nd eat the bread
of our fields, and slay the beasts of our flocks and herds, and drink
the wine that in the old days my father laid up, and weary our servants
with their orders.'

When he had told him all this Telemachus raised his head and looked at
the stranger: 'O my guest,' he said, 'wisdom and power shine out of your
eyes. Speak now to me and tell me what I should do to save the house of
Odysseus from ruin. And tell me too if you think it possible that my
father should still be in life.'

The stranger looked at him with his grey, clear, wonderfully-shining
eyes. 'Art thou verily the son of Odysseus?' said he.

'Verily, I am the son of Odysseus,' said Telemachus.

'As I look at you,' said the stranger, 'I mark your head and eyes, and I
know they are such a head and such eyes as Odysseus had. Well, being the
son of such a man, and of such a woman as the lady Penelope, your spirit
surely shall find a way of destroying those wooers who would destroy
your house.'

'Already,' said Telemachus, 'your gaze and your speech make me feel
equal to the task of dealing with them.'

'I think,' said the stranger, 'that Odysseus, your father, has not
perished from the earth. He may yet win home through labors and perils.
But you should seek for tidings of him. Harken to me now and I shall
tell you what to do.

'To-morrow summon a council of all the chief men of the land of Ithaka,
and stand up in that council and declare that the time has come for the
wooers who waste your substance to scatter, each man to his own home.
And after the council has been held I would have you voyage to find out
tidings of your father, whether he still lives and where he might be. Go
to Pylos first, to the home of Nestor, that old King who was with your
father in the war of Troy. Beg Nestor to give you whatever tidings he
has of Odysseus. And from Pylos go to Sparta, to the home of Menelaus
and Helen, and beg tidings of your father from them too. And if you get
news of his being alive, return: It will be easy for you then to endure
for another year the wasting of your substance by those wooers. But if
you learn that your father, the renowned Odysseus, is indeed dead and
gone, then come back, and in your own country raise a great funeral
mound to his memory, and over it pay all funeral rites. Then let your
mother choose a good man to be her husband and let her marry him,
knowing for a certainty that Odysseus will never come back to his own
house.