When first light broke, Telemachus laced his sandals, seized a stout spear, and set his mind on the town. He spoke to the swineherd: “Old friend, I am going to the city to face my mother. I know she will not stop weeping until she sees me herself. This is my charge for you: lead this unhappy stranger to town so he may beg there. Whoever wishes may give him a scrap and a cup. I cannot take on every wanderer myself — I have too many troubles of my own. If the stranger is angry, it will go worse for him. I like to speak plain truth.”
Odysseus answered, “Friend, I do not ask to stay. Better for a beggar to ask his meal in town than in the fields. I am too old to crouch by every farmyard waiting for a handout. Go. I will follow this man as you order — once I have warmed myself at the fire and the sun is higher. These clothes are wretched. The morning frost could finish me.”
He led Theoclymenus to his own halls. There they laid their cloaks on chairs, went to the bath, and washed. Maids rubbed them with oil and put tunics and woolen cloaks about them. They left the bathing rooms and sat. A maid poured water for their hands from a golden pitcher into a silver basin. She set a polished table.
“Telemachus, I will go upstairs and lie on that bitter bed I have watered with tears since Odysseus left for Troy with Atreus’s sons. You did not choose to tell me clearly, before the suitors came back to this house, whether you had heard anything of your father’s return.”
Her son answered, “Mother, I will tell you the truth. We went to Pylos and saw Nestor. He took me into his house and treated me as a father treats a son just home from abroad. Yet he said he had heard nothing of Odysseus, living or dead, from any man on earth. He sent me on with horses and a chariot to Menelaus, son of Atreus.”
“‘So — cowards want to sleep in a brave man’s bed. As when a doe leaves twin fawns in a lion’s den and goes to graze the ridges, and the lion returns and makes a cruel end of both — so will Odysseus make a cruel end of those men.”
So he spoke, and stirred his mother’s heart. Then Theoclymenus said to her: “Honored wife of Odysseus, Telemachus does not see clearly in this. Listen to me. I can read the signs, and I will hide nothing.”
Penelope answered, “Stranger, may it be so. If your words prove true, you will meet such gifts and kindness from me that anyone who meets you will call you blessed.”
While they talked, the suitors were throwing the discus and aiming spears at a mark on the leveled ground before Odysseus’s doors, running their usual insolent games. When it was time for dinner — the flocks had come in from every field, and the men who used to lead them were there — Medon spoke. He pleased them most among the heralds, and shared their meals. “Young men,”
Odysseus said, “I hear and understand. Let us go. If you have a stick cut ready, give it to me for the road — you say it is rough.” He slung his miserable tattered wallet over his shoulder by its cord. Eumaeus gave him a stick that suited him. The two set out, leaving the dogs and the herdsmen behind to guard the farm.