there, No sturdy lance for them to wield. They called Thus to Ulysses with indignant words:—
“Stranger! in evil hour hast thou presumed To aim at men; and thou shalt henceforth bear Part in no other contest. Even now Is thy destruction close to thee. Thy hand Hath slain the noblest youth in Ithaca. The vultures shall devour thy flesh for this.”
So each one said; they deemed he had not slain The suitor wittingly; nor did they see, Blind that they were, the doom which in that hour Was closing round them all. Then with a frown The wise Ulysses looked on them, and said:—
“Dogs! ye had thought I never would come back From Ilium’s coast, and therefore ye devoured My substance here, and offered violence To my maidservants, and pursued my wife As lovers, while I lived. Ye dreaded not The gods who dwell in the great heaven, nor feared Vengeance hereafter from the hands of men; And now destruction overhangs you all.”
He spake, and all were pale with fear, and each Looked round for some escape from death. Alone Eurymachus found voice, and answered thus:—
“If thou indeed be he, the Ithacan Ulysses, now returned to thine old home, Well hast thou spoken of the many wrongs Done to thee by the Achaians in thy house And in thy fields. But there the man lies slain Who was the cause of all. Antinoüs first Began this course of wrong. Nor were his thoughts So much of marriage as another aim— Which Saturn’s son denied him—to bear rule Himself o’er those who till the pleasant fields Of Ithaca, first having slain thy son In ambush. But he now has met his fate. Spare, then, thy people. We will afterward Make due amends in public for the waste Here in thy palace of the food and wine. For each of us shall bring thee twenty beeves, And brass and gold, until thy heart shall be Content. Till then we cannot blame thy wrath.”