Odyssey 1.274 · Book 1, lines 274–275
Scatter the suitors; the mother a harder question
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μνηστῆρας μὲν ἐπὶ σφέτερα σκίδνασθαι ἄνωχθι, μητέρα δʼ, εἴ οἱ θυμὸς ἐφορμᾶται γαμέεσθαι,
Bid the suitors scatter, each to his own home; and your mother, if her heart is set on marrying,
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The setting
The close of Athena's counsel (running on past this passage): the suitors are to be dismissed to their own homes, and Penelope's possible remarriage raised as a separate, harder matter — the sentence carrying over into the next line.
A note on this passage
The last, concrete order — and it splits in two. The suitors are simply to be told to disband, each man back to his own house. Penelope is a separate matter, and the sentence breaks off here, at the edge of this passage, just as Athena raises the harder question of her remarriage.
The asymmetry is the point. The suitors can be dismissed with a word; the mother cannot. ‘If her heart is set on marrying’ opens the one knot the whole book will not be able to cut — a widow who may have to remarry, and a son who loses his house if she does. Athena states the suitors' expulsion as a command and the mother's future as a mere condition, and the poem lets that harder clause hang, unfinished, into the next line.
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