while Ulysses, as long as his arrows lasted, had been shooting the suitors one by one, and they fell thick on one another: when his arrows gave out, he set the bow to stand against the end wall of the house by the door post, and hung a shield four hides thick about his shoulders; on his comely head he set his helmet, well wrought with a crest of horse-hair that nodded menacingly above it,[1] and he grasped two redoubtable bronze-shod spears.
126Now there was a trap door[2] on the wall, while at one end of the pavement[3] there was an exit leading to a narrow passage, and this exit was closed by a well made door. Ulysses told Philœtius to stand by this door and guard it, for only one person could attack it at a time. But Agelaus shouted out, "Cannot some one go up to the trap door and tell the people what is going on? Help would come at once, and we should soon make an end of this man and his shooting."
135"This may not be, Agelaus," answered Melanthius, "the mouth of the narrow passage is dangerously near the entrance to the outer court. One brave man could prevent any number from getting in. But I know what I will do, I will bring you arms from the store-room, for I am sure it is there that Ulysses and his son have put them."
142On this the goatherd Melanthius went by back passages to the store-room of Ulysses' house. There he chose twelve shields, with as many helmets and spears, and brought them back as fast as he could to give them to the suitors.[4] Ulysses'
- ↑ cf. Il. III. 337 and three other places. It is strange that the author of the Iliad should find a little horse-hair so alarming. Possibly enough he was merely borrowing a common form line from some earlier poet—or poetess—for this is a woman's line rather than a man's.
- ↑ Or perhaps simply "window." See plan in the appendix.
- ↑ i.e. the pavement on which Ulysses was standing.
- ↑ The interpretation of lines 126—143 is most dubious, and at best we are in a region of melodrama: cf., however, i. 425, &c. from which it appears that there was a tower in the outer court, and that Telemachus used to sleep in it. The ὀρσοθὐρα I take to be a door, or trap door, leading on to the roof above Telemachus's bed room, which we
