Book 4
With these words she made her mistress leave off crying, and dried the tears from her eyes. Penelope washed her face, changed her dress, and went upstairs with her maids. She then put some bruised barley into a basket and began praying to Athena.
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"Hear me," she cried, "Daughter of Aegis-bearing Zeus, unweariable. If ever Odysseus while he was here burned you fat thigh bones of sheep or heifer, bear it in mind now as in my favor, and save my darling son from the villainy of the suitors."
She cried aloud as she spoke, and the goddess heard her prayer; meanwhile the suitors were clamorous throughout the covered room, and one of them said:
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"The queen is preparing for her marriage with one or other of us. Little does she dream that her son has now been doomed to die."
This was what they said, but they did not know what was going to happen. Then Antinoos said, "Comrades, let there be no loud talking, lest some of it get carried inside. Let us be up and do that in silence, about which we are all of a mind."
He then chose [krînô] twenty men, and they went down to their ship and to the sea side; they drew the vessel into the water and got her mast and sails inside her; they bound the oars to the thole-pins with twisted thongs of leather, all in due course, and spread the white sails aloft, while their fine servants brought them their armor. Then they made the ship fast a little way out, came on shore again, got their suppers, and waited till night should fall.
But Penelope lay in her own room upstairs unable to eat or drink, and wondering whether her brave son would escape, or be overpowered by the wicked suitors. Like a lioness caught in the toils with huntsmen hemming her in on every side she thought and thought till she sank into a slumber, and lay on her bed bereft of thought and motion.
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Then Athena bethought her of another matter, and made a vision in the likeness of Penelope's sister Iphthime daughter of Ikarios who had married Eumelos and lived in Pherai. She told the vision to go to the house of Odysseus, and to make Penelope leave off crying, so it came into her room by the hole through which the thong went for pulling the door to, and hovered over her head, saying,
"You are asleep, Penelope: the gods who live at ease will not suffer you to weep and be so sad. Your son has done them no wrong, so he will yet come back to you."
