"When the child of morning,
rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, I took the three men on whose prowess
of all kinds I could most rely, and went along by the sea-side,
praying heartily to heaven. Meanwhile the goddess fetched me up four
seal skins from the bottom of the sea, all of them just skinned, for
she meant to play a trick upon her father. Then she dug four pits for
us to lie in, and sat down to wait till we should come up. When we
were close to her, she made us lie down in the pits one after the
other, and threw a seal skin over each of us. Our ambuscade would
have been intolerable, for the stench of the fishy seals was most
distressing - who would go to bed with a sea monster if he could help
it?-but here, too, the goddess helped us, and thought of something
that gave us great relief, for she put some ambrosia under each
man's nostrils, which was so fragrant that it killed the smell
of the seals.
"We waited the whole morning and
made the best of it, watching the seals come up in hundreds to bask
upon the sea shore, till at noon the old man of the sea came up too,
and when he had found his fat seals he went over them and counted
them. We were among the first he counted, and he never suspected any
guile, but laid himself down to sleep as soon as he had done
counting. Then we rushed upon him with a shout and seized him; on
which he began at once with his old tricks, and changed himself first
into a lion with a great mane; then all of a sudden he became a
dragon, a leopard, a wild boar; the next moment he was running water,
and then again directly he was a tree, but we stuck to him and never
lost hold, till at last the cunning old creature became distressed,
and said, Which of the gods was it, Son of Atreus, that hatched this
plot with you for snaring me and seizing me against my will? What do
you want?’
"‘You know that yourself,
old man,’ I answered. ‘You will gain nothing by trying to
put me off. It is because I have been kept so long in this island,
and see no sign of my being able to get away. I am losing all heart;
tell me, then, for you gods know everything, which of the immortals
it is that is hindering me, and tell me also how I may sail the sea
so as to reach my home [nostos]?’
"Then,’ he said, ‘if
you would finish your voyage and get home quickly, you must offer
sacrifices to Zeus and to the rest of the gods before embarking; for
it is decreed that you shall not get back to your friends, and to
your own house, till you have returned to the heaven-fed stream of
Egypt, and offered holy hecatombs to the immortal gods that reign in
heaven. When you have done this they will let you finish your
voyage.’
Homer. The Odyssey. Rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original. Samuel Butler. Based on public domain edition, revised by Timothy Power and Gregory Nagy. A. C. Fifield, London. 1900 (?).
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