Page:The Odyssey of Homer, with the Hymns, Epigrams, and Battle of the Frogs and Mice (Buckley 1853).djvu/76

40 this the old man mixed a bowl, and pouring forth a libation prayed much to Minerva, daughter of Ægis-bearing Jupiter.

But when they had made libations, and drank as much as their mind desired, some of them went to sleep, each to their own home; but the Gerenian knight Nestor made Telemachus, the dear son of divine Ulysses, sleep there in wrought beds under the echoing portico: and near him Pisistratus, skilled in the spear, chieftain of men, who of his sons was still unmarried in his palace: but himself again slept in the recess of his lofty house: and for him his wife the queen prepared a couch and bed.

But when the mother of dawn, rosy-fingered morning, appeared, the Gerenian knight Nestor arose from his bed. And coming out he sat down on the polished stones which were before his lofty gates, white, shining with oil, on which Neleus before used to sit, a counsellor equal to the gods. But he, already subdued by fate, had gone to Hades. But Gerenian Nestor, the guardian of the Grecians, then sat there, holding his sceptre; and around him his sons were assembled together, coming from their chambers, Echephron, and Stratius, and Perseus, and Aretus, and godlike Thrasymedes; and after them the sixth, the hero Pisistratus, came; and leading godlike Telemachus they seated him near him. And the Gerenian knight Nestor began an address to them.

"Quickly, my dear children, accomplish my desire: that I may supplicate Minerva first of the gods, who came manifest to me to a solemn feast of the god. But let one go to the plain for a heifer, that a herdsman may come with all haste, and bring a heifer. And let another go to the black ship of magnanimous Telemachus, and bring all his companions, but let him leave two only: and let another command the goldsmith Laerceus to come hither, that he may pour gold about the horns of the heifer. But do the rest of you remain here together, and bid the handmaidens within prepare a glorious feast in the palace, and place seats and wood around, and bring clear water."

Thus he spoke; and they all were busily occupied; a heifer