Homer’s Daughter (13 page)

I greeted them with an imperceptible nod and beckoned to Clytoneus. “Brother,” I said, “as acting head of the royal household, will you be kind enough to inform these impetuous young noblemen that, though they appear without warning, in unprecedented numbers, and at a very awkward time, they are welcome to our palace commons: namely, spruce beer, bread, cheese and olives, which will duly be set before them if they have the patience to wait awhile.”

“My sister's words are mine,” cried Clytoneus, staring straight in front of him.

“Princess,” drawled Antinous with a superior smile, “can you be so young and ignorant as not to know what is expected of you? When suitors for your hand arrive in such a flatteringly large company you should offer them roast meat and the best wine.”

“No orders have been given to our swineherds, cattlemen, or shepherds; consequently there is no meat to roast, and even if I had authority to draw good wine for you, it would be wasted on a snack of bread and cheese. Spruce beer is a healthy drink, and economical, too.”

“But unless my eyes deceived me, I observed more than a dozen fat beasts tied to the hitching posts outside the gate.”

“Ah, those! But they are not for sacrifice.”

“You are your father's own daughter,” exclaimed Antinous.

“So the Queen has always maintained, and since it is a wise child that knows its own father, I shall not dishonour her by doubting my legitimacy. I must therefore ask you to retire. The King gave me his solemn promise, which the Queen witnessed, that my inclinations would be consulted in this matter of suitors as religiously as if I were an oracle. He has since sailed to the east on domestic business, and even if he were here, your visit could not justify the expense of a banquet; for I should be forced to admit that a cursory review of your faces disinclines me to accept a single one of you. They express nothing but insolence, vanity, greed, mockery and rebellion. However, because I am, as you say, my father's own daughter, and because Clytoneus is my father's son, neither of us can waive the common claims of hospitality. If you are hungry enough to make do with what you deserve, go to the banqueting court and sit down at the cloister tables; when I have completed this mattress stuffing, I shall attend to your wants. Clytoneus, please find Eurycleia and ask her whether she has sufficient cheese for about ten dozen corpulent young men. And perhaps Phemius will consent to sing to them.”

I turned my back on the company and resumed work. “What a little spitfire!” cried Ctesippus, not troubling to lower his voice. “To think that more than a hundred of us are competing for the pleasure of having our cheeks scratched by her long nails!”

“The pleasure would be wholly mine,” I flung over my shoulder, as they trooped past me into the banqueting court.

I realized that, physically, we were powerless to cope with
the invaders, but pride forbade me to show the least sign of accepting so absurd a position. When Melantheus went to the entrance gate, unbarred it, and called in the servants, I ran and shot home the bolt at once.

“Melantheus,” I said, “if you defy my orders by bringing back that fat stock, let me warn you that when the King returns, he will not hesitate to disembowel you, afterwards cutting off your extremities and feeding them to the dogs.”

“I act at the orders of Prince Agelaus,” he answered pompously, “whom the Drepanan Council have elected as Regent.”

“Indeed? Then fetch him to me, unless you want to be beaten as a liar.”

Melantheus hurried off, and presently brought Agelaus, a small, sullen, dark-faced man who had nothing to commend him but his birth, a luxuriant head of hair, and a certain dexterity at cottabus. Cottabus is a game for banqueters: each in turn throws what wine is left in his goblet at a number of minature silver cups floating in a basin ten paces away; whoever sinks most of these is the winner. My father, however, allows nobody to play cottabus in the Palace—prince, guest, servant or slave—because of the splashed clothes and walls, and the waste of good wine.

I greeted him with: “Why, kinsman! Have you come to play cottabus in the King's absence? You have my special indulgence, so long as you stick to spruce beer and keep to the middle of the court. But first tell this scoundrel Melantheus that the beasts tied up outside must stay there until they are rested and can be driven back to the pastures from which they were brought in error.”

Agelaus flushed. “I shall tell him no such thing! Those beasts are to be sacrificed; and, once the fat and thighbones have been offered to the Blessed Gods, we promise ourselves the satisfaction of eating their roast flesh. And, mark you, when I play cottabus, I play it only with the best wine.”

“Who, may I ask, are ‘we'?”

“Your suitors, Princess.”

“Have a care, Agelaus,” I said. “Resentment at some fancied slight has clouded your intelligence. As soon as my father lands at Drepanum, he will seek you out and strike off your head…”

“If he ever lands,” Agelaus interjected.

“And if he does not, kinsman, I doubt whether your position will be in any way improved. Antinous and Eurymachus have already agreed to betray you. What if the javelin intended for Clytoneus at the boar hunt drives whistling between your shoulder blades, and the Phocaeans usurp the sceptre which Zeus himself placed in the hands of our Trojan ancestor Aegestus? Call off your rebellious clansmen, before it is too late!”

“You seem to know a great deal,” he sneered.

“The Goddess Athene has been gracious enough to make me her confidante,” I answered.

Agelaus paused irresolutely, then “Melantheus!” he shouted, in what were meant to be kingly accents, “command the servants to make ready our sacrifice!”

“Very well, kinsman,” I said. “You have chosen as you have chosen. But theft is no less reprehensible in a Trojan prince than in the cheapest Sicel slave.”

The servants re-entered boisterously with the beasts. Leodes,
priest to Zeus, and one of my suitors, thereupon dedicated the bullocks to the Thunderer and to Poseidon, and the other beasts to Hera, Apollo, Aphrodite, Hermes and the rest—but pointedly omitted Athene, as if scornful of my trust in her. This caused me deep satisfaction, since Athene is the best ally imaginable and quick to take offence. Zeus, though the stronger, is apt to be indolent or preoccupied and, as they say, his mills grind slowly.

We sewed up the last mattresses, in hurry and confusion because the court was soon filled with the swirling smoke of log fires and all the bustle of cooking. I went to find Clytoneus.

“I have done my best, Sister,” he said. “On our mother's advice, I have given the clerk of the Drepanan Council notice to convene it again for tomorrow morning. I am not yet old enough to qualify as a member, yet Halitherses tells me that any royal prince may call a Council in the absence of the King or his authorized Regent. I shall protest strongly against this invasion of our Palace. Meanwhile, the rogues have browbeaten Pontonous the butler into fetching them wine, although he was expressly warned to take orders only from me. I have sent Eumaeus a message by his son, and Philoetius a message by his cousin, to send down no more beasts unless they receive a written demand bearing the imprint of my seal.”

“You can do little else at present. Whether the Council will reverse its judgment is another matter; but your protest must be placed on record, if only to satisfy our father.”

“Hush, Phemius is tuning up. It is to be
Odysseus's Return
, the last fytte of the cycle.”

Phemius's delivery was neither so dramatic nor so compelling
as Demodocus's. His voice, however, was younger and more resonant, and he had lost none of his front teeth, which made for clearer enunciation, and his self-assurance improved with every performance. It is my view that he will one day become the most famous of all his guild, and I have entrusted my epic poem to him partly for this reason.

After the conventional invocation of the Muse, he gave a summary of the tale: how the anger borne by Aphrodite towards the Greek leaders who had attacked and burned the holy fortress of Troy and, by killing her favourite, Paris, had dealt a blow to devoted lovers the world over, was expressed in her peculiarly savage treatment of Odysseus. Being the Goddess of the Sea as well as of Love, she was content, in some cases, to wreck her enemies' ships and drown them, as she drowned Ajax; others she drove by adverse winds to distant lands from which they took years to return, as did Spartan Menelaus; still others she so wearied by bad weather that they despaired of seeing their wives and children again, but stayed to found cities beside outlandish rivers, as did Guneus in Libya, and Elphenor in Epirus. Her usual revenge, however, lay in allowing the victorious champion to reach home, only to find that his wife had set her lover on the throne; as happened to Argive Agamemnon and Cretan Idomeneus, joint leaders of the Greek expedition. On Diomedes and Odysseus who, between them, had done more than any of the Greeks to earn her hate, she visited a double punishment—a wearisome return after shipwreck and similar perils, and the subsequent discovery that their wives had been false to them. Yet Odysseus's sufferings were far harsher and longer drawn out than those of Diomedes; and whereas Diomedes's
wife Aegialeia had taken only a single lover, Odysseus found that Penelope, supposedly so faithful to his bed, was living in riotous and promiscuous love with no less than fifty of his own subjects; and that his son, Telemachus, had been sold into slavery, none knew where.

Phemius stopped to rinse his throat, and Clytoneus applauded. “Well sung, Phemius,” he cried, “best of bards next to the venerable Demodocus! I hope that you will enlarge on the subject of those rascally fellows who camped in Odysseus's palace and made the swineherds and shepherds slaughter his fat stock for them. Have their infamous names survived, to bring a blush to their descendants' cheeks? And was it they who, to detach the Ithacans' affection from their rightful prince, plotted to sell him in the Sidonian slave market?”

Antinous sprang up with an oath, but Eurymachus restrained him. “Clytoneus's question is a very pertinent one,” he grinned. “Let us hear how Phemius answers it.”

Phemius gulped, and seemed ill at ease; however, his good sense and ready wit did not desert him. “My ancestor Homer has given us little information on this point,” he said apologetically. “But you should remember, I think, that Penelope's fifty lovers, the leading citizens of the islands over which Odysseus ruled, were all bewitched by Aphrodite, who had lent Penelope her girdle of irresistibility: though she was by now fat, ungainly and well past the age of childbearing, they could not refrain. Each awaited his summons to her couch, sitting expectantly in a ring, as dogs do when a bitch is in heat. They found Telemachus's presence awkward. Stung by his taunts, which they felt keenly, yet unwilling to turn murderers,
they begged him to sail away. Then, since he would neither go nor keep silence, they sold him to a slave trader who undertook to find him a considerate master. It would have been better had Telemachus disregarded the situation at the Palace, unpleasant as it must have been to so spirited a prince, and spent his time in the chase. Now, if you will allow me, I shall proceed.”

“Very well, Phemius!” muttered Clytoneus. “If you have gone over to the enemies of our house, your wand and feathered sandals will not protect you for ever.”

Phemius told the familiar story of Odysseus's journey: how he sailed to Thrace, a region which had provided King Priam with bold allies, and sacked the city of Ismarus. His foolish crew would not hurry their spoils of gold, silver and captive women into the ships; but delayed on the shore, slaughtering sheep and fat cattle and drinking heady wine. Other Thracians from the hills flocked in chariots and on foot to the support of their suffering neighbours and broke the Greek ranks; so that Odysseus was lucky to get his men aboard again, full-bellied if empty-handed. A storm soon blew all his canvas to ribbons, and drove him towards Cape Malea at the foot of the Peloponnese, which lay on his course; yet would not let up until, after nine days, he sighted the coast of Libya, where the lotus-eating Nasamanians live. There some of his men tried to desert when he sent them inland to fetch water; he clapped them in irons, and put to sea once more. Then Aphrodite sent a storm which wrecked his entire fleet. Odysseus alone managed to swim ashore to the desolate isle of Pantellaria, or Cossyra—on fine days we can see it from the summit of Mount Eryx far to the south—and he
spent the next seven years there, living off shellfish, asphodel roots, and the eggs of sea birds. Every day he used to sit on the strand, chin against knees, gazing at the blank horizon; yet no ship, of the few that passed, ever heeded his frantic signals. At last a Taphian thirty-oarer put in, not for trade, because the island was uninhabited; not for water, because it was waterless, except for occasional rain puddles; but to maroon one of the crew whom they judged hateful to the Gods. They consented to engage Odysseus instead of this sailor, pretending to sympathize with his misfortunes, took him by way of Italy to the head of the Adriatic, where they were buying Hyperborean amber—and treacherously sold him to the priestess of the Goddess Circe, who had charge of Aeolus's oracle on Aeaea. She forced him to act as her man of all work and to share her bed, which he soon found almost as distasteful as his solitary confinement on Pantellaria, the priestess being both ill favoured and insatiate.

At last he secretly sent a message to the priest of Zeus at Dodona, who ordered his release, and a Thesprotian ship fetched him off, half dead with exhaustion. At Dodona he was advised to placate Aphrodite by extending her empire, and therefore shouldered an oar and trudged inland, until he came to a village whose inhabitants, never having heard of salt water, mistook the oar for a flail. Having told the local shepherds of Aphrodite's birth from sea foam, he offered public sacrifices to her, implored pardon, and was granted a favourable augury of mating sparrows. Thence he hastened home to Ithaca, where he took vengeance on Penelope's lovers with a bow which had once been Apollo's, killing all fifty of them at a marriage contest. She was sent back in disgrace to his
father-in-law, King Icarius. One day the seer Teiresias prophesied that death would come to Odysseus from the sea, and so it did. Telemachus returned without warning, having escaped from slavery and travelled far and wide in search of his father. Landing by moonlight, he mistook Odysseus for one of Penelope's lovers. There, on the stony beach, he transfixed him with a sting-ray spear.