should lie without a shroud.' Thus I spoke; and their haughty mind was persuaded. Then during the day I wove the large web, but at night, when I had set the torches near me, I unravelled it. Thus for three years I escaped them, and persuaded the Grecians: but when the fourth year came, and the hours advanced, [the months waning, and many days were completed,] then they caught me, coming upon me through means of the women servants, careless creatures! and chided me with words. So I finished it, although against my will, by necessity; but now I neither can escape marriage, nor do I discover any other counsel: and my parents very much exhort me to marry: and my son grieves at their consuming his property, knowing [that they are doing so]: for now he is a man by all means able to take care of the house, to whom Jove gives renown. But even so tell me thy race, from whence thou art: for thou art not born of an old-fabled oak, or from a rock."
But her much-planning Ulysses addressed in answer: "O venerable wife of Ulysses, son of Laertes, wilt thou not yet cease inquiring my race? But I will tell thee; thou wilt indeed give me up to more griefs, than [those] by which I am already possessed: for this is the wont, when a man is absent from his country so long a time, as I now am, wandering over many cities of mortals, suffering griefs: but even so I will tell thee that which thou askest and inquirest of me. There is a certain land, Crete, in the middle of the dark sea, beautiful and rich, surrounded with water; and in it there are many men, numberless, and ninety cities. And there is a different language of different men, mixed together; there are in it Achaians, and magnanimous Eteocretans, and Cydonians, and crest-shaking[1] Dorians, and divine Pelasgians. And amongst them is a large city, Cnossus: there Minos reigned, who every nine years[2] conversed with mighty Jove, the father of my sire, magnanimous Deucalion. And Deucalion
- ↑ Or, "inhabiting three cities;" for some inhabited Eubœa, others Peloponnesus, and others Crete. Others say, "having three crests." Others, "shaking their crests in battle." See Eustathius.
- ↑ This is evidently the correct interpretation, as we may learn from Plato de Legg. i. p. 565. Læm., τοῦ Μίνω φοιτῶντος πρὸς τὴν τοῦ πατρὸς ἑκάστοτε συνουσίαν δι' ἐννάτον ἔτους, καὶ κατὰ τὰς παρ' ἐκείνου φήμας ταῖς πόλεσιν ὑμῖν θεντὸς τοὺς νόμους; See also Minos, p. 46. F. Dion. Chrysost. Or. i. p. 56. Cicer. Tusc. Q. ii. 13.
