Odyssey 2.110 · Book 2, lines 110–114
The suitors' demand: send her back
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ὣς τὸ μὲν ἐξετέλεσσε καὶ οὐκ ἐθέλουσʼ ὑπʼ ἀνάγκης· σοὶ δʼ ὧδε μνηστῆρες ὑποκρίνονται, ἵνʼ εἰδῇς αὐτὸς σῷ θυμῷ, εἰδῶσι δὲ πάντες Ἀχαιοί· μητέρα σὴν ἀπόπεμψον, ἄνωχθι δέ μιν γαμέεσθαι τῷ ὅτεῴ τε πατὴρ κέλεται καὶ ἁνδάνει αὐτῇ.
So she finished it, even against her will, under compulsion. And thus to you the suitors give their answer, so that you yourself may know it in your heart, and all the Achaeans may know: send your mother away, and bid her marry that man, whomever her father commands and who pleases her.
Word by word
The setting
Caught out, Penelope was forced to complete the web. Antinous turns from the story to its point: this, he says, is the suitors' formal answer to Telemachus — send your mother back to her father's house and make her choose a husband.
A note on this passage
Antinous closes the anecdote and states the ultimatum. The story was evidence; the verdict is a demand. Telemachus is to expel his own mother from the house and hand her marriage back to her father Icarius, who will match her to a suitor. It is put as a public answer, witnessed by ‘all the Achaeans.’
The undercurrent is where the pressure now falls. Unable to force Penelope, the suitors turn on the son, demanding he do their work by dismissing her himself. To send a mother back to be re-given in marriage is to declare the father's house dead and the son its failed guardian — the exact humiliation Telemachus has just begun, this very book, to refuse.
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