Odyssey 1.222 · Book 1, lines 222–226
Your line is not nameless
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Athena (as Mentes) — οὐ μέν τοι γενεήν γε θεοὶ νώνυμνον ὀπίσσω θῆκαν, ἐπεὶ σέ γε τοῖον ἐγείνατο Πηνελόπεια. ἀλλʼ ἄγε μοι τόδε εἰπὲ καὶ ἀτρεκέως κατάλεξον· τίς δαίς, τίς δὲ ὅμιλος ὅδʼ ἔπλετο; τίπτε δέ σε χρεώ; εἰλαπίνη ἠὲ γάμος; ἐπεὶ οὐκ ἔρανος τάδε γʼ ἐστίν·
Surely the gods have not made your line nameless in time to come, since Penelope bore you such a son. But come, tell me this and recount it truly: what feast, what throng is this? What need have you? A banquet or a wedding? For this is no shared common meal.
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The setting
Athena reassures Telemachus that his family will not be forgotten, then turns abruptly to the crowded, disorderly hall around them.
A note on this passage
The goddess answers his despair with a promise: the gods have not left his line nameless — Penelope bore no ordinary son. Then she turns, abruptly, to the room. What is this gathering? A banquet, a wedding? It is plainly no ἔρανος, the decent kind of feast where each man brings his own share.
νώνυμνον, ‘nameless,’ is the real reply to Telemachus. In this world oblivion, not death, is the thing to fear, and Athena meets a fatherless boy's grief by naming the one good he can still win. But the question that follows is not small talk: by ruling out the shared meal she has already named the crime — a house being eaten by men who brought nothing to it. Her indignation is one line away.
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