BOOK XXI

But now the goddess, gray-eyed Athene, put it in the mind of the daughter

of Ikarios, circumspect Penelope,

to set the bow before the suitors, and the gray iron, in the house of

Odysseus: the contest, the beginning of the slaughter.

5 So she ascended the high staircase of her own house,

and in her solid hand took up the beautiful, brazen

and artfully curved key, with an ivory handle upon it.