The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

hour and thought she should step in before I hit the thornbush. Naturally, there was some awkwardness about it, but Tyndareus eventually came around and asked me to stay. In the course of dinner, I came to see that Penelope was twice as clever as her cousins and just as beautiful. So—” “As beautiful as Helen?” Diomedes interrupted. “Is that why she was twenty and unmarried?” Odysseus’ voice was mild. “I’m sure you would not ask a man to compare his wife unfavorably to another woman,” he said. Diomedes rolled his eyes and settled back to pick his teeth with the point of his knife. Odysseus returned to Lycomedes. “So, in the course of our conversation, when it became clear that the Lady Penelope favored me—” “Not for your looks, certainly,” Diomedes commented. “Certainly not,” Odysseus agreed. “She asked me what wedding present I would make to my bride. A wedding bed, I said, rather gallantly, of finest holm-oak. But this answer did not please her. ‘A wedding bed should not be made of dead, dry wood, but something green and living,’ she told me. ‘And what if I can make such a bed?’ I said. ‘Will you have me?’ And she said—”