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Updated: May 15, 2025
Then he set food before them, and when they had eaten, Telemachus asked who the stranger was, and how he had come to Ithaca. And Eumæus told him Ulysses's own story and begged him to protect the wanderer. But Telemachus thought of the suitors and did not wish to take him to the palace.
Ulysses was joyed enough to find himself in his own country; but so prudently he carried his joy, that dissembling his true name and quality, he pretended to the shepherd that he was only some foreigner who by stress of weather had put into that port; and framed on the sudden a story to make it plausible, how he had come from Crete in a ship of Phæacia; when the young shepherd laughing, and taking Ulysses's hand in both his, said to him: "He must be cunning, I find, who thinks to over-reach you.
From hence Aeneas coasted along the shore of Sicily and passed the country of the Cyclopes. Here they were hailed from the shore by a miserable object, whom by his garments, tattered as they were, they perceived to be a Greek. He told them he was one of Ulysses's companions, left behind by that chief in his hurried departure.
They bit their lips and frowned for anger to be checked so by a youth; nevertheless for that time they had the grace to abstain, either for shame, or that Minerva had infused into them a terror of Ulysses's son. So that day's feast was concluded without bloodshed, and the suitors, tired with their sports, departed severally each man to his apartment. Only Ulysses and Telemachus remained.
He related the story of Ulysses's adventure with Polyphemus, and besought them to take him off with them as he had no means of sustaining his existence where he was but wild berries and roots, and lived in constant fear of the Cyclopes.
It was downright cutting of throats and scuttling of ships that our youngster sang of, and the grim faces looked and listened approvingly, as you might fancy Ulysses's veterans hearkening to a tale of Troy. There is another class of songs, half of the sea, half of the shore, which the fishermen and coasters croon in their lonely watches.
This bow, with the quiver of arrows belonging thereto, Telemachus had brought down from the armoury on the last night along with the lances; and now Minerva, intending to do Ulysses an honour, put it into the mind of Telemachus to propose to the suitors to try who was strongest to draw that bow; and he promised that to the man who should be able to draw that bow his mother should be given in marriage Ulysses's wife the prize to him who should bend the bow of Ulysses.
For this saying of Eumæus the waters stood in Ulysses's eyes, and he said, "My friend, to say and to affirm positively that he cannot be alive, is to give too much licence to incredulity.
After him Liodes, and Amphinomus, and Polybus, and Eurynomus, and Polyctorides, assayed their strength, but not any one of them, or of the rest of those aspiring suitors, had any better luck: yet not the meanest of them there but thought himself well worthy of Ulysses's wife, though to shoot with Ulysses's bow the completest champion among them was by proof found too feeble.
Now his mother came and lapped the blood, without restraint from her son, and now she knew him to be her son, and enquired of him why he had come alive to their comfortless habitations. And she said, that affliction for Ulysses's long absence had preyed upon her spirits, and brought her to the grave.
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