Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/251

TREASURE TOMBS AT MYKENÆ Tell her the part, forsooth, and see that the rest shall be hidden.

Natheless, not unto thee will come such murder, Odysseus,

Dealt by a wife; for wise indeed, and true in her purpose,

Noble Penelope is, the child of Icarius. Truly,

She it was whom we left, a fair young bride, when we started

Off for the wars; and then an infant lay at her bosom,

One who now, methinks, in the list of men must be seated,—

Blest indeed! ah, yes, for his well-loved father, returning,

Him shall behold, and the son shall clasp the sire, as is fitting.

Not unto me to feast my eyes with the sight of my offspring

Granted the wife of my bosom, but first of life she bereft me.

Therefore I say, moreover, and charge thee well to remember,

Unto thine own dear land steer thou thy vessel in secret,

Not in the light; since faith can be placed in woman no longer."

Thus ends the Homeric version of Agamemnon's taking off, and, like everything in Homer, it is the more impressive for its directness and pathetic simplicity. Granting that the bard, nearly twenty-eight hundred years ago, was recounting events that occurred two centuries earlier, the dreadful tale would then have been comparatively fresh tradition and entitled to the force of history.

Four hundred years afterward, Æschylos made the [237]