Kitap 4
"I lent it him," answered Noemon. "What else could I do when a man of his position said he was in a difficulty and asked me to oblige him? I could not possibly refuse. As for those who went with him they were the best young men we have in the dêmos, and I saw Mentor go on board as leader - or some god who was exactly like him. I cannot understand it, for I saw Mentor here myself yesterday morning, and yet he was then setting out for Pylos."
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Noemon then went back to his father's house, but Antinoos and Eurymakhos were very angry. They told the others to leave off competing [athlos], and to come and sit down along with themselves. When they came, Antinoos son of Eupeithes spoke in anger. His heart was black with rage, and his eyes flashed fire as he said:
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"Good heavens, this voyage of Telemakhos is a very serious matter; we had made sure that it would come to nothing, but the young man has got away in spite of us, and with a crew picked [krînô] from the best of the dêmos, too. He will be giving us trouble presently; may Zeus destroy him with violence [biê] before he is full grown. Find me a ship, therefore, with a crew of twenty men, and I will lie in wait for him in the straits between Ithaca and Samos; he will then rue the day that he set out to try and get news of his father."
Thus did he speak, and the others applauded his saying; they then all of them went inside the buildings.
It was not long ere Penelope came to know what the suitors were plotting; for a man servant, Medon, overheard them from outside the outer court as they were laying their schemes within, and went to tell his mistress. As he crossed the threshold of her room Penelope said: "Medon, what have the suitors sent you here for? Is it to tell the maids to leave their master's business and cook dinner for them? I wish they may neither woo nor dine henceforward, neither here nor anywhere else, but let this be the very last time, for the waste you all make of my son's estate. Did not your fathers tell you when you were children how good Odysseus had been to them - never doing anything high-handed, nor speaking harshly to anybody in the dêmos? Such is the justice [dikê] of divine kings: they may take a fancy to one man and dislike another, but Odysseus never did an unjust thing by anybody - which shows what bad hearts you have, and that there is no such thing as gratitude [kharis] left in this world."
Then Medon said, "I wish, my lady, that this were all; but they are plotting something much more dreadful now - may heaven frustrate their design. They are going to try and murder Telemakhos as he is coming home from Pylos and Lacedaemon, where he has been to get news of his father."
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