Odyssey 2.237 · Book 2, lines 237–240
My anger is at the silent many
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σφὰς γὰρ παρθέμενοι κεφαλὰς κατέδουσι βιαίως οἶκον Ὀδυσσῆος, τὸν δʼ οὐκέτι φασὶ νέεσθαι. νῦν δʼ ἄλλῳ δήμῳ νεμεσίζομαι, οἷον ἅπαντες ἧσθʼ ἄνεῳ, ἀτὰρ οὔ τι καθαπτόμενοι ἐπέεσσι
for they, risking their own heads, violently devour the house of Odysseus, whom they say will no longer return. But now I am indignant at the rest of the people, how you all sit in silence, yet do not at all rebuke them with words
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The setting
Mentor delivers the real charge. The suitors devour Odysseus's house — but his indignation falls on the whole assembly of Ithacans, who far outnumber the suitors yet sit by in silence.
A note on this passage
Here Mentor's anger finds its true target. The suitors gamble their own lives to eat the house of a man they insist is never coming back — and the real scandal, for Mentor, is not the few who prey but the many who allow it. His reproach turns from the suitors to the silent assembly.
Two things run underneath. ‘Risking their own heads’ is not idle: it quietly pronounces the suitors' death sentence, which the poem will collect in full. And ‘whom they say will no longer return’ is dramatic irony at its sharpest — Odysseus is already near, on his way, and everyone in the hall is wrong. Mentor rebukes a silence that the future is about to break.
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