spilled The viands; bread and roasted meats were flung To lie polluted on the floor. Then rose The suitors in a tumult, when they saw The fallen man; from all their seats they rose Throughout the hall, and to the massive walls Looked eagerly; there hung no buckler 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