Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE ODYSSEY: BOOK 3. AT PYLOS: A FALSE WIFE, by HOMER


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THE ODYSSEY: BOOK 3. AT PYLOS: A FALSE WIFE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: But wise telemachus returned reply
Last Line: His ships freight-laden full as they could hold.'
Subject(s): Mythology - Classical


But wise Telemachus returned reply:
'Mentor, of this our grief discourse would I
No longer: a false tale is his return.
Surely on him the Gods that do not die

'Death and the phantom black ere this have sent.
But now another question am I bent
To ask of Nestor, since beyond all men
Righteous is he, and full of wise intent:

'And reigning here has witnessed, so say men,
Three generations rise and fall again;
And like a deathless God methinks is he.
O Nestor, son of Neleus, tell me then,

'How Atreus' son, the lord of many a land,
Great Agamemnon, fell by violent hand.
Where then was Menelaus? In what wise
Was wrought the treason that AEgisthus planned,

One mightier than himself in death to lay?
Out of Achaean Argos far away
Belike he wandered among unknown men,
So that the slayer plucked up heart to slay.'

And Nestor, the Gerenian knight, replied:
'Look you, my son, the truth I will not hide.
Even as you deem, so was it: for if he
Had found AEgisthus living at that tide

'Within his halls, when home from Troy he won,
The fair-haired Menelaus, Atreus' son,
Not even on his body had men cast
The mound of earth, as for the dead is done,

'But dogs and birds had torn him for their prey
Cast out beyond the city where he lay,
And no Achaean woman wept for him;
So dreadful was the dead he did that day.

'For we sat down in leaguer overseas
Doing great feats of arms, while he at ease
Deep in horse-pasturing Argos won the soul
Of Agamemnon's wife with flatteries.

'And glorious Clytemnestra first for long
Rejected utterly the deed of wrong:
For her own mind was right; and by her side
She had for guardian a man skilled in song,

'Into whose keeping Atreus' son had lent
His wife, when to the Trojan land he went,
Charging him well to guard her: but when fate
Ordained her fall and her entanglement,

'He to an island not inhabited
Bore off the minstrel, and there left him dead,
A prey to birds, and to his house the Queen,
Her will consenting to his will, he led.

'And many beasts he burned on the divine
Altars, and offerings hung on many a shrine
Of woven cloths and gold; for he had done
A mighty deed, exceeding his design. . . .

'And for seven years he held beneath his reign
Golden Mycenae, after he had slain
The son of Atreus, and the people bore
His yoke: but in the eighth year came his bane,

'When bright Orestes from the Athenian town
Returning struck his father's murderer down,
AEgisthus guileful-hearted, at whose hand
His sire had perished, dead in his renown.

'And while the funeral feast the slayer spread
Among the Argives for the twain laid dead,
The cursed woman and the faint-heart man,
The same day thither Menelaus led

'His ships freight-laden full as they could hold.'






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