’s lives by a clean death, these that have poured dishonour on my head and on my mother, and have lain with the wooers.’