Odyssey 1.396 · Book 1, lines 396–398
Lord of his own house
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τῶν κέν τις τόδʼ ἔχῃσιν, ἐπεὶ θάνε δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς· αὐτὰρ ἐγὼν οἴκοιο ἄναξ ἔσομʼ ἡμετέροιο καὶ δμώων, οὕς μοι ληίσσατο δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς.
Let one of these hold this, since noble Odysseus is dead; but I will be lord of our own house and of the slaves whom noble Odysseus won as spoils for me.
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The setting
Telemachus is finishing his reply to the suitor Antinous, who has just mocked the idea of his becoming king. He concedes the kingship of Ithaca to whichever Achaean the gods choose — but draws a hard line around his own household.
A note on this passage
Telemachus gives ground and keeps ground in one breath. The public prize — the kingship of Ithaca — he hands to whoever the gods appoint; that is a matter, he has just said, for the wider run of Achaean lords. But the house and its people are not on the table. There he plants the word ἄναξ, lord, over himself.
The undercurrent is how the claim rests on the father even as it lets the father go. ‘Since Odysseus is dead’ concedes the loss the whole household is straining against; yet the slaves he means to command are Odysseus's own war-spoils, so the son's authority is entirely inherited property. He is asserting himself and citing his father in the same sentence — which is the exact double bind of a boy coming of age with the man still unaccounted for.
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