Odysseus interrogating Penelope in dramatization of Homer's Odyssey
Odysseus convinces Penelope that he is her husband by knowing a particular and secret detail of the construction of their bed.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
-
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Learn more about women writers of the Harlem Renaissance.
-
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Alice Walker published The Color Purple in 1982. With it, she became the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
-
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.And how do you really pronounce Telemachus?Media Editor: Kira Helm
-
Contunico © ZDF Studios GmbH, Mainz; Thumbnail © Leonid Andronov/Dreamstime.com; Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Purchased with the support of the F.G. Waller-Fonds; Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Learn about Troy.
-
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Learn about the reunion of Penelope and Odysseus in this excerpt from a dramatization of Homer's Odyssey, Book XXIII, where, assured at last that it is her husband, Odysseus, who stands before her, Penelope explains her earlier reluctance to greet him.
-
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.“Tell me, Muse…”Media Editors: Meg Matthias , Lee Goldstein
-
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Watch as Homer plunges the reader into the saga of Odysseus's return from the war.
Transcript
ODYSSEUS: Woman, what you have just said wounds me to the heart.
Who has moved my bed? It would be difficult
to move without a miracle.
There was an olive-tree inside the site of my house,
well-grown, with flourishing leaves, and a trunk as thick as a pillar.
Round this I built the bedroom, adding the door and the roof,
and then I cut the leaves and branches of the olive,
smoothed down the trunk and straightened it and cut it square;
and this I made the bedpost, rooted in the ground.
Now I do not know
if my bed is still in place. Has anyone
cut through the trunk of the solid tree, and moved it away?
Who has moved my bed? It would be difficult
to move without a miracle.
There was an olive-tree inside the site of my house,
well-grown, with flourishing leaves, and a trunk as thick as a pillar.
Round this I built the bedroom, adding the door and the roof,
and then I cut the leaves and branches of the olive,
smoothed down the trunk and straightened it and cut it square;
and this I made the bedpost, rooted in the ground.
Now I do not know
if my bed is still in place. Has anyone
cut through the trunk of the solid tree, and moved it away?