a haughty suitor with his blood And brains shall stain thy spacious palace floor. Now will I change thine aspect, so that none Shall know thee. I will wither thy fair skin, And it shall hang on crooked limbs; thy locks Of auburn I will cause to fall away, And round thee fling a cloak which all shall see With loathing. I will make thy lustrous eyes Dull to the sight, and thus shalt thou appear A squalid wretch to all the suitor train, And to thy wife, and to the son whom thou Didst leave within thy palace. Then at first Repair thou to the herdsman, him who keeps Thy swine; for he is loyal, and he loves Thy son and the discreet Penelope. There wilt thou find him as he tends his swine, That find their pasturage beside the rock Of Corax, and by Arethusa’s fount. On nourishing acorns they are fed, and drink The dark clear water, whence the flesh of swine Is fattened. There remain, and carefully Inquire of all that thou wouldst know, while I, Taking my way to Sparta, the abode Of lovely women, call Telemachus, Thy son, Ulysses, who hath visited King Menelaus in his broad domain, To learn if haply thou art living yet.”
Ulysses, the sagacious, answered her: “Why didst not thou, to whom all things are known, Tell him concerning me? Must he too roam And suffer on the barren deep, and leave To others his estates, to be their spoil?”
And then the blue-eyed goddess spake again: “Let not that thought distress thee. It was I Who sent him thither, that he might deserve The praise of men. No evil meets him there; But in the halls of Atreus’ son he sits, Safe mid the abounding luxuries. ’Tis true That even now the suitors lie in wait, In their black ship, to slay him ere he reach His native land; but that will hardly be Before the earth shall cover many a one Of the proud suitors who consume thy wealth.”
So Pallas spake, and touched him with her wand, And caused the blooming skin to shrivel up On his slow limbs, and the fair hair to fall, And with an old man’s wrinkles covered all His frame, and dimmed his