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Telemachos in Ithaca

Continuing my review of ancient literature, I move now to the Odyssey. I’m reading a modern translation by Barry Powell of the “essential books,” which isn’t in verse, but is very clean and forceful, maintaining the rhythms of the Greek — so reviews say, I only know a little Greek myself — but I find it more engaging and less stuffy than some older translations I’ve read.

The poem opens, not so much with Odysseus, the “resourceful man” himself, but with his son, Telemachos, now no longer a boy, who is looking to secure his future, with or without his father. There is only a brief mention of the hero and his plight, he is “off-stage” for the moment, bereft of all his unwise or unfortunate companions, and held captive by the minor goddess Kalypso on her other-worldly island. 

The sorry fate of other Achaeans returning from the Trojan War, like Agamemnon, killed by his wife and her lover, is mentioned as Athena prepares to plead Odysseus’ case for mercy to Zeus. But first she goes to Ithaca to prod Telemachos into action. She appears as a stranger, and he treats her properly as a guest (in contrast to how his mother’s suitors treat strangers) by preparing a comfortable seat for her, as well as food and drink. He also seeks to exchange guest-gifts (a sign of hospitality) and only then asks news of his father. It’s important that he perform these duties in the proper order, providing hospitality before asking a lot of questions about the visitor. In the world of Homer (c. 800 BCE) these rules were essential hallmarks of social order, and again and again in the poem we can identify who is and who is not civilized by how they treat traveling strangers.

Athena, however, scolds Telemachos for not acting as a man and defending his own house and property from the gluttonous suitors. That is his duty also. He pleads that he can’t defeat all of them by himself, so Athena sends him to Sparta to seek news of his father, and also removes him from Ithaca because the suitors are plotting to kill him in an ambush. I note the “name tags” which are applied to Telemachos are similar to those given to Odysseus (“god-like” and “shrewd”) even though he doesn’t seem especially sharp to me. It isn’t until Athena takes her leave and flies away as an owl that he realizes he has been speaking with a goddess.