Odysseus lay in the courtyard porch on an undressed oxhide with sheepskins over it, while the women who had been going to the suitors came out laughing. Among them Melantho walked boldly, joking with the others as if the house were hers. His heart growled within him. He considered whether to spring up and kill them one by one, or let them lie with the arrogant suitors one last time. As a bitch with puppies growls and shows her teeth when she sees a stranger, so his heart growled at the evil done in his halls. He clenched his fists under the fleeces and forced himself to wait for the day Athena would choose.
He beat his breast and spoke to his heart: Endure, my heart — you endured worse on the day the Cyclops ate your brave companions, and you held on in silence until cunning brought you out of the cave. He chided his heart and checked it into endurance — as a man turns a paunch full of fat and blood this way and that over a hot fire, longing for it to roast through — so he tossed, planning evil for the suitors.
Athena came from heaven and stood over him in a woman's shape. Why are you awake, she asked, when other men sleep? This is your house; your wife is here, and your child — such a son as any man would pray for. Goddess, he answered, all that is true; yet I doubt how I shall set hands on the shameless suitors, alone against many. And if I kill them by your will and Zeus's, where shall I flee afterward from their kin?
Athena told him to trust her: even a worse ally than she would save a man — and she was a goddess who had guarded him through all his troubles. Even if fifty bands of men surrounded them eager to kill, he would drive off their cattle and sheep. Go to sleep, she said; it is a bad thing to lie awake all night, and you shall be out of your troubles before long. She shed sleep over his eyes and went back to Olympus.
While he slept, Penelope woke and sat up in her soft bed. She wept until she was sated, then prayed to Artemis: Artemis, daughter of Zeus, I wish you would shoot me dead at once, or that a storm-wind would snatch me away to the streams of Ocean, as the storm-winds carried off the daughters of Pandareus when the gods had killed their parents. Aphrodite had cared for those girls, and Hera and Artemis and Athena had given them gifts — yet the storm-winds took them to serve the dread Erinyes. So I might look on Odysseus even in the house of Hades, and not gladden the heart of a lesser man. She wept again after the prayer, longing for the husband whose fame still filled her nights.
She said that by day a person can endure grief if night brings sleep, but her misery haunted her even in dreams. That very night she had thought one like Odysseus as he left for Troy lay beside her, and she rejoiced, believing it no dream. Dawn came. Odysseus heard her weeping and wondered — it seemed as if she stood by his head and knew him. He rose, gathered the fleeces, lifted his hands, and prayed: Father Zeus, if you gods have brought me home over dry land and sea by your own will, let someone inside speak a word of omen, and outside let another sign appear from Zeus.
Zeus thundered at once from the bright clouds of a clear sky. A woman grinding corn at the mill nearby — the only one still at work, for the rest had finished and gone to rest — stopped and spoke: Father Zeus, you thunder from a clear sky with no cloud in sight — surely a sign for someone. Fulfill also the prayer I speak: may this be the last day the suitors feast in Odysseus's hall; they have worn me out grinding meal for them; may they dine now for the last time. Odysseus was glad at the omen of her speech and of the thunder, and felt that vengeance was in his hands. He gathered the oxhide and fleeces, set them on a seat in the porch, and went out into the open court under the clear sky.