"How shameful! That’s the bed
of a brave man of war they’d like to crawl inside,
those spineless, craven cowards!
Weak as the doe that beds down her fawns
in a mighty lion’s den – her newborn sucklings –
then trails off to the mountain spurs and grassy bends
to graze her fill, but back the lion comes to his own lair
and the master deals both fawns a ghastly bloody death,
just what Odysseus will deal that mob – ghastly death."
– Homer
The Odyssey, Book 17, lines 132-140. Telemachus repeats to Penelope what Menelaus said to him about the suitors attempting to crawl inside the marriage bed of a brave warrior. Menelaus makes a prediction that Odysseus will punish the suitors with "ghastly death," foreshadowing their bloody end at the hands of Odysseus. In an epic simile, Penelope’s suitors are compared to fawns and Odysseus to a powerful lion into whose lair they have stumbled.