The upper rags which Ulysses wore fell from his shoulder, and his own
kingly likeness returned, when he rushed to the great hall door with bow
and quiver full of shafts, which down at his feet he poured, and in bitter
words presignified his deadly intent to the suitors. "Thus far," he said,
"this contest has been decided harmless: now for us there rests another
mark, harder to hit, but which my hands shall essay notwithstanding, if
Phoebus, god of archers, be pleased to give me the mastery." With that he
let fly a deadly arrow at Antinous, which pierced him in the throat, as he
was in the act of lifting a cup of wine to his mouth. Amazement seized the
suitors, as their great champion fell dead, and they raged highly against
Ulysses, and said that it should prove the dearest shaft which he ever let
fly, for he had slain a man whose like breathed not in any part of the
kingdom; and they flew to their arms, and would have seized the lances,
but Minerva struck them with dimness of sight that they went erring up and
down the hall, not knowing where to find them. 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