Odyssey 2.257 · Book 2, lines 257–259
The gathering breaks up
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ὣς ἄρʼ ἐφώνησεν, λῦσεν δʼ ἀγορὴν αἰψηρήν. οἱ μὲν ἄρʼ ἐσκίδναντο ἑὰ πρὸς δώμαθʼ ἕκαστος, μνηστῆρες δʼ ἐς δώματʼ ἴσαν θείου Ὀδυσῆος.
So he spoke, and broke up the assembly, short-lived as it was. They scattered, each to his own house; and the suitors went to the house of divine Odysseus.
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The setting
With Leocritus's words the assembly ends. The gathered men disperse, and the suitors go back to Odysseus's house to resume their feasting.
A note on this passage
Three lines of pure stage-clearing. The assembly Telemachus dared to call — the first of his manhood — breaks up with nothing decided. The townsmen go back to their tasks; the suitors go back to eating Odysseus's house. Homer marks the gathering αἰψηρήν, 'short-lived': convened and dissolved in a single morning.
The undercurrent is where each man walks. The people scatter 'each to his own house' — the ordinary order of Ithaca still holds for them. The suitors alone walk into a house that is not theirs, as though it were. That one wrong turning, repeated day after day, is the whole crime of the poem's first movement.
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