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I am being forced by my parents to choose a husband from the wooers, and depart from the house of Odysseus. 'And how wilt thou choose from amongst them? said Odysseus. 'In this way will I make choice, said Penelope. 'My husband's great bow is still in the house.
Odysseus aimed at him, and smote him with the arrow in the throat and the point passed out clean through his neck. The wine cup fell from his hands and Antinous fell dead across the table. Then did all the wooers raise a shout, threatening Odysseus for sending an arrow astray. It did not come into their minds that this stranger-beggar had aimed to kill Antinous.
Still Eurycleia kept on saying, 'In very deed Odysseus is here. He is that guest whom all the wooers dishonour in the hall. Then hearing Eurycleia say these words, Penelope sprang out of bed and put her arms round the nurse's neck. 'O tell me if what thou dost say be true tell me how this stranger slew the wooers, who were so many.
But she came dressed as a warrior, and not as a beautiful, gray-eyed, golden-haired goddess with golden sandals on her feet. Telemachus rose up and shook her kindly by the hand, and led her into the hall. He took from her the heavy bronze spear that she carried, and made her sit down on one of the finest of the chairs, in a place where the noise of the rough wooers should not disturb her.
He had felt the necessity of some third person to carry letters and messages, and to plead his cause when he was absent. In a girl named Sally Leadbitter he had found a willing advocate. Carson bestowed upon her. Sally Leadbitter was vulgar-minded to the last degree; never easy unless her talk was of love and lovers; in her eyes it was an honour to have had a long list of wooers.
"Go home, old man," angrily mocked the wooers. "Prophesy to thine own children. Odysseus is dead. Would that thou hadst died with him. Then thou couldst not have babbled nonsense, and tried to hound on Telemachus in the hope that he may give thee a gift." To Telemachus they said again: "We will go on wasting thy goods until Penelope weds one of us."
Then the fourth year came, and my wooers were hard to deal with. My treacherous handmaidens brought them upon me as I was unravelling the web. And now I cannot devise any other plan to keep the marriage away from me. My parents command me to marry one of my wooers. My son cannot long endure to see the substance of his house and field being wasted, and the wealth that should be his destroyed.
And likewise the Achaeans brought each one some other beautiful gift. Then the fair lady went aloft to her upper chamber, and her attendant maidens bare for her the lovely gifts, while the wooers turned to dancing and the delight of song, and therein took their pleasure, and awaited the coming of eventide. And dark evening came on them at their pastime.
Now the wooers went within laughing sweetly, and greeted him, saying: 'May Zeus, stranger, and all the other deathless gods give thee thy dearest wish, even all thy heart's desire, seeing that thou hast made that insatiate one to cease from his begging in the land! Soon will we take him over to the mainland, to Echetus the king, the maimer of all mankind.
"Ye princely wooers," she said, "now I believe that the king Odysseus, my husband, must long since have perished in a strange land; and I have bethought me once more of marriage. Have patience, therefore, till I shall have finished the web that I am weaving. This is the way of my people," said she; "and when the web is done, I will choose another king for Ithaca."
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