Page:The Odyssey of Homer, with the Hymns, Epigrams, and Battle of the Frogs and Mice (Buckley 1853).djvu/298

262 should lie without a shroud.' Thus I spoke; and their haughty mind was persuaded. Then during the day I wove the large web, but at night, when I had set the torches near me, I unravelled it. Thus for three years I escaped them, and persuaded the Grecians: but when the fourth year came, and the hours advanced, [the months waning, and many days were completed,] then they caught me, coming upon me through means of the women servants, careless creatures! and chided me with words. So I finished it, although against my will, by necessity; but now I neither can escape marriage, nor do I discover any other counsel: and my parents very much exhort me to marry: and my son grieves at their consuming his property, knowing [that they are doing so]: for now he is a man by all means able to take care of the house, to whom Jove gives renown. But even so tell me thy race, from whence thou art: for thou art not born of an old-fabled oak, or from a rock."

But her much-planning Ulysses addressed in answer: "O venerable wife of Ulysses, son of Laertes, wilt thou not yet cease inquiring my race? But I will tell thee; thou wilt indeed give me up to more griefs, than [those] by which I am already possessed: for this is the wont, when a man is absent from his country so long a time, as I now am, wandering over many cities of mortals, suffering griefs: but even so I will tell thee that which thou askest and inquirest of me. There is a certain land, Crete, in the middle of the dark sea, beautiful and rich, surrounded with water; and in it there are many men, numberless, and ninety cities. And there is a different language of different men, mixed together; there are in it Achaians, and magnanimous Eteocretans, and Cydonians, and crest-shaking Dorians, and divine Pelasgians. And amongst them is a large city, Cnossus: there Minos reigned, who every nine years conversed with mighty Jove, the father of my sire, magnanimous Deucalion. And Deucalion