Odyssey 2.218 · Book 2, lines 218–223
A year's patience, or a tomb and a wedding
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εἰ μέν κεν πατρὸς βίοτον καὶ νόστον ἀκούσω, ἦ τʼ ἄν, τρυχόμενός περ, ἔτι τλαίην ἐνιαυτόν· εἰ δέ κε τεθνηῶτος ἀκούσω μηδʼ ἔτʼ ἐόντος, νοστήσας δὴ ἔπειτα φίλην ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν σῆμά τέ οἱ χεύω καὶ ἐπὶ κτέρεα κτερεΐξω πολλὰ μάλʼ, ὅσσα ἔοικε, καὶ ἀνέρι μητέρα δώσω.
If indeed I hear of my father's life and his return, then surely, worn though I am, I could still endure a year. But if I hear he is dead, living no longer, then having returned to my dear native land, I will heap a mound for him, and pay funeral rites, very many, as is fitting, and give my mother to a husband.
Word by word
The setting
Telemachus finishes his demand by naming the two outcomes of his search. The choice is stark: if his father lives, he will wait; if his father is dead, he will bury him and remarry his mother — releasing the household.
A note on this passage
Telemachus sets out the two paths that news could open. Word that Odysseus lives buys another year of endurance. Word that he is dead triggers the full close of the house: a mound, the funeral honors ‘as is fitting,’ and — last and heaviest — his mother given in marriage.
The undercurrent is what that last act means. To give Penelope to a husband is precisely the suitors' whole aim; the boy is contemplating, with his own hands, the end of Odysseus's line in Ithaca. And the mound would cover no body — a cenotaph for a man lost at sea. Telemachus is rehearsing how to bury a father who may not be dead, and to hand away the house while defending it.
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