2.267–320

Leokrites has spoken for the local citizens and Antinous for the suitors, neither holding out much hope for Odysseus’s return or voicing any support for Telemachus. He is on his own, except for Athena, exactly the situation we will find Odysseus in when we meet him in Book 5. As he makes his way to Pylos and then Sparta, Telemachus will learn about Odysseus. In the process, he will grow up by leaving his mother’s protection and entering his father’s world, as every young man must do to reach maturity. He will begin to show signs of his genetic inheritance, responding to people and events along his journey in ways that foreshadow Odysseus’s behavior.

We can understand these parallels from inside the story, what we expect of a father and son. But we can also see in the portrait of Telemachus another example of the poet’s use of repeated forms to create meaning through accretion. Repetition occurs, as we have seen, on many levels throughout the poem, of single words, phrases, verses and groups of verses, of entire scenes and large-scale narrative patterns. The poet’s method in all these cases is to use the repeated elements to build up thematic associations that suggest parallels. Each time a repeated element appears in a different context, it picks up additional resonance.

The portrait of individual heroes is the product of the same kind of layering of repeated characteristics. In the Iliad, we see the uniqueness of Achilles in Books 19–22 against the background of what he shares with the figure of Diomedes as the latter appears in Books 5 and 6. When Achilles withdraws from the Greek camp and refuses to fight, Diomedes becomes a surrogate for him, leading the charge against the Trojans. He is told by Athena that he is not to fight against gods, and when Apollo warns him off, he desists (Il. 5.441–52). Later on, Achilles, enraged by Hector’s killing of Patroclus, is clogging up the river Scamander with Trojan corpses. Warned by the god of the river not to persist, he refuses and nearly dies as a result (Il. 21.214–331). Diomedes and Achilles are both fierce fighters, but Diomedes observes limits, while Achilles does not.

Penelope in the Odyssey can be understood in the same way. Calypso, Nausicaa, Arete, Circe, the Sirens, Clytemnestra, all portray some aspects of the queen’s complex and mysterious character. Like Calypso and Circe (and perhaps in a more dangerous way, Clytemnestra), she can be seductive and controlling, as the suitors learn; when the circumstances demand it, she assumes a regal authority, standing in for the absent king as Arete does in the Phaeacian court; her awakening from passivity in Book 18 and response to the beggar in Book 19 are built on the figure of Nausicaa in Book 6. All of these characters are only partial realizations of the formidable woman Odysseus meets when he returns to Ithaka.

Likewise, we have seen that Athena/Mentes, Mentor, and Athena/Mentor are surrogates for Odysseus, standing in for him to advise his son. Telemachus joins the succession when he breaks with the suitors and the local citizens decline to help him, becoming like his father a solitary traveler aided only by Athena. Menelaus, in his own stories about coming home from Troy, becalmed in Egypt, relying on a friendly nymph, and in the future that Proteus predicts for him, foreshadows parts of Odysseus’ journey (4.351–592). Theoclymenus, the mysterious traveling seer who catches a ride to Ithaka with Telemachus, adds another shading to the portrait (15.222–81). Perhaps most important of all are the various personae that Odysseus creates before his hosts on the way home, leading lives that offer a detached perspective on the heroic identity he hopes to reaffirm in Ithaka. When Odysseus throws off his final disguise as beggar, all these approximations come together to form the remarkable figure who triumphs over the suitors and wins back his wife.

The poet signals in various ways that Telemachus is now fully committed to leaving home and pursuing Athena’s plan. When he goes to the seashore to call on the mysterious god who came to him disguised as Mentes, Athena returns, as Mentor this time. The parallels to Achilles summoning his mother Thetis in Book 1 of the Iliad (see above, p.5) are again instructive. Achilles’s mother offers no resistance to her son’s self-destructive attitude toward his comrades. She will go to Zeus and see to it that the Greeks suffer—and in some cases, die—because they will not accede to his demands. Athena’s response is more constructive. She expects Telemachus to live up to his genetic inheritance:

"Τηλέμαχ᾽, οὐδ᾽ ὄπιθεν κακὸς ἔσσεαι οὐδ᾽ ἀνοήμων,
εἰ δή τοι σοῦ πατρὸς ἐνέστακται μένος ἠύ,
οἷος κεῖνος ἔην τελέσαι ἔργον τε ἔπος τε:
οὔ τοι ἔπειθ᾽ ἁλίη ὁδὸς ἔσσεται οὐδ᾽ ἀτέλεστος.
εἰ δ᾽ οὐ κείνου γ᾽ ἐσσὶ γόνος καὶ Πηνελοπείης,
οὐ σέ γ᾽ ἔπειτα ἔολπα τελευτήσειν, ἃ μενοινᾷς.
παῦροι γάρ τοι παῖδες ὁμοῖοι πατρὶ πέλονται,
οἱ πλέονες κακίους, παῦροι δέ τε πατρὸς ἀρείους.
ἀλλ᾽ ἐπεὶ οὐδ᾽ ὄπιθεν κακὸς ἔσσεαι οὐδ᾽ ἀνοήμων,
οὐδέ σε πάγχυ γε μῆτις Ὀδυσσῆος προλέλοιπεν,
ἐλπωρή τοι ἔπειτα τελευτῆσαι τάδε ἔργα."

"Telemachus, you are neither thoughtless nor a coward, 
if your father’s strong force is instilled in you—  
such a man he was for accomplishing words and action— 
your journey will not be in vain or go unfinished. 
But if you are not his offspring and Penelope’s, 
I have no hope that you will accomplish what you intend. 
For few children turn out to be the equal of their fathers; 
more of them are worse, and only a few are better. 
But since you are neither thoughtless nor a coward, 
and the mind of Odysseus has not entirely given out in you, 
then I have some hope that you will accomplish these things."

Odyssey 2.270–80

Athena’s support, unlike Thetis’s, has conditions. She will help Telemachus if he steps up to his father’s legacy.

Antinous tries to draw Telemachus back into the fold. Why not eat and drink with the suitors as he used to do? But the young man’s blood is up. When he was a child (νήπιος, 313), he was willing to let them eat up his possessions; now he is grown up (μέγας εἰμὶ, 314); he has heard the truth and he understands, so he will be sailing soon. He shucks off Antinous’s chummy grip and vows to destroy the suitors, either by going to Pylos or at home. But he will go. This new assertiveness draws nervous speculation from the suitors: maybe he will bring back reinforcements from Pylos or go on to Ephyre to get poison for their wine; better yet, maybe he will die and they can divide up his possessions.

Done with sparring, Telemachus calls his childhood nanny Eurykleia to his father’s storeroom, to pack up supplies for the journey. The old woman is alarmed. Why is he leaving home? The suitors would have killed Odysseus when he returned, but he is already dead, and they will do the same to Telemachus. Telemachus recognizes the voice of his mother here, and orders Eurykleia not to reveal his absence to Penelope for eleven or twelve days. Odysseus too will silence Eurykleia, when she sees his scar in Book Nineteen and is about to identify him, thus blowing his disguise. He orders her to keep his secret, even from Penelope. This exchange affirms what the poet has been building toward since the assembly, putting Telemachus in his father’s place as a lone, endangered traveler on a crucial mission, which must begin with his separation from Penelope.

Further Reading

Edwards, M. 1987. Homer, Poet of the Iliad, 61–71. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Van Nortwick, T. 2008. The Unknown Odysseus: Alternate Worlds in Homer’s Odyssey, 74–78. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.