that he was indeed in Ithaka, his own country--he knew the
harbour and the cave, and the hill Neriton all covered with its forest.
And knowing them he knelt down on the ground and kissed the earth of his
country.

[Illustration]

Then the goddess helped him to lay his goods within the cave--the gold
and the bronze and the woven raiment that the Phaeacians had given him.
She made him sit beside her under the olive tree while she told him of
the things that were happening in his house.

'There is trouble in thy halls, Odysseus,' she said, 'and it would be
well for thee not to make thyself known for a time. Harden thy heart,
that thou mayest endure for a while longer ill treatment at the hands of
men.' She told him about the wooers of his wife, who filled his halls
all day, and wasted his substance, and who would slay him, lest he
should punish them for their insolence. 'So that the doom of Agamemnon
shall not befall thee--thy slaying within thine own halls--I will change
thine appearance that no man shall know thee,' the goddess said.

Then she made a change in his appearance that would have been evil but
that it was to last for a while only. She made his skin wither, and she
dimmed his shining eyes. She made his yellow hair grey and scanty. Then
she changed his raiment to a beggar's wrap, torn and stained with smoke.
Over his shoulder she cast the hide of a deer, and she put into his
hands a beggar's staff, with a tattered bag and a cord to hang it by.
And when she had made this change in his appearance the goddess left
Odysseus and went from Ithaka.

It was then that she came to Telemachus in Sparta and counselled him to
leave the house of Menelaus and Helen; and it has been told how he went
with Peisistratus, the son of Nestor, and came to his own ship. His ship
was hailed by a man who was flying from those who would slay him, and
this man Telemachus took aboard. The stranger's name was Theoclymenus,
and he was a sooth-sayer and a second-sighted man.

And Telemachus, returning to Ithaka, was in peril of his life. The
wooers of his mother had discovered that he had gone from Ithaka in a
ship. Two of the wooers, Antinous and Eurymachus, were greatly angered
at the daring act of the youth. 'He has gone to Sparta for help,'
Antinous said, 'and if he finds that there are those who will help him
we will not be able to stand against his pride. He will make us suffer
for what we have wasted in his house. But let us too a