The suitors turned to lovely dance and song, taking their pleasure. They waited for evening to come. Dark evening found them still at their pleasure. Then they set up three braziers in the halls to give light, and piled dry wood around them, long seasoned and dry, newly split with the bronze. They mixed the light of the fire with torches.
“Maids of Odysseus, who has been so long away — go to the room where your honored queen is. Twist yarn beside her, amuse her, sitting in the hall, or comb wool with your hands. I will supply light for all these men. Even if they wish to wait for Dawn of the fair throne, they will not outlast me. I am much-enduring.”
So he spoke. The maids laughed among themselves and glanced at one another. Fair-cheeked Melantho abused him shamefully. Dolius had fathered her, but Penelope had raised her and treated her as her own child, and given her playthings to her heart’s desire. Even so Melantho felt no sorrow for Penelope. She loved Eurymachus and was his lover.
She abused Odysseus with cutting words: “Wretched stranger — you must be knocked silly. Why not go sleep at the smithy, or the public lounge, instead of talking big here before many men? Have you no shame? Wine has hold of your wits, or else your mind is always like this — you babble nonsense. Are you beside yourself because you beat that tramp Irus?”
Odysseus scowled and said, “I will go tell Telemachus what you say, you bitch — how you talk. He will cut you apart limb from limb on the spot.” With that threat he scattered the women. They fled through the hall, and the limbs of each went loose with fear — they thought he spoke truth.
Athena would not let the proud suitors hold back from painful insult, so that pain might sink still deeper into Odysseus’s heart. Eurymachus son of Polybus began to speak, mocking Odysseus and setting his companions laughing:
“Hear me, suitors of the famous queen, while I say what my heart bids. This man comes to Odysseus’s house by a god’s guidance. At least it looks that way. Torches seem to shine from his head — there is not a hair on it.”
Odysseus answered with a plan in mind: “Eurymachus, if only we two could contend in work in the early summer, when the days are long — in a hay meadow — I with a well-curved scythe in my hands, and you with one like it, so we could test our work, fasting till dusk, with plenty of grass still left.”
So he spoke. Eurymachus’s anger burned hotter. He scowled and shot back: “Wretch, I will soon make you pay for talking bold among many men. Courage has hold of you — or wine has eaten your wits — or you always babble this way. Are you beside yourself because you beat that tramp Irus?” He seized a footstool.
The suitors broke into uproar through the shadowy halls. Looking at his neighbor, one would say, “I wish that stranger had died elsewhere on his wanderings before he came here. Then he would not have raised such a din. Now we quarrel over beggars. There will be no pleasure in the fine feast, since worse things win.”