THE TRIAL OF THE BOW
By Alfred J. Church
The next day many things cheered Ulysses for that which he had to do; for first the goddess Minerva had told him that she would stand at his side, and next he heard the thunder of Jupiter in a clear sky, and at last it chanced that a woman who sat at the mill grinding corn, being sore weary of her task, and hating the suitors, said, “Grant Father Jupiter, that this be the last meal which these men shall eat in the house of Ulysses!”
After a while the suitors came and sat down, as was their wont, to the feast, and the servants bare to Ulysses, as Telemachus had bidden, a full share with the others. When Ctesippus, a prince of Samos, saw this, he said, “Is it well that this fellow should fare even as we? Look now at the gift that I shall give him.” Whereupon he took a bullock’s foot out of the basket wherein it lay, and cast it at Ulysses.
But he moved his head to the left and shunned it, and it flew on, marking the wall. And Telemachus cried in great wrath, “It is well for thee, Ctesippus, that thou didst not strike this stranger. For surely, hadst thou done this thing, my spear had pierced thee through, and thy father had made good cheer, not for thy marriage, but for thy burial.”
Then said Agelaus, “This is well said. Telemachus should not be wronged, no, nor this stranger. But, on the other hand, he must bid his mother choose out of the suitors whom she will, and marry him, nor waste our time any more.”
And Telemachus said, “It is well. She may marry whom she will. But from my house I will never send her against her will.” And the suitors laughed, and scoffed at Telemachus, but he heeded them not, and sat waiting till his father should give the sign.
Alter this Penelope went to fetch the great bow of Ulysses. From the peg on which it hung she took it with its sheath, and sitting down, she laid it on her knees and wept over it, and after this rose up and went to where the suitors sat feasting in the hall. The bow she brought, and also the quiver full of arrows, and standing by the pillar of the dome, spake thus—
“Ye suitors who devour this house, making pretence that ye wish to wed me, lo! here is a proof of your skill. Here is the bow of the great Ulysses. Whoso shall bend it easiest in his hands, and shoot an arrow most easily through the helve-holes of the twelve axes that Telemachus shall set up, him will I follow, leaving this house, which I shall remember only in my dreams.”