Odyssey 2.246 · Book 2, lines 246–248
Even if Odysseus himself came home
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εἴ περ γάρ κʼ Ὀδυσεὺς Ἰθακήσιος αὐτὸς ἐπελθὼν δαινυμένους κατὰ δῶμα ἑὸν μνηστῆρας ἀγαυοὺς ἐξελάσαι μεγάροιο μενοινήσειʼ ἐνὶ θυμῷ,
For even if Odysseus the Ithacan himself, coming upon them as the proud suitors feasted throughout his own house, should long in his heart to drive them from the hall,
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The setting
Leocritus pushes his argument to its edge with an extraordinary hypothetical: suppose Odysseus himself walked in and tried to clear his own hall of the suitors.
A note on this passage
Leocritus builds a monstrous 'even if': suppose Odysseus himself walked in and, seeing the proud suitors at his tables, burned to drive them out. The grammar heaps up the master of the house — 'the Ithacan,' 'himself' — only to set him against a room too full to clear.
The undercurrent is dramatic irony sharpened to a point. The audience knows Odysseus is coming, and that he will do exactly this. Leocritus names the future in order to dismiss it as impossible; the poem lets him, because his certainty measures how blind the suitors are to the story they are standing inside.
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