Odyssey 1.178 · Book 1, lines 178–179
The goddess answers
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τὸν δʼ αὖτε προσέειπε θεά, γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη·
Athena (as Mentes) — τοιγὰρ ἐγώ τοι ταῦτα μάλʼ ἀτρεκέως ἀγορεύσω.
Then the goddess, bright-eyed Athena, answered him in turn: Well then, I will tell you all this very truly.
Word by word
The setting
The reply formula, then the first line of the disguised Athena's speech. She promises a truthful account — the same word, ἀτρεκέως, Telemachus used — before delivering her cover story.
A note on this passage
The narrator hands the floor across with a fixed reply-formula — ‘then the goddess, bright-eyed Athena, answered him’ — and Athena opens her speech by promising the plain truth, echoing the very word ἀτρεκέως that Telemachus had used.
The promise is the joke. What follows ‘very truly’ is a fabricated identity: she will claim to be Mentes, a Taphian trader. The poem enjoys this. Athena is the goddess of exactly this — the well-made, useful lie — and swearing to truth is how the disguise works. The reader, told a line back that this is Athena, watches ‘truly’ open a false tale, and the two things sit together without strain.
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Odyssey 1.178 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/1.178/