Athena Unveiled

30He spoke; the blue-eyed goddess, Athena, smiled,
And touched the chief caressingly. She seemed
A beautiful and stately woman now,
Such as are skilled in works of rare device,
And thus she said to him in winged words: —

31“Full shrewd were he, a master of deceit,
Who should surpass you in the ways of craft,
Even though he were a god —you unabashed
And prompt with shifts, and measureless in wiles!
You can not even in your own land refrain
From artful figments and misleading words,
As you have practised from your birth. But now
Speak we of other matters, for we both
Are skilled in stratagem. You are the first
Of living men in counsel and in speech,
And I am famed for foresight and for craft
Among the immortals. Do you not yet know
Athena, child of Zeus, whose aid
Is present to defend you in all time
Of peril, and but lately gained for you
The favor of the whole Phaeacian race?
And hither am I come to frame for you
Wise counsels, and to hide away the stores
Given by the opulent Phaeacian chiefs
At your departure. I shall also tell
What you must yet endure beneath the roof
Of your own palace, by the will of fate.
Yet bear it bravely, since you must, nor speak
To any man or woman of yourself
And of your wandering hither, but submit
To many things that grieve you, silently,
And bear indignities from violent men.”

32Odysseus, the sagacious, thus rejoined:
“O goddess, it is hard for mortal man
To know you when he meets you, though his sight
Be of the sharpest, for you put on
At pleasure any form. Yet this I know,
That you were kind to me when we, the sons
Of Greece, were warring in the realm of Troy.
But when we had overthrown the lofty town
Of Priam, and embarked, and when some god
Had scattered the Achaians, after that,
Daughter of Zeus, I never saw you more,
Never perceived you entering my barque
And guarding me from danger —but I roamed
Ever from place to place, my heart weighed down
By sorrow, till the gods delivered me,
And till your counsels in the opulent realm
Of the Phaeacians brought my courage back,
And you yourself did guide me to the town.
And now in your great father’s name I pray —
For yet I cannot think that I am come
To pleasant Ithaca, but have been thrown
Upon some other coast, and fear that you
Are jesting with me, and have spoken thus
But to deceive me —tell me, is it true
That I am in my own beloved land?”

33And then the goddess, blue-eyed Athena, said:
“Such ever are your thoughts, and therefore I
Must not forsake you in your need. I know
How prompt your speech, how quick your thought, how shrewd
Your judgment. If another man had come
From such long wanderings, he had flown at once
Delighted to his children and his wife
In his own home. But you desire not
To ask or hear of them till you have put
Your consort to the trial of her truth —
Her who now sits within your halls and waits
In vain for you, and in perpetual grief
And weeping wears her nights and days away.
I never doubted —well, in truth, I knew
That you, with all your comrades lost, would reach
Your country, but I dreaded to withstand
My father’s brother Poseidon, who was wroth,
And fiercely wroth, for that you had deprived
His well-beloved son of sight. But now
Attend, and I will show you Ithaca
By certain tokens; mark them and believe.
The port of Phorcys, Ancient of the Deep,
Is here; and there the spreading olive-tree,
Just at the haven’s head; and, close beside,
The cool dark grotto, sacred to the nymphs
Called Naiads —a wide-vaulted cave where once
You came oft with chosen hecatombs,
An offering to the nymphs —and here you see
The mountain Neritus with all his woods.”