Now there was amongst the wooers a man named Ctesippus, and he was the rudest and the roughest of them all. When he saw Telemachus bringing Odysseus within he shouted out, 'Here is a guest of Telemachus to whom some gift is due from us. It will be unseemly if he should get nothing to-day. Therefore I will bestow this upon him as a token.'
Saying this, Ctesippus took up the foot of a slaughtered ox and flung it full at Odysseus. Odysseus drew back, and the ox's foot struck the wall. Then did Odysseus smile grimly upon the wooers.
Said Telemachus, 'Verily, Ctesippus, the cast turned out happily for thyself. For if thou shouldst have struck my guest, there would have been a funeral feast instead of a wedding banquet in thy father's house. Assuredly I should have driven my spear through thee.'
All the wooers were silent when Telemachus spoke these bold words. But soon they fell laughing at something one of their number said. The guest from Telemachus' ship, Theoclymenus, was there, and he started up and went to leave the hall.
'Why dost thou go, my guest?' said Telemachus.
'I see the walls and the beams of the roof sprinkled with blood,' said Theoclymenus, the second-sighted man. 'I hear the voice of wailing. I see cheeks wet with tears. The men before me have shrouds upon them. The courtyard is filled with ghosts.'
So Theoclymenus spoke, and all the wooers laughed at the second-sighted man, for he stumbled about the hall as if it were in darkness. Then said one of the wooers, 'Lead that man out of the house, for surely he cannot tell day from night.'
'I will go from the place,' said Theoclymenus. 'I see death approaching. Not one of all the company before me will be able to avoid it.'
So saying, the second-sighted man went out of the hall. The wooers looking at each other laughed again, and one of them said: