Odyssey 1.366 · Book 1, lines 366–367
The suitors' prayer; Telemachus rises
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πάντες δʼ ἠρήσαντο παραὶ λεχέεσσι κλιθῆναι. τοῖσι δὲ Τηλέμαχος πεπνυμένος ἤρχετο μύθων·
And they all prayed to lie beside her bed; and to them wise Telemachus began to speak:
Word by word
The setting
The suitors have feasted in Odysseus's hall and called for song. As the bard sings, every one of them privately longs for Penelope. Now Telemachus — stirred by Athena's visit in the guise of Mentes — speaks out among them for the first time.
A note on this passage
The scene turns from the feast to the boy. Every suitor, listening to the song, silently prays to share Penelope's bed; and to them Telemachus — marked by the epithet πεπνυμένος, ‘wise, prudent’ — begins to speak. The formula ἤρχετο μύθων, ‘he began the speaking,’ opens his first public words in his own house.
The undercurrent is a threshold. Until Athena came, this boy sat helpless among the men eating his home. The suitors' shared prayer — to bed the wife while the husband may still live — is the standing outrage; and the fixed word ‘wise’ is laid on a youth who has never yet had cause to prove it. He is about to. The epithet runs ahead of the deed, the way epithets do, and this time the poem means to let him earn it.
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