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It was the figure of a tall, fair and splendid woman. Odysseus knew her for the goddess Pallas Athene. 'Hold your hands from fierce fighting, ye men of Ithaka, the goddess called out in a terrible voice. 'Hold your hands, Straightway the arms fell from each man's hands.
Then for the last time Telemachus rose up and spoke to the council. 'I have spoken in the council, and the men of Ithaka know, and the gods know, the rights and wrongs of my case. All I ask of you now is that you give me a swift ship with twenty youths to be my crew so that I may go to Pylos and to Sparta to seek tidings of my father.
Never did we two speak diversely in the assembly nor in the council. 'You say to me that you are the son of Odysseus! Surely you are. Amazement comes over me as I look on you and listen to you, for you look as he looked and you speak as he spoke. But I would have you speak further to me and tell me of your homeland and of how things fare in Ithaka.
He summoned a council of the chief men of Ithaka and commended to their care his wife and his child and all his household, and thereafter he took his sailors and his fighting men with him and he sailed away. The years went by and Odysseus did not return. After ten years the City was taken by the Kings and Princes of Greece and the thread of war was wound up. But still Odysseus did not return.
Then the goddess called them together, and she made them enter into a covenant that all bloodshed and wrong would be forgotten, and that Odysseus would be left to rule Ithaka as a King, in peace.
The lords of all the islands around Dulichium and Same and Zacynthus; and the lords of the land of Ithaka, have come here and are wooing me against my will. They devour the substance of this house and my son is being impoverished. 'Long ago a god put into my mind a device to keep marriage with any of them away from me.
Telemachus told him about this also. When seven years had gone by from the fall of Troy and still Odysseus did not return there were those who thought he was dead and would never be seen more in the land of Ithaka. Then many of the young lords of the land wanted Penelope, Telemachus' mother, to marry one of them. They came to the house to woo her for marriage.
Odysseus arose, and questioned her as to the land he had come to. The goddess answered him and said, 'This is Ithaka, a land good for goats and cattle, a land of woods and wells, Even as she spoke she changed from the semblance of a young man and was seen by Odysseus as a woman tall and fair.
But, if a stranger may say it, thine own self is not cared for well. 'Who art thou that dost speak to me like this? old Laertes said, lifting his head. 'I am a stranger in Ithaka, said Odysseus. 'I seek a man whom I once kindly treated a man whose name was Odysseus.
But still the wooers continued to feast, and still Odysseus sat in the guise of a beggar on the threshold of his own house. There was in Ithaka a common beggar; he was a most greedy fellow, and he was nicknamed Irus because he used to run errands for the servants of Odysseus' house.
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