Athena pleads for Odysseus

5Athena, the blue-eyed goddess, thus replied: —
“O father, son of Cronus, king of kings!
Well he deserved his death. So perish all
Guilty of deeds like his! But I am grieved
For sage Odysseus, that most wretched man,
So long detained, repining, and afar
From those he loves, upon a distant isle
Girt by the waters of the central deep —
A forest isle, where dwells a deity
The daughter of wise Atlas, him who knows
The ocean to its utmost depths, and holds
Upright the lofty columns which divide
The earth from heaven. The daughter there detains
The unhappy chieftain, and with flattering words
Would win him to forget his Ithaca.
Meanwhile, impatient to behold the smokes
That rise from hearths in his own land, he pines
And willingly would die. Is not your heart,
Olympics, touched by this? And did he not
Pay grateful sacrifice to you beside
The Argive fleet in the broad realm of Troy?
Why then, O Zeus, are you so wroth with him?”

6Then answered cloud-compelling Zeus: “My child,
What words have passed your lips? Can I forget
Godlike Odysseus, who in gifts of mind
Excels all other men, and who has brought
Large offerings to the gods that dwell in heaven?
Yet he who holds the earth in his embrace,
Poseidon, pursues him with perpetual hate
Because of Polypheme, the Cyclops, strong
Beyond all others of his giant race,
Whose eye Odysseus had put out. The nymph
Thoosa brought him forth —a daughter she
Of Phorcys, ruling in the barren deep —
And in the covert of overhanging rocks
She met with Poseidon. For this cause the god
Who shakes the shores, although he slay him not,
Sends forth Odysseus wandering far away
From his own country. Let us now consult
Together and provide for his return,
And Poseidon will lay by his wrath, for vain
It were for one like him to strive alone
Against the might of all the immortal gods.”

7And then the blue-eyed Athena spoke again: —
“O father! son of Cronus, king of kings!
If such the pleasure of the blessed gods
That now the wise Odysseus shall return
To his own land, let us at once despatch
Hermes, the Argicide, our messenger,
Down to Ogygia, to the bright-haired nymph,
And make our steadfast purpose known to bring
The sufferer Odysseus to his home,
And I will haste to Ithaca, and move
His son, that with a resolute heart he call
The long-haired Greeks together and forbid
The excesses of the suitor train, who slay
His flocks and slow-paced beeves with crooked horns.
To Sparta I will send him and the sands
Of Pylos, to inquire for the return
Of his dear father. So a glorious fame
Shall gather round him in the eyes of men.”