Then Odysseus with his many wiles answered her and in replying, said:
"Woman, it's hard for one has been away so long to tell,
when it is already twenty years since he himself went to
that place, and has gone away from my homeland.
But I shall tell you how he appears to the inner eye of my heart.
Noble Odysseus has a purple travel cloak [woolen, for sleeping rough]
folded double, yet its two-tongued buckle made of gold; and on its
front there was an elegant design:
a dog was holding a spotted fawn in his front paws, and watching
its death struggles; and everyone admired this,
how, though made of gold, the dog enjoys throttling the fawn, while
the fawn was striving to escape with trembling legs.
And I noticed the tunic upon his body, glistening like the sheen on
the skin of a dried onion,
so soft it was, and shining like the Sun. Indeed, many women there
gazed at him, in awe enrapt.
And I'll tell you another thing (better put this in your heart!) :
I don't know if Odysseus had put on these duds at home, or
if some shipmate, while sailing on a swift ship, or even a
stranger somewhere gave him those duds, since Odysseus was
friend to many men, for few Achaeans were his equal. I myself gave
him a bronze sword and a first-rate, double-thick
purple cloak and a sexy brief tunic with dangling tassels; and I
sent him off with due honors on a well-decked ship.
Also there was a herald, a little older than himself, following
him; I will describe him for you (what sort of man he was):
round in the shoulders, dark-skinned, woolly headed. His name was
Eurybates. Odysseus was treasuring him beyond all
the others, because he was congenial with his own soul." He spoke
thus and thereby excited still more Penelope's passion for tears,
as she perceived the authentic proofs Odysseus told her; and when
she therefor had had her fill of tearful lamentation,
she then answered with the fruits of her thinking and said to him:
"Now then stranger, though before this you were pitied, you shall be
dear and honored in my great hall here, for it was I myself gave him
this clothing that you have thus described."
Labels: my own translation from Homeric Greek
