grief equal to that which she endured for
Ulysses: the goddess herself having so ordered the course of his
adventures, that the time of his return should correspond with the
return of Ulysses, that they might together concert measures how to
repress the power and insolence of those wicked suitors. This the
goddess told him; but of the particulars of his son's adventures, of
his having been detained in the Delightful Island, which his father
had so lately left, of Calypso, and her nymphs, and the many strange
occurrences which may be read with profit and delight in the history
of the prince's adventures, she forbore to tell him as yet, as judging
that he would hear them with greater pleasure from the lips of his
son, when he should have him in an hour of stillness and safety, when
their work should be done, and none of their enemies left alive to
trouble them.

Then they sat down, the goddess and Ulysses, at the foot of a wild
olive-tree, consulting how they might with safety bring about his
restoration. And when Ulysses revolved in his mind how that his
enemies were a multitude, and he single, he began to despond, and he
said: "I shall die an ill death like Agamemnon; in the threshold of my
own house I shall perish, like that unfortunate monarch, slain by some
one of my wife's suitors." But then again calling to mind his ancient
courage, he secretly wished that Minerva would but breathe such a
spirit into his bosom as she enflamed him with in the hour of Troy's
destruction, that he might encounter with three hundred of those
impudent suitors at once, and strew the pavements of his beautiful
palace with their bloods and brains.

And Minerva knew his thoughts, and she said, "I will be strongly with
thee, if thou fail not to do thy part. And for a sign between us that
I will perform my promise, and for a token on thy part of obedience, I
must change thee, that thy person may not be known of men."

Then Ulysses bowed his head to receive the divine impression, and
Minerva by her great power changed his person so that it might not be
known. She changed him to appearance into a very old man, yet such a
one as by his limbs and gait seemed to have been some considerable
person in his time, and to retain yet some remains of his once
prodigious strength. Also, instead of those rich robes in which king
Alcinous had clothed him, she threw over his limbs such old and
tattered rags as wandering beggars usually wear. A staff support