Page:The Odyssey of Homer, with the Hymns, Epigrams, and Battle of the Frogs and Mice (Buckley 1853).djvu/288

252 came: but sweet sleep left her, and she wiped her cheeks with her hands, and spoke:

"Truly a very soft slumber has covered me who suffer grievous things; would that chaste Diana would now immediately give me as soft a death, that no longer lamenting in my mind, I might waste away my life, regretting the various excellence of a dear husband: since he was conspicuous among the Grecians."

Thus having spoken, she descended from the splendid upper-rooms, not alone: [for] two handmaidens followed with her. But when the divine one of women reached the suitors, she stood near the pillar of the strong-made roof, holding up a slender veil before her cheeks: and a prudent handmaiden stood on each side of her. And their knees were loosed, and their minds were soothed with love: and all desired to lie near her on her couch.

But she then addressed her dear son Telemachus: "O Telemachus, no longer is thy mind firm, nor thy counsel: when thou wert still a child, thou didst even more meditate what was profitable in thy mind: but now, when thou art large, and hast reached the measure of youth, and a foreign man would say, that thou art the offspring of a happy man, looking at thy size and beauty; thy mind and thy counsel are no longer proper. What a deed is this which has now been done in the palace, thou who hast suffered a stranger to be treated thus in an unseemly way? How now? if any stranger sitting in our house, thus suffer from terrible violence, it would be a shame and disgrace to thee amongst men."

But her prudent Telemachus addressed in answer: "My mother, I am not indignant that thou shouldst be angry; but I consider and know every thing in my mind, both what is good and what is worse: (but before I was still a babe:) but I cannot perceive all things that are prudent; for these astound me, meditating evils, sitting one with another; and I have no assistants. The conflict however between the stranger and Irus was not made by the will of the suitors; but he was superior in strength. Would that, O father Jove, and Minerva, and Apollo, the suitors may now thus nod their heads,