💡 This is a chapter from The Wanderings of Odysseus, by C. Witt & F. Younghusband ← Go there to read the full book free online; it is also available in paperback and Kindle editions.
Meanwhile, in the house of Odysseus at Ithaca, the time was passing sorrowfully enough. Twenty years had gone by since the departure of Odysseus from the island; and his son Telemachus, who at that time was a child in arms, had grown up to be a noble youth. After the termination of the war, Queen Penelope constantly heard of this or that hero who had arrived home in safety, and with patient longing she waited for the return of her husband. But year after year passed away, and he still remained absent; she did not know where he was, nor even whether he was yet alive, and her hopes sank lower and lower. Continually she saw him before her eyes as he was in the time when he had made her life one perpetual joy, and the memory of those days filled her with sorrow and often brought the tears to her eyes.
She had, moreover, another source of trouble. Everyone thought that Odysseus must certainly have perished, and all the noblest youths in Ithaca and the neighborhood cherished the hope that the queen might take one of them as her second husband. They came therefore to sue for her, but not, as was then the custom, by going to her father and offering him costly gifts in return for the hand of his daughter; instead of this, they came to her palace in crowds, more than a hundred of them at once, and there they feasted every day, consuming the goods of Odysseus and endeavoring to compel her to make choice of one of them.
Penelope was sorely perplexed, but at last she hit upon a device by which to keep them off for a time. She set up a great loom in her room and said to them, “Ye suitors, press me not to choose between you until I have woven a shroud for the aged father of my beloved Odysseus, for ill should I be spoken of amongst women if I allowed the old man to be laid on his funeral pyre without a shroud woven by my hands.”
The suitors agreed to this, and every day Penelope worked industriously at the great sheet; but in the night she always got up, lighted a torch, and undid all the work of the previous day. For three years she contrived in this way to keep the suitors at a distance, but at last she was betrayed by one of her waiting women. The suitors came one night and surprised her in the act of undoing her work, and after this she was obliged to go straight on with it until it was quite finished.
Then the stormy wooing began again, and Penelope did not know what to do. Long ago, when Odysseus was bidding her farewell, he had taken her kindly by the hand and said to her, “Not all of us will return from this war, for the Trojans, they say, are well skilled in the art of battle. I know not therefore whether the gods will keep me alive, or whether I may not rather fall before Troy. Do thou take care of this our house and be kind as thou hast ever been —or, if it is possible, kinder still— to my old father and mother; and when our son is grown up, then, if thou wilt, do thou marry and bring home thy new husband to this house.”
Thus had Odysseus spoken. Telemachus was now grown up and able himself to manage the house and estate of his father; and if she remained in the house, it was certain that the suitors would dissipate more and more the inheritance which ought to be his. It seemed that the only way of ridding the house of this crowd of unwelcome visitors was for her to do violence to her feelings and take one of them for her husband.