“My friend and guest, wilt thou take no offence At what I say? These revellers enjoy The harp and song, for at no cost of theirs They waste the substance of another man, Whose white bones now are mouldering in the rain Upon some mainland, or are tossed about By ocean billows. Should they see him once In Ithaca, their prayers would rather rise For swifter feet than richer stores of gold And raiment. But an evil fate is his, And he has perished. Even should we hear From any of the dwellers upon earth That he is near at hand, we could not hope. For him is no return. But now, I pray, Tell me, and frankly tell me, who thou art, And of what race of men, and where thy home, And who thy parents; how the mariners Brought thee to Ithaca, and who they claim To be, for well I deem thou couldst not come Hither on foot. All this, I pray, relate Truly, that I may know the whole. Art thou For the first time arrived, or hast thou been My father’s guest? for many a stranger once Resorted to our palace, and he knew The way to win the kind regard of men.”
Pallas, the blue-eyed goddess, answered thus:— “I will tell all and truly. I am named Mentes; my father was the great in war Anchialus. I rule a people skilled To wield the oar, the Taphians, and I come With ship and crew across the dark blue deep To Temesè, and to a race whose speech Is different from my own, in quest of brass, And bringing bright steel with me. I have left Moored at the field behind the town my barque, Within the bay of Reithrus, and beneath The woods of Neius. We claim to be Guests by descent, and from our fathers’ time, As thou wilt learn if thou shouldst meet and ask Laertes, the old hero. It is said He comes no more within the city walls, But in the fields dwells sadly by himself, Where an old handmaid sets upon his board His food and drink when weariness unnerves His limbs in creeping o’er the fertile soil Of his rich vineyard.
I am come because I heard thy father had at last returned, And now am certain that the gods delay His journey hither; for the illustrious man