{"collection":"Classics","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/cla/homer/aoo/aoo40.htm","path":"cla/homer/aoo/aoo40.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/cla/homer/aoo/aoo40.htm","text":"AND still many dangers had to be faced. The wooers whom Odysseus had slain were the richest and the most powerful of the lords of Ithaka and the Islands; all of them had fathers and brothers who would fain avenge them upon their slayer.\nNow before anyone in the City knew that he had returned, Odysseus went forth to the farm that Laertes, his old father, stayed at. As he drew near he saw an old man working in the vineyard, digging round a plant. When he came to him he saw that this old man was not a slave nor a servant, but Laertes, his own father.\n\u2018Old man, thou dost care for this garden well and all things here are flourishing--fig tree, and vine, and olive, and pear. But, if a stranger may say it, thine own self is not cared for well.\u2019\n\u2018Who art thou that dost speak to me like this?\u2019 old Laertes said, lifting his head.\n\u2018I am a stranger in Ithaka,\u2019 said Odysseus. \u2018I seek a man whom I once kindly treated--a man whose name was Odysseus. A stranger, he came to me, and he declared that he was of Ithaka, and that one day he would give me entertainment for the entertainment I had given him. I know not if this man be still alive.\u2019\nOld Laertes wept before Odysseus. \u2018Ah,\u2019 said he, \u2018if thou hadst been able to find him here, the gifts you gave him would not have been bestowed in vain. True hospitality thou wouldst have received from Odysseus, my son. But he has perished--far from his country\u2019s soil he has perished, the hapless man, and his mother wept not over him, nor his wife, nor me, his father.\u2019\nSo he spake and then with his hands he took up the dust of the ground, and he strewed it over his head in his sorrow. The heart of Odysseus was moved with grief. He sprang forward and fell on his father\u2019s neck and he kissed him, saying:\n\u2018Behold I am here, even I, my father. I, Odysseus, have come back to mine own country. Cease thy lamentation until I tell thee of the things that have happened. I have slain the wooers in mine hall, and I have avenged all their injuries and all their wrongful doings. Dost thou not believe this, my father? Then look on what I will show thee. Behold on my foot the mark of the boar\u2019s tusk--there it is from the days of my youth.\u2019\nLaertes looked down on the bare foot, and he saw the scar, but still his mind was clouded by doubt. But then Odysseus took him through the garden, and he told him of the fruit trees that Laertes had set for him when he, Odysseus, was a little child, following his father about the garden--thirteen pear trees, and ten apple trees, and forty fig trees.\nWhen Odysseus showed him these Laertes knew that it was his son indeed who stood before him--his son come back after twenty years\u2019 wandering. He cast his arms around his neck, and Odysseus caught him fainting to his breast, and led him into the house.\nWithin the house were Telemachus, and Eum\u00e6us the swineherd and Phil\u0153tius the cattle-herd. They all clasped the hand of Laertes and their words raised his spirits. Then he was bathed, and, when he came from the bath, rubbed with olive oil he looked hale and strong. Odysseus said to him, \u2018Father, surely one of the gods has made thee goodlier and greater than thou wert a while ago.\u2019\nSaid the old hero Laertes: \u2018Ah, my son, would that I had such might as when, long before thou wert born, I took the Castle of Nericus there upon the Foreland. Would that in such might, and with such mail upon my shoulders, I stood with thee yesterday when thou didst fight with the wooers.\u2019\nWHILE they were speaking in this way the rumour of the slaying of the wooers went through the City. Then those who were related to the men slain went into the courtyard of Odysseus\u2019 house, and brought forth the bodies. Those who belonged to Ithaka they buried, and those who belonged to the Islands they put upon ships, and sent them with fisherfolk, each to his own home. Many were wroth with Odysseus for the slaying of a friend. He who was the most wroth was Eupeithes, the father of Antinous.\nThere was an assembly of the men of the country, and Eupeithes spake in it, and all who were there pitied him. He told how Odysseus had led away the best of the men of Ithaka, and how he had lost them in his ships. And he told them how, when he returned, he slew the noblest of the men of Ithaka and the Islands in his own hall. He called upon them to slay Odysseus saying, \u2018If we avenge not ourselves on the slayer of our kin we will be scorned for all time as weak and cowardly men. As for me, life will be no more sweet to me. I would rather die straightway and be with the deParted. Up now, and let us attack Odysseus and his followers before they take ship and escape across the sea.\u2019\nMany in that assembly put on their armour and went out with old Eupeithes. And as they went through the town they met with Odysseus and his following as they were coming from the house of Laertes.\nNow as the two bands came close to each other--Odysseus with Telemachus and Laertes; with the swineherd and the cattle-herd; with Dolius, Laertes\u2019 servant, and with the six sons of Dolius--and Eupeithes with his friends--a great figure came between. It was the figure of a tall, fair and splendid woman. Odysseus knew her for the goddess Pallas Athene.\n\u2018Hold your hands from fierce fighting, ye men of Ithaka,\u2019 the goddess called out in a terrible voice. \u2018Hold your hands.\u2019 Straightway the arms fell from each man\u2019s hands. Then the goddess called them together, and she made them enter into a covenant that all bloodshed and wrong would be forgotten, and that Odysseus would be left to rule Ithaka as a King, in peace.\nSo ends the story of Odysseus who went with King Agamemnon to the wars of Troy; who made the plan of the Wooden Horse by which Priam\u2019s City was taken at last; who missed the way of his return, and came to the Land of the Lotus-eaters; who came to the Country of the dread Cyclopes, to the Island of \u00c6olus and to the house of Circe, the Enchantress; who heard the song of the Sirens, and came to the Rocks Wandering, and to the terrible Charybdis, and to Scylla, past whom no other man had won scatheless; who landed on the Island where the Cattle of the Sun grazed, and who stayed upon Ogygia, the home of the nymph Calypso; so ends the story of Odysseus, who would have been made deathless and ageless by Calypso if he had not yearned always to come back to his own hearth and his own land. And spite of all his troubles and his toils he was fortunate, for he found a constant wife and dutiful son and a father still alive to weep over him.\nTHE END","title":"Adventures of Odysseus: Part II: The Odyssey: Chapter XVII","type":"page"}