Odyssey 2.192 · Book 2, lines 192–195
A fine, and send the widow home
Read the full text in our reader
σοὶ δέ, γέρον, θωὴν ἐπιθήσομεν, ἥν κʼ ἐνὶ θυμῷ τίνων ἀσχάλλῃς· χαλεπὸν δέ τοι ἔσσεται ἄλγος. Τηλεμάχῳ δʼ ἐν πᾶσιν ἐγὼν ὑποθήσομαι αὐτός· μητέρα ἣν ἐς πατρὸς ἀνωγέτω ἀπονέεσθαι·
And on you, old man, we will lay a fine, which, paying it, you will chafe at in your heart; and a bitter pain it will be for you. And to Telemachus, before you all, I myself give counsel: let him bid his mother return to the house of her own father.
Word by word
The setting
Eurymachus finishes with the seer — a fine he will be sorry to pay — and turns to his real demand, addressed past Halitherses to Telemachus: send Penelope back to her father's house so a marriage can be arranged.
A note on this passage
The threat lands as a money penalty: a fine on the old seer, bitter to pay. Then Eurymachus pivots to the practical demand that has driven the suitors all along — Telemachus must send his mother home to her father, where a proper marriage can be settled.
Fining a seer and evicting the widow are of a piece: the suitors overriding the household's own authority. In this world a fatherless bride is given by her kin, who arrange the match and take the bride-price. To move Penelope ‘to her father’ is to move the decision out of Ithaca and out of Telemachus's hands — the suitors legislating the fate of a house that is not theirs.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 2.192 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 2.192 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/2.192/