Odyssey 1.231 · Book 1, lines 231–234
The house was once rich
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Telemachus — ξεῖνʼ, ἐπεὶ ἂρ δὴ ταῦτά μʼ ἀνείρεαι ἠδὲ μεταλλᾷς, μέλλεν μέν ποτε οἶκος ὅδʼ ἀφνειὸς καὶ ἀμύμων ἔμμεναι, ὄφρʼ ἔτι κεῖνος ἀνὴρ ἐπιδήμιος ἦεν· νῦν δʼ ἑτέρως ἐβόλοντο θεοὶ κακὰ μητιόωντες,
Stranger, since indeed you ask and inquire of me these things: this house was once meant to be rich and blameless, while that man was still at home. But now the gods have willed otherwise, devising evils,
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The setting
Telemachus takes up the guest's question and answers it as the history of a fallen house — prosperous while his father was home, ruined since.
A note on this passage
Telemachus takes up the question and answers it as a history of the house. Once, he says, it was rich and without reproach — as long as ‘that man’ was still in the land. Now the gods have turned it the other way, and are devising evils.
He will not say the name. Odysseus is κεῖνος, ‘that man,’ a presence defined by his absence, and the wealth of the house is bound up with him: when he left, the prosperity began to leak away. Note too where Telemachus lays the blame — on the gods, ‘devising evils.’ It sits uneasily against the poem's opening, where Zeus insists men bring ruin on themselves by their own folly. The boy's grief has not yet learned that argument; to him the loss is simply something heaven did.
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