Odyssey 1.360 · Book 1, lines 360–365
Penelope withdraws; the suitors clamor
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ἡ μὲν θαμβήσασα πάλιν οἶκόνδε βεβήκει· παιδὸς γὰρ μῦθον πεπνυμένον ἔνθετο θυμῷ. ἐς δʼ ὑπερῷʼ ἀναβᾶσα σὺν ἀμφιπόλοισι γυναιξὶ κλαῖεν ἔπειτʼ Ὀδυσῆα φίλον πόσιν, ὄφρα οἱ ὕπνον ἡδὺν ἐπὶ βλεφάροισι βάλε γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη. μνηστῆρες δʼ ὁμάδησαν ἀνὰ μέγαρα σκιόεντα,
She, astonished, went back to her rooms; for she laid up her son's prudent word in her heart. Going up to the upper chamber with her handmaid women, she wept then for Odysseus, her dear husband, until bright-eyed Athena cast sweet sleep upon her eyelids. And the suitors clamored throughout the shadowy halls,
Word by word
The setting
Astonished, Penelope obeys and goes back upstairs — she has taken her son's prudent word to heart. In her chamber, among her women, she weeps for Odysseus until Athena casts sweet sleep on her eyes. Below, the suitors break into an uproar through the shadowed halls.
A note on this passage
The scene closes on the mother's obedience. Penelope is astonished — the word marks how strange it is to hear such a speech from her boy — but she goes, taking his prudent word to heart. Upstairs, out of the men's hall, she does what she came down grieving over: she weeps for Odysseus until the goddess mercifully closes her eyes.
The last line turns the camera. While the wife weeps herself to sleep over her husband, the suitors erupt into an uproar in the shadowed hall below — the men eating the house alive, loud where she is silenced. Homer sets the private grief and the public riot in the same breath, and the epithet σκιόεντα, ‘shadowy,’ falls over the whole hall like the trouble that fills it. Athena's sleep is a small kindness inside a house that is not safe.
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