After marvelling at Odysseus’ tales, the people of Scheria (see previous story) finally conveyed him safely home to Ithaca. To punish them, the sea god Poseidon, father of the blinded Cyclops Polyphemus, turned their ship to stone. Odysseus’ troubles were far from over. First he needed to defeat the evil suitors who had been pursuing his loyal wife Penelope. Then he needed to convince her that he was indeed her husband come home to her after an absence of twenty years. In this translation, T. E. Shaw – Lawrence of Arabia – proved that he was as capable of mastering the tender scenes in Homer as he was the most thrilling episodes of derring-do. The ‘old dame’ is Eurycleia, the nurse of the household. Telemachus is Odysseus and Penelope’s son.

But it was with a cackle of laughter that the old dame climbed towards the upper room, to warn her mistress of the beloved husband’s return. Her knees moved nimbly and her feet tripped along to the lady’s bed-head where she stood and spoke her part. “Awake dear child, Penelope: open your eyes upon the sight you have yearned for all these days. Odysseus has appeared, at this end of time. He has reached his home and in it slaughtered the recalcitrant suitors who for so long vexed the house, ate his stored wealth and outfaced his son.”

Circumspect Penelope replied to this: “Dear mother, the Gods have driven you frantic. They turn to foolishness the ripest judgements and the flighty into sober ways. From them comes this derangement of your old true understanding:—but why tease with fantasies a heart already brimmed with grief? Why wake me from this sleep whose sweetness held me in thrall and veiled my eyelids; the best sleep I have enjoyed since Odysseus went away to view that ill city never-to-be-named. Off with you below, instantly, to the women’s quarters. Had any other of my housemaidens roused me with news of this sort I should have sent her smartingly back into her place. Just for this once your great age shall excuse you.”

Eurycleia persisted. “Dear child, I am in very earnest with you. Odysseus, I say, is here. He came back to the house as that stranger who met such scurvy treatment at all hands. Telemachus long since learnt his identity but very properly hid the knowledge, to let his father’s revenge take shape against those proud rough men.”