Thus did he speak, and with knees and with heart all quaking she stood there.
Speechless long she remained, struck mute, while gathering teardrops
Flooded her eyes, and the flow of her clear-voiced utterance failed,
Till at the last she recovered her speech and addressed him in answer:
“Wherefore, herald, I pray, is my son departed? He nowise
Needed to mount on a ship—on a swift-paced vessel that sailors
Ride as a horse and traverse the watery waste of the ocean.
Wills he that even his name no longer remain in remembrance?”[[8]]
Penelope is overwhelmed with grief, and Medon’s explanation of her son’s errand does not soothe her. She believes that he is lost to her for ever, like his father; and when the herald has left her, she throws herself down upon the floor of her room, wailing:
“... sorrow hath Zeus the Olympian sent me