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However, as he learned that Peirithous and his friend were come, not as wooers, but as ravishers, he cast them into prison. He put an end to Peirithous at once, by means of his dog, but only guarded Theseus strictly.
Morris, let us give his rendering of part of the Slaying of the Wooers, from his translation of the "Odyssey":
"I have had that wad sober me or ony ane," said the matron, "Aweel, Tibb, a lass like me wasna to lack wooers, for I wasna sae ill-favoured that the tikes wad bark after me." "How should that be," said Tibb, "and you sic a weel-favoured woman to this day?"
Then the twain put up their hands, and Irus struck at the right shoulder, but the other smote him on his neck beneath the ear, and crushed in the bones, and straightway the red blood gushed up through his mouth, and with a moan he fell in the dust, and drave together his teeth as he kicked the ground. But the proud wooers threw up their hands, and died outright for laughter.
The truth was that Odysseus feared recognition if he appeared before his wife in broad daylight; so he affected to complain of the indifference of Telemachus, who had allowed the savage deed of Antinous to go unpunished, and begged permission to wait until the evening, when the wooers would be gone home, and he could tell his story unmolested.
When it was ended the floor ran with blood, and Odysseus, like a lion at bay, stood with the dead bodies of the wooers piled in heaps around him and his face and hands stained with blood. When all lay dead, the old nurse gave a great cry of joy. "Rejoice in thy heart, old nurse," said Odysseus. "It is an unholy thing to rejoice openly over slain men." The nurse hastened to Penelope's room.
She ascended to her upper chamber with the women her handmaids, and then was bewailing Odysseus, her dear lord, till grey-eyed Athene cast sweet sleep upon her eyelids. Now the wooers clamoured throughout the shadowy halls, and each one uttered a prayer to be her bedfellow.
Now he knew that she was not only unwedded by reason of her chastity, but that in the cruelty of her arrogance she had always loathed her wooers, and had inflicted on her lovers the uttermost punishment, so that not one but of all the multitude was to be found who had not paid for his insolence with his life.
Thou knowest how welcome the sight of him would be in the halls to all, and to me in chief, and to his son that we got between us. But this is no true tale, as thou declarest it, nay but it is one of the deathless gods that hath slain the proud wooers, in wrath at their bitter insolence and evil deeds. For they honoured none of earthly men, neither the good nor yet the bad, that came among them.
So he first gathered all the wooers of Gunwar together on the pretence of a banquet, and then lined the customary room of the princess with their heads a gruesome spectacle for all the rest. Yet he forfeited none of his favour with Frode, nor abated his old intimacy with him.
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