He spoke to her: Strange woman — to you beyond all women the dwellers on Olympus have given a heart that cannot be softened. No other woman would harden her heart like this and hold off from her husband who has come back in the twentieth year. Come, nurse — make me a bed so that I may lie alone; for the heart in this woman's breast is iron. Wise Penelope answered: Strange man — I am not proud or scornful, nor am I too much amazed. I know very well what you were like when you sailed from Ithaca. But come, Euryclea — make up the sturdy bed outside the well-built chamber that he built himself. Put the sturdy bedstead out there for him, and throw bedding on it — fleeces and cloaks and bright blankets.
She spoke, testing her husband. Odysseus spoke in anger: Wife, this word wounds me deep. Who has moved my bed elsewhere? That would be hard even for one well skilled, unless a god himself came and set it in another place. Among men no living being could easily pry it up — for a great sign is built into the bed. I built it; no one else. A long-leaved olive grew inside the enclosure, thick as a pillar. I built my chamber around it with close-set stones, roofed it, and put on close-fitting doors. Then I cut off the leafy top, trimmed the stump from the root, smoothed it with bronze, and made a bedpost of it; I bored it with the auger. Beginning from that I shaped the bed, inlaying it with gold and silver and ivory, and stretched across it a thong of oxhide bright with purple. So I declare this sign. But I do not know whether my bedstead is still fast in place, or whether some man has cut the olive at the base and set the bed elsewhere.
So he spoke, and her knees and heart went loose as she recognized the sure signs. She burst into tears and ran to him, threw her arms about his neck, kissed his head, and said: Do not be angry with me, Odysseus. The gods granted us misery — they begrudged our remaining together to enjoy our youth and come to old age. So do not be angry that I did not embrace you when I first saw you. My heart always dreaded that some man would come and deceive me with words. Helen of Argos would not have lain with a man from another country if she had known the Achaeans would bring her home. Yet a god drove her to the shameless deed from which grief first came to us also. But now, since you have told the clear signs of our bed, which no other mortal has seen — only you and I and one handmaid, Actoris, who kept the doors of our bridal chamber — you persuade my heart, though it has been very stubborn.
So she spoke, and stirred in him a still greater desire for lamentation. He wept as he held his beloved wife, whose heart was true. As when welcome land appears to swimmers — Poseidon has smashed their ship on the sea, and few have escaped by swimming to the shore; thick brine is caked on their bodies, and gladly they set foot on land — so she was glad to look on her husband, and her white arms would never quite let go his neck. Rosy-fingered Dawn would have appeared while they wept, if gray-eyed Athena had not thought of something else. She held the long night back at the end, and kept golden-throned Dawn at Ocean, and would not let her yoke the swift-footed horses that bring light to men.
Then resourceful Odysseus spoke to his wife: Wife, we have not yet come to the end of all our trials. There is still left one measureless labor, long and hard, that I must complete. So the spirit of Teiresias foretold when I went down into the house of Hades. But come — let us to bed, so that we may take our joy resting under the spell of sweet sleep. The bed will be yours whenever you wish, wise Penelope answered, now that the gods have brought you back. But since you have thought of it, tell me of this trial; later I shall hear of it, and it will be no worse to know at once.
Strange woman, Odysseus answered, why urge me so? Yet I will hide nothing. Your heart will have no joy in it. Teiresias told me to go to many cities carrying a well-fitted oar, until I come to men who do not know the sea and do not eat food mixed with salt — who know nothing of ships or oars. When another traveler says I have a winnowing-fan on my shoulder, I must plant my oar in the earth and sacrifice to Poseidon — a ram, a bull, and a boar — then go home and offer hecatombs to all the deathless gods in order. Death would come to me away from the sea, the gentlest of deaths, in rich old age, with my people prosperous about me. If the gods give you a happier old age, Penelope said, there is hope of escape from evils.