"Stranger," replied Eumaios, "as
regards your question: sit still, make yourself comfortable, drink
your wine, and listen to me. The nights are now at their longest;
there is plenty of time both for sleeping and sitting up talking
together; you ought not to go to bed till bed time
[hôra], too much sleep is as bad as too little;
if any one of the others wishes to go to bed let him leave us and do
so; he can then take my master's pigs out when he has done
breakfast in the morning. We two will sit here eating and drinking in
the hut, and telling one another stories about our misfortunes; for
when a man has suffered much, and been buffeted about in the world,
he takes pleasure in recalling the memory of sorrows that have long
gone by. As regards your question, then, my tale is as
follows:
"You may have heard of an island
called Syra that lies over above Ortygia, where the land begins to
turn round and look in another direction. It is not very thickly
peopled, but the soil is good, with much pasture fit for cattle and
sheep, and it abounds with wine and wheat. Dearth never comes there,
nor are the people [dêmos] plagued by any
sickness, but when they grow old Apollo comes with Artemis and kills
them with his painless shafts. It contains two communities, and the
whole country is divided between these two. My father Ktesios son of
Ormenus, a man comparable to the gods, reigned over both.
"Now to this place there came
some cunning traders from Phoenicia (for the Phoenicians are great
mariners) in a ship which they had freighted with trinkets of all
kinds. There happened to be a Phoenician woman in my father's
house, very tall and comely, and an excellent servant; these
scoundrels got hold of her one day when she was washing near their
ship, seduced her, and cajoled her in ways that no woman can resist,
no matter how good she may be by nature. The man who had seduced her
asked her who she was and where she came from, and on this she told
him her father's name. ‘I come from Sidon,’ said she,
‘and am daughter to Arybas, a man rolling in wealth. One day as
I was coming into the town from the country some Taphian pirates
seized me and took me here over the sea, where they sold me to the
man who owns this house, and he gave them their price for
me.’
"The man who had seduced her then
said, ‘Would you like to come along with us to see the house of
your parents and your parents themselves? They are both alive and are
said to be well off.’
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