Odyssey 1.345 · Book 1, lines 345–349
Telemachus: blame Zeus, not the bard
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τὴν δʼ αὖ Τηλέμαχος πεπνυμένος ἀντίον ηὔδα·
Telemachus — μῆτερ ἐμή, τί τʼ ἄρα φθονέεις ἐρίηρον ἀοιδὸν τέρπειν ὅππῃ οἱ νόος ὄρνυται; οὔ νύ τʼ ἀοιδοὶ αἴτιοι, ἀλλά ποθι Ζεὺς αἴτιος, ὅς τε δίδωσιν ἀνδράσιν ἀλφηστῇσιν, ὅπως ἐθέλῃσιν, ἑκάστῳ.
And Telemachus, prudent, answered her in reply: Mother of mine, why then begrudge the faithful bard to give us delight however his mind stirs him? The bards are not to blame, but Zeus somehow is to blame, who deals out to men, the toilers, however he wishes, to each.
Word by word
The setting
Telemachus answers his mother — his first assertion of himself in the poem. Why begrudge the singer his song? The bards are not the cause of anything; Zeus is, who deals out to men whatever fortune he wills, to each his own.
A note on this passage
The boy speaks up, and the poem tags him at once as πεπνυμένος — ‘prudent,’ of sound sense — the epithet that will follow him through the epic. His argument is a small theology: don't resent the singer, resent the god. The bard only voices what happened; Zeus is the one who assigns each man his lot, good or ill.
The undercurrent is that this is a plain, almost consoling piece of Homeric doctrine — the gods, not the messengers, own our fortunes — put in the mouth of a young man who has just decided to sound like an adult. It is the argument Zeus himself made in the poem's opening scene, when he complained that men blame the gods for griefs they enlarge themselves. Telemachus, without knowing it, is quoting heaven.
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