Odyssey 2.21 · Book 2, lines 21–24
Three living sons, one grief
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τρεῖς δέ οἱ ἄλλοι ἔσαν, καὶ ὁ μὲν μνηστῆρσιν ὁμίλει, Εὐρύνομος δύο δʼ αἰὲν ἔχον πατρώια ἔργα. ἀλλʼ οὐδʼ ὣς τοῦ λήθετʼ ὀδυρόμενος καὶ ἀχεύων. τοῦ ὅ γε δάκρυ χέων ἀγορήσατο καὶ μετέειπε·
He had three others: one kept company with the suitors, Eurynomus; and two always tended the father's lands. But even so he did not forget that son, mourning and grieving. For him, shedding a tear, he addressed the gathering and spoke among them:
Word by word
The setting
The poet finishes Aegyptius's family before the old man's mouth opens: three other sons remain — one among the suitors devouring Odysseus's house, two working the family farm — but the lost Antiphos is the one he cannot stop weeping for. In tears, he addresses the assembly.
A note on this passage
Homer completes the household ledger. Of the four sons, one, Eurynomus, is himself among the suitors; two work the inherited fields; and the fourth is the dead Antiphos. Grief does not balance against the three who live — ‘even so’ the old man cannot forget the one who is gone, and he stands to speak with a tear already falling.
The undercurrent is placed in a single clause: one of this grieving father's living sons ‘kept company with the suitors.’ The assembly Telemachus has called is aimed squarely at the suitors' crime, and one of the very men eating his house is Aegyptius's own boy. The poem sets the town's division inside one family before the first speech, so that no side in what follows is cleanly innocent.
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