Odyssey 1.372 · Book 1, lines 372–375
At dawn, to the assembly
Read the full text in our reader
ἠῶθεν δʼ ἀγορήνδε καθεζώμεσθα κιόντες πάντες, ἵνʼ ὕμιν μῦθον ἀπηλεγέως ἀποείπω, ἐξιέναι μεγάρων· ἄλλας δʼ ἀλεγύνετε δαῖτας, ὑμὰ κτήματʼ ἔδοντες, ἀμειβόμενοι κατὰ οἴκους.
At dawn let us go and sit in the assembly, all of us, so that I may declare my word to you outright: to quit my halls. Prepare other feasts, eating your own goods, passing house to house.
Word by word
The setting
Telemachus, having asked for quiet, now names his real intent: he will summon a formal assembly and there order the suitors out of his house.
A note on this passage
The demand arrives. Telemachus announces he will call a formal assembly at dawn and there order the suitors, plainly and publicly, out of his house; if they must go on feasting, let them eat their own estates, moving from one man's house to the next.
The undercurrent is political. The private grievance becomes a public act: ἀγορήνδε, ‘to the assembly’ — the institution where a community's business is decided. This is the first move of a man claiming his household and his standing in the city, and it points straight at the assembly of Book 2. And ‘eat your own possessions’ exposes the crime beneath the hospitality: the feast, the engine of guest-friendship, has been turned into a machine for consuming another man's estate.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 1.372 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
From the Great Library
You are reading a page of the Odyssey — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Odyssey 1.372 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/1.372/