Odyssey 1.113 · Book 1, lines 113–118
Telemachus dreams his father home
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τὴν δὲ πολὺ πρῶτος ἴδε Τηλέμαχος θεοειδής, ἧστο γὰρ ἐν μνηστῆρσι φίλον τετιημένος ἦτορ, ὀσσόμενος πατέρʼ ἐσθλὸν ἐνὶ φρεσίν, εἴ ποθεν ἐλθὼν μνηστήρων τῶν μὲν σκέδασιν κατὰ δώματα θείη, τιμὴν δʼ αὐτὸς ἔχοι καὶ δώμασιν οἷσιν ἀνάσσοι. τὰ φρονέων, μνηστῆρσι μεθήμενος, εἴσιδʼ Ἀθήνην.
Godlike Telemachus saw her far the first; for he was sitting among the suitors, grieved in his own heart, envisioning his noble father in his mind — if only he might come from somewhere and make a scattering of the suitors through the halls, and himself hold the honor and be lord over his own house. Pondering these things, seated among the suitors, he caught sight of Athena.
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The setting
Among the suitors sits the son of the house: Telemachus, now about twenty, who has never known his father. He is the first to see the stranger at the door — because he is the only one looking.
A note on this passage
Our first sight of Telemachus is an interior: a boy sitting in his own hall like an outsider, heart aching, seeing his father in his mind's eye — ὀσσόμενος is visionary seeing, not memory, for he has no memories of the man — imagining the day his father walks in, scatters the suitors, and takes back honor and house.
The daydream is the plot of the poem's final books, dreamed in advance and marked as fantasy: 'from somewhere,' and a string of optatives — the mood of wish, not plan. What the boy cannot yet do is act. And the answer arrives inside the dream itself: pondering these things, he catches sight of Athena. The fantasy of the father is interrupted by the god who will make it real — beginning not with Odysseus but with him. It matters, too, that he alone sees her: in this house, grief is what pays attention.
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