49When the servants had washed them and anointed them with oil, they brought them woollen cloaks and shirts, and the two took their seats by the side of Menelaus. A maid-servant brought them water in a beautiful golden ewer, and poured it into a silver basin for them to wash their hands; and she drew a clean table beside them. An upper servant brought them bread, and offered them many good things of what there was in the house, while the carver fetched them plates of all manner of meats and set cups of gold by their side.
59Menelaus then greeted them saying, "Fall to, and welcome; when you have done supper I shall ask who you are, for the lineage of such men as you cannot have been lost. You must be descended from a line of sceptre-bearing kings, for poor people do not have such sons as you are."
65On this he handed them[1] a piece of fat roast loin, which had been set near him as being a prime part, and they laid their hands on the good things that were before them; as soon as they had had enough to eat and drink, Telemachus said to the son of Nestor, with his head so close that no one might hear, "Look, Pisistratus, man after my own heart, see the gleam of bronze and gold—of amber,[2] ivory, and silver. Everything is so splendid that it is like seeing the palace of Olympian Jove. I am lost in admiration."
76Menelaus overheard him and said, "No one, my sons, can hold his own with Jove, for his house and everything about him is immortal; but among mortal men—well there may be another who has as much wealth as I have, or there may not; but at all events I have travelled much and have undergone much hardship, for it was nearly eight years before I could get home with my fleet. I went to Cyprus, Phœnicia and the
- ↑ From the Greek (ἐν χερσὶν ἑλών) it is plain that Menelaus took up the piece of meat with his fingers.
- ↑ Amber is never mentioned in the Iliad. Sicily, where I suppose the Odyssey to have been written, has always been, and still is one of the principal amber producing countries. It was probably the only one known in the Odyssean age. See "The Authoress of the Odyssey," Longmans 1898, p. 186.
