The Adventures of Ulysses the Wanderer

by Guy Thorne; Homer

For a moment the black turmoil in the hero’s heart was almost irrepressible. But with an enormous effort of will he overcame it. He stood quite still, with his head sunk upon his breast in humility.

Now came the girls from out of the house carrying great jars of fresh wine, and copper bowls of water for the mixing, which they put upon the table.

Here was better sport than an old beggar and his woes, and Ulysses moved aside and was forgotten.

But one of the girls touched him on the shoulder. “Wanderer,” said she, “the Queen Penelope has seen how Antinous used you from her room within the hall, and she sends me to summon you to her, for she would speak to you.”

Then, with beating heart and footsteps which trembled with no simulated age, the king followed the girl over the threshold of his own palace.

As he was walking towards the chamber of the queen an old woman came towards them, a very old woman with a lined brown face and little, brilliant twinkling eyes.

“Poor old man,” she said, “it is a shame that they should use your grey hairs so, and abuse the hospitality which is the sacred right of strangers. My lady Penelope sends me to you, and bids me wash your feet in this bowl of water, so that we may purge our house of the stain the prince without has cast upon it. Sit on this stool and I will lave ye.”

So the old nurse Euryclea bathed the feet of her master whom she had dandled in her arms as a child. Suddenly Ulysses made as though he would draw away his foot. He remembered that on his leg he bore a strange-shaped scar made by a savage boar when he was a boy, and he feared the wise old woman would know him by that mark.

But as she passed her hand along his ankle she touched the mark and turned his foot towards the light and saw it. She dropped his foot quickly, and the basin was overturned and the water ran away over the marble floor. She looked up into the king’s face and knew him for all his disguise.

In a fierce, hurried whisper he bade her be silent for her life and his and the queen’s safety. As she vowed, trembling, by Zeus and the gods, to do his bidding, a trumpet snarled suddenly outside on the steps of the palace.