Odyssey 1.213 · Book 1, line 213
Telemachus answers in turn
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τὴν δʼ αὖ Τηλέμαχος πεπνυμένος ἀντίον ηὔδα·
And to her in turn wise Telemachus spoke in reply:
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The setting
The narrator's fixed line that closes the guest's speech and opens the reply. 'Wise Telemachus' — the epithet the poem gives the boy throughout Book 1.
A note on this passage
A single formulaic line hands the scene from guest to host. It does nothing but mark the turn — the oral poet's hinge between one speech and the next, as fixed and reusable as a stage direction.
The one live word is the epithet: πεπνυμένος, 'wise' or 'sound of mind.' The poem keeps calling this untried boy 'prudent,' an honorific that runs slightly ahead of what we have seen him do. The gap is the point of Book 1 — the epithet names the man Telemachus is about to become, applied to him just as the goddess begins to make it true.
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