by the fraud deceived The Grecian youths; but when the hours had brought The fourth year round, a woman who knew all Revealed the mystery, and we ourselves Saw her unravelling the ample web. Thenceforth, constrained, and with unwilling hands, She finished it. Now let the suitors make Their answer to thy words, that thou mayst know Our purpose fully, and the Achaians all May know it likewise. Send thy mother hence, Requiring that she wed the suitor whom Her father chooses and herself prefers. But if she still go on to treat the sons Of Greece with such despite, too confident In gifts which Pallas has bestowed on her So richly, noble arts, and faculties Of mind, and crafty shifts, beyond all those Of whom we ever heard that lived of yore, The bright-haired ladies of the Achaian race, Tyro, Alcmena, and Mycenè, famed For glossy tresses, none of them endowed As is Penelope, though this last shift Be ill devised—so long will we consume Thy substance and estate as she shall hold Her present mood, the purpose which the gods Have planted in her breast. She to herself Gains great renown, but surely brings on thee Loss of much goods. And now we go not hence To our affairs nor elsewhere, till she wed Whichever of the Greeks may please her most.”
And then rejoined discreet Telemachus:— “Antinoüs, grievous wrong it were to send Unwilling from this palace her who bore And nursed me. Whether he be living yet Or dead, my father is in distant lands; And should I, of my own accord and will, Dismiss my mother, I must make perforce Icarius large amends, and that were hard. And he would do me mischief, and the gods Would send yet other evils on my head. For then my mother, going forth, would call On the grim Furies, and the general curse Of all men would be on me. Think not I Will ever speak that word. But if ye bear A sense of injury for what is past, Go from these halls; provide for other feasts, Consuming what is yours, and visiting Each other’s homes in turn. But if it seem To you the wiser and the better way To plunder one man’s goods, go on to waste My substance. I shall call the eternal gods To aid me, and, if Jupiter allow Fit retribution for your crimes, ye die Within this very palace unavenged.”