than he who they tell me is my father."

And Minerva said, "There is no fear of your race dying out yet,
while Penelope has such a fine son as you are. But tell me, and
tell me true, what is the meaning of all this feasting, and who
are these people? What is it all about? Have you some banquet,
or is there a wedding in the family--for no one seems to be
bringing any provisions of his own? And the guests--how
atrociously they are behaving; what riot they make over the
whole house; it is enough to disgust any respectable person who
comes near them."

"Sir," said Telemachus, "as regards your question, so long as my
father was here it was well with us and with the house, but the
gods in their displeasure have willed it otherwise, and have
hidden him away more closely than mortal man was ever yet
hidden. I could have borne it better even though he were dead,
if he had fallen with his men before Troy, or had died with
friends around him when the days of his fighting were done; for
then the Achaeans would have built a mound over his ashes, and I
should myself have been heir to his renown; but now the
storm-winds have spirited him away we know not whither; he is
gone without leaving so much as a trace behind him, and I
inherit nothing but dismay. Nor does the matter end simply with
grief for the loss of my father; heaven has laid sorrows upon me
of yet another kind; for the chiefs from all our islands,
Dulichium, Same, and the woodland island of Zacynthus, as also
all the principal men of Ithaca itself, are eating up my house
under the pretext of paying their court to my mother, who will
neither point blank say that she will not marry, {7} nor yet