The Plea for Truth

26“What urgent cause, my brave Telemachus,
Brings you to sacred Lacedaemon over
The breast of the great ocean? Frankly say,
Is it a private or a public need?”

27And thus discreet Telemachus replied: —
“Atrides Menelaus, reared by Zeus,
Ruler of nations! I am come to ask
News of my father, if you know aught.
My heritage is wasting; my rich fields
Are made a desolation. Enemies
Swarm in my palace, and from day to day
Slaughter my flocks and slow-paced horned herds;
My mother’s suitors they, and measureless
Their insolence. And therefore am I come
To clasp your knees, and pray you to relate
The manner of my father’s sorrowful death
As you have seen it with your eyes, or heard
Its story from some wandering man —for sure
His mother brought him forth to wretchedness
Beyond the common lot. I ask you not
To soften aught in the sad history
Through tenderness to me, or kind regard,
But tell me plainly all that you do know;
And I beseech you, if at any time
My father, good Odysseus, brought to pass
Aught that he undertook for you in word
Or act while you were in the realm of Troy,
Where the Greeks suffered sorely, bear it now
In mind, and let me have the naked truth.”

28Then Menelaus of the amber locks
Drew a deep sigh, and thus in answer said: —
“Heavens! they would climb into a brave man’s bed,
These craven weaklings. But as when a hart
Has hid her newborn suckling fawns within
The lair of some fierce lion, and gone forth
Herself to range the mountainsides and feed
Among the grassy lawns, the lion comes
Back to the place and brings them sudden death,
So will Odysseus bring a bloody fate
Upon the suitor crew. O father Zeus,
And Athena, and Apollo! I could wish
That now, with prowess such as once was his
When he, of yore, in Lesbos nobly built,
Rising to strive with Philomela’s son,
In wrestling threw him heavily, and all
The Greeks rejoiced, Odysseus might engage
The suitors. Short were then their term of life,
And bitter would the nuptial banquet be.
Now for the questions you have put, and craved
From me a true reply, I will not seek
To pass them by with talk of other things,
Nor yet deceive you, but of all that once
Was told me by the Ancient of the Deep,
Whose words are truth, I shall keep nothing back.