Odyssey 2.200 · Book 2, lines 200–202
We fear no seer
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οὔτʼ οὖν Τηλέμαχον μάλα περ πολύμυθον ἐόντα, οὔτε θεοπροπίης ἐμπαζόμεθʼ, ἣν σύ, γεραιέ, μυθέαι ἀκράαντον, ἀπεχθάνεαι δʼ ἔτι μᾶλλον.
Neither Telemachus, wordy though he is, nor do we heed the prophecy which you, old man, keep declaring in vain, and you are hated still the more.
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The setting
Eurymachus spells out whom the suitors do not fear — completing the boast begun in the previous lines. Not the outspoken Telemachus, and not the prophecy Halitherses keeps pressing on them.
A note on this passage
He names the two things he dismisses: Telemachus, for all his new talk, and the old seer's prophecy, which he calls empty and self-defeating — the more you prophesy, he tells Halitherses, the more you are hated for it.
‘Wordy’ (πολύμυθον) is a precise jab: speech is the one weapon Telemachus has found in this assembly, and Eurymachus belittles it as mere words. And to wave away ‘unfulfilled prophecy’ is again to be wrong on the poem's own terms. The prophecy is true; calling it worthless, and hating the man who speaks it, is the error the whole book is built to punish.
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