"Amphimedon," it said, "what has
happened to all you choice [krînô] young
men - all of an age too - that you are come down here under the
ground? One could select [krînô] no finer
body of men from any city. Did Poseidon raise his winds and waves
against you when you were at sea, or did your enemies make an end of
you on the mainland when you were cattle-lifting or sheep-stealing,
or while fighting in defense of their wives and city? Answer my
question, for I have been your guest. Do you not remember how I came
to your house with Menelaos, to persuade Odysseus to join us with his
ships against Troy? It was a whole month ere we could resume our
voyage, for we had hard work to persuade Odysseus to come with
us."
And the ghost
[psukhê] of Amphimedon answered, "Agamemnon, son
of Atreus, king of men, I remember everything that you have said, and
will tell you fully and accurately about the way in which our end was
brought about. Odysseus had been long gone, and we were courting his
wife, who did not say point blank that she would not marry, nor yet
bring matters to an end, for she meant to compass our destruction:
this, then, was the trick she played us. She set up a great tambour
frame in her room and began to work on an enormous piece of fine
needlework. ‘Sweethearts,’ said she, ‘Odysseus is
indeed dead, still, do not press me to marry again immediately; wait
- for I would not have my skill in needlework perish unrecorded -
till I have completed a shroud for the hero Laertes, against the time
when death shall take him. He is very rich, and the women of the
dêmos will talk if he is laid out without a
shroud.’ This is what she said, and we assented; whereupon we
could see her working upon her great web all day long, but at night
she would unpick the stitches again by torchlight. She fooled us in
this way for three years without our finding it out, but as time
[hôra] wore on and she was now in her fourth
year, and the waning of moons and many days had been accomplished,
one of her maids who knew what she was doing told us, and we caught
her in the act of undoing her work, so she had to finish it whether
she would or not; and when she showed us the robe she had made, after
she had had it washed, its splendor was as that of the sun or
moon.
"Then some malicious
daimôn conveyed Odysseus to the upland farm where his
swineherd lives. Thither presently came also his son, returning from
a voyage to Pylos, and the two came to the town when they had hatched
their plot for our destruction. Telemakhos came first, and then after
him, accompanied by the swineherd, came Odysseus, clad in rags and
leaning on a staff as though he were some miserable old beggar. He
came so unexpectedly that none of us knew him, not even the older
ones among us, and we reviled him and threw things at him. He endured
both being struck and insulted without a word, though he was in his
own house; but when the will [noos] of Aegis-bearing
Zeus inspired him, he and Telemakhos took the armor and hid it in an
inner chamber, bolting the doors behind them. Then he cunningly made
his wife offer his bow and a quantity of iron to be contended for by
us ill-fated suitors; and this was the beginning of our end, for not
one of us could string the bow - nor nearly do so. When it was about
to reach the hands of Odysseus, we all of us shouted out that it
should not be given him, no matter what he might say, but Telemakhos
insisted on his having it. When he had got it in his hands he strung
it with ease and sent his arrow through the iron. Then he stood on
the floor of the room and poured his arrows on the ground, glaring
fiercely about him. First he killed Antinoos, and then, aiming
straight before him, he let fly his deadly darts and they fell thick
on one another. It was plain that some one of the gods was helping
them, for they fell upon us with might and main throughout the
cloisters, and there was a hideous sound of groaning as our brains
were being battered in, and the ground seethed with our blood. This,
Agamemnon, is how we came by our end, and our bodies are lying still
un-cared for in the house of Odysseus, for our friends at home do not
yet know what has happened, so that they cannot lay us out and wash
the black blood from our wounds, making moan over us according to the
offices due to the departed."
"Happy Odysseus, son of Laertes,"
replied the ghost [psukhê] of Agamemnon, "you
are indeed blessed [olbios] in the possession of a
wife endowed with such rare excellence [aretê]
of understanding, and so faithful to her wedded lord as Penelope the
daughter of Ikarios. The kleos, therefore, of her excellence
[aretê] shall never die, and the immortals shall
compose a song that shall be welcome to all humankind in honor of the
constancy of Penelope. How far otherwise was the wickedness of the
daughter of Tyndareus who killed her lawful husband; her song shall
be hateful among men, for she has brought disgrace on all womankind
even on the good ones."
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