The Odyssey of Homer in English

BOOK 24

BOOK XXIV Hermes of Kyllene summoned the souls of the suitors to come forth, and in his hands he was holding the beautiful golden staff, with which he mazes the eyes of those mortals whose eyes he would maze, or wakes again the sleepers. Herding 5 them on with this, he led them along, and they followed, gibbering.

BOOK 23

BOOK XXIII The old woman, laughing loudly, went to the upper chamber to tell her mistress that her beloved husband was inside the house. Her knees moved swiftly, but her feet were tottering. She stood above Penelope's head and spoke a word to her: 5 ‘Wake, Penelope, dear child, so that, with your own eyes, you can see what all your days you have been longing for.

BOOK 22

BOOK XXII Now resourceful Odysseus stripped his rags from him, and sprang up atop the great threshold, holding his bow and the quiver filled with arrows, and scattered out the swift shafts before him on the ground next his feet, and spoke his word to the suitors: 5 ‘Here is a task that has been achieved, without any deception.

BOOK 21

BOOK XXI But now the goddess, gray-eyed Athene, put it in the mind of the daughter of Ikarios, circumspect Penelope, to set the bow before the suitors, and the gray iron, in the house of Odysseus: the contest, the beginning of the slaughter. 5 So she ascended the high staircase of her own house, and in her solid hand took up the beautiful, brazen and artfully curved key, with an ivory handle upon it.

BOOK 20

BOOK XX Then the noble Odysseus bedded down in the forecourt, and spread beneath him the raw hide of an ox, and uppermost many fleeces of sheep the Achaians had dedicated.