perfection. Besides we cannot go after the other women whom we
should marry in due course, but for the way in which she treats
us."

Then Telemachus said, "Eurymachus, and you other suitors, I
shall say no more, and entreat you no further, for the gods and
the people of Ithaca now know my story. Give me, then, a ship
and a crew of twenty men to take me hither and thither, and I
will go to Sparta and to Pylos in quest of my father who has so
long been missing. Some one may tell me something, or (and
people often hear things in this way) some heaven-sent message
may direct me. If I can hear of him as alive and on his way home
I will put up with the waste you suitors will make for yet
another twelve months. If on the other hand I hear of his
death, I will return at once, celebrate his funeral rites with
all due pomp, build a barrow to his memory, and make my mother
marry again."

With these words he sat down, and Mentor {20} who had been a
friend of Ulysses, and had been left in charge of everything
with full authority over the servants, rose to speak. He, then,
plainly and in all honesty addressed them thus:

"Hear me, men of Ithaca, I hope that you may never have a kind
and well-disposed ruler any more, nor one who will govern you
equitably; I hope that all your chiefs henceforward may be cruel
and unjust, for there is not one of you but has forgotten
Ulysses, who ruled you as though he were your father. I am not
half so angry with the suitors, for if they choose to do
violence in the naughtiness of their hearts, and wager their