Yet so infatuated were they
by the displeasure of Heaven that they did not see the imminent peril
which impended over them, but every man believed that this accident had
happened beside the intention of the doer. Fools! to think by shutting
their eyes to evade destiny, or that any other cup remained for them but
that which their great Antinous had tasted!
Then Ulysses revealed himself to all in that presence, and that he was the
man whom they held to be dead at Troy, whose palace they had usurped,
whose wife in his lifetime they had sought in impious marriage, and that
for this reason destruction was come upon them. And he dealt his deadly
arrows among them, and there was no avoiding him, nor escaping from his
horrid person; and Telemachus by his side plied them thick with those
murderous lances from which there was no retreat, till fear itself made
them valiant, and danger gave them eyes to understand the peril; then they
which had swords drew them, and some with shields, that could find them,
and some with tables and benches snatched up in haste, rose in a mass to
overwhelm and crush those two; yet they singly bestirred themselves like
men, and defended themselves against that great host, and through tables,
shields, and all, right through the arrows of Ulysses clove, and the
irresistible lances of Telemachus; and many lay dead, and all had wounds,
and Minerva in the likeness of a bird sat upon the beam which went across
the hall, clapping her wings with a fearful noise; and sometimes the great
bird would fly among them, cuffing at the swords and at the lances, and up
and down the hall would go, beating her wings, and troubling everything,
that it was frightful to behold, and it frayed the blood from the cheeks
of those heaven-hated suitors; but to Ulysses and his son she appeared in
her own divine similitude, with her snake-fringed shield, a goddess armed,
fighting their battles.
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