Homer’sThe Odyssey

At dawn Telemachus rises, dresses, and does something no one on Ithaca has done since his father sailed for Troy: he calls the island to assembly. The heralds cry, the men gather in the agora, and for the first time in twenty years the people of Ithaca sit together as a kingdom, not a territory the suitors have carved up between themselves.

The old lord Aegyptius opens the meeting. He has not seen an assembly since Odysseus left. He does not know who has called this one — and when Telemachus rises to speak, taking the herald’s sceptre in his hand, the crowd stirs. This is the boy. Everyone knows him. No one has ever heard him speak like a man.

“No enemy army threatens us. I have no public matter to lay before you. This is my own grief — a double blow that has fallen on my house.”

Telemachus denounces the suitors before the whole island. They are eating his house to ruin, he says. They dishonour his mother. And they have not the decency to court her properly — to go to her father’s house, as custom demands, and offer gifts.

But the suitors have an answer. Antinous, the boldest among them, rises and turns the accusation around. It is not the suitors who are to blame, he says. It is Penelope. For three years she has been deceiving them all — promising to choose a husband once she finished weaving a funeral shroud for old Laertes, while secretly unravelling her work each night. Put the trick in order.

In the middle of the argument, Zeus sends a sign. Two eagles sweep down from the mountains, circle the assembly, and tear at each other’s throats and cheeks. Then they wheel eastward and vanish. The crowd watches, uneasy.

Old Halitherses — the finest reader of birds on Ithaca — rises and speaks plainly. Odysseus is coming home. He will return and bring ruin on every suitor in this hall. Leave now, he tells them, while you still can.

The suitors laugh. Eurymachus mocks the old man: go home and prophesy for your children, not for us. Birds are just birds. But are they?

The assembly achieves nothing. The suitors refuse to leave. They refuse Telemachus a ship. They tell him to sit down, eat, and accept his lot.

But Athena is not finished. Disguised as Mentor, an old friend of Odysseus, she finds Telemachus on the shore and tells him not to despair. She will arrange the ship herself. She will find the crew. All he must do is pack provisions — wine in jars, barley in leather bags — and come to the harbour at nightfall.

That evening, while the suitors pour their wine and settle into another feast they have not paid for, Telemachus tells his old nurse Eurycleia to prepare the stores. She weeps — she begs him not to go. His father was lost at sea; why should the son follow? But Telemachus swears her to silence. Do not tell my mother until I have been gone twelve days.

At midnight, Athena sends a deep sleep over the suitors. Telemachus walks down to the harbour, boards the ship, takes his place at the stern. The moorings are cast off. Athena sends a favouring wind. The dark sail fills. The oars dip. And a boy who has never left home sails into the night toward whatever news of his father the world may hold.

“A following wind, dark as wine, sang in the canvas. The water hissed along the keel, and the ship cut through the swell.”

Did you follow the voyage?

Five questions from the assembly. Answer to see where each one leads.