Odyssey 1.306 · Book 1, lines 306–308
Telemachus answers — as a father to a son
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τὴν δʼ αὖ Τηλέμαχος πεπνυμένος ἀντίον ηὔδα·
Telemachus — ξεῖνʼ, ἦ τοι μὲν ταῦτα φίλα φρονέων ἀγορεύεις, ὥς τε πατὴρ ᾧ παιδί, καὶ οὔ ποτε λήσομαι αὐτῶν.
And in turn prudent Telemachus addressed her in reply: “Stranger, truly you speak these things with kind intent, as a father to his own son; and never will I forget them.
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The setting
Athena, disguised as Mentes, has just urged Telemachus to sail in search of news of his father and to face down the suitors. This is the opening of his courteous reply.
A note on this passage
The standard reply-formula introduces Telemachus, and he answers the stranger with grave courtesy: the counsel was kindly meant, and he will not forget it. The fixed epithet πεπνυμένος, ‘prudent,’ rides with him through the poem — a boy being addressed, for once, as a man with sense.
The undercurrent is the comparison he reaches for. The stranger has spoken ‘as a father to his son.’ Telemachus does not know he has been counseled by Athena, but he feels the shape of the thing exactly: fatherly guidance is what his house has lacked for twenty years, and what this whole book is about him finding. He names the absence in the very act of being consoled for it.
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