Homer, Odyssey

Then Odysseus of many wiles answered her: “Why then, I pray thee, didst thou not tell him, thou whose mind knows all things? Nay, was it haply that he too might suffer woes, wandering over the unresting sea, and that others might devour his substance?” [420] Then the goddess, flashing-eyed Athena, answered him: “Nay verily, not for him be thy heart overmuch troubled. It was I that guided him, that he might win good report by going thither, and he has no toil, but sits in peace in the palace of the son of Atreus, and good cheer past telling is before him. [425] Truly young men in a black ship lie in wait for him, eager to slay him before he comes to his native land, but methinks this shall not be. Ere that shall the earth cover many a one of the wooers that devour thy substance.” So saying, Athena touched him with her wand. [430] She withered the fair flesh on his supple limbs, and destroyed the flaxen hair from off his head, and about all his limbs she put the skin of an aged old man. And she dimmed his two eyes that were before so beautiful, and clothed him in other raiment, [435] a vile ragged cloak and a tunic, tattered garments and foul, begrimed with filthy smoke. And about him she cast the great skin of a swift hind, stripped of the hair, and she gave him a staff, and a miserable wallet, full of holes, slung by a twisted cord. So when the two had thus taken counsel together, they parted; and thereupon the goddess [440] went to goodly Lacedaemon to fetch the son of Odysseus.