Odyssey 2.138 · Book 2, lines 138–140
If you have any shame, leave my halls
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ὑμέτερος δʼ εἰ μὲν θυμὸς νεμεσίζεται αὐτῶν, ἔξιτέ μοι μεγάρων, ἄλλας δʼ ἀλεγύνετε δαῖτας ὑμὰ κτήματʼ ἔδοντες ἀμειβόμενοι κατὰ οἴκους.
But if your own heart feels indignation at this, get out of my halls, and busy yourselves with other feasts, eating your own goods, taking turns from house to house.
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The setting
Having shown why he cannot send his mother away, Telemachus turns on the suitors themselves and dares them to leave — to feast at their own expense instead of his.
A note on this passage
Telemachus goes on the attack. If the suitors feel any shame at what they are doing, they can go: hold their feasts elsewhere, eat their own stores, and rotate from house to house rather than devour his one.
He throws their own value back at them. νεμεσίζομαι — to feel the sting of others' reproach — is the emotion the whole honor economy runs on, the check that is supposed to keep men in bounds. Telemachus dares them to feel it, knowing they will not. And the picture is exact: guests who ought to host in turn, moving from door to door, are instead settled on a single house like a swarm. The image names the sickness the poem opens on — hospitality perverted into consumption.
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