-7^] THE GREAT BOW 317

stout spear as earnest of a friendship that he hoped to cherish.
But before the two could meet as host and guest, the Son of
Zeus had killed the heroic Iphitus, the giver of the bow. This
bow Odyseus never took on board with him when he sailed to
the "wars but laid it up at home in memory of a treasured friend,
though he did use it on his own estate.

The Queen reached the store-room and mounted the oaken
threshold - the work of some carpenter of bygone days, whose
adze had smoothed it well and trued it to the line, and whose
hands had fixed the doorposts too in their sockets and hung the
polished doors upon them. She quickly undid the thong at-
tached to the door-knob, passed the key through the hole, and
with a well-aimed thrust shot back the bolt. The key did its
work. With a groan like the roar of a bull at grass in a meadow,
the doors flew open before her, and she stepped onto the raised
boarding of the floor. Here stood the chests where clothing was
laid by in scented herbs. But Penelope, rising on tiptoe, fetched
the bow down from its peg in the shining case that covered it.
And there she sat down with the case on her knees and burst into
sobs as she drew out her husband's bow. But when the abun-
dance other tears had brought its own relief, she set out for the
hall to face the proud lords who were courting her, carrying the
bow and the quiver with its deadly load of arrows in her arms,
while the women followed with a box full of the iron and
bronze implements that their master had employed for games of
skill. Then, veiling her cheeks with a fold other bright head-
dress, the noble lady took her stand by a pillar of the massive
rootand without further ado issued her challenge to the Suitors:

€ Listen, my lords. You have fastened on this house, in the long
absence of its master, as the scene of your perpetual feasts, and
you could offer no better pretext for your conduct than your
wish to win my hand in marriage. That being the prize, come
forward now, my gallant lords; for I challenge you to try your
skill on the great bow of King Odysseus. And whichever man
among you proves the handiest at stringing the bow and shoots
an arrow through every one of these twelve axes, with that man