Odyssey 2.262 · Book 2, lines 262–266
The prayer to the unknown god
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Telemachus — κλῦθί μευ, ὃ χθιζὸς θεὸς ἤλυθες ἡμέτερον δῶ καί μʼ ἐν νηὶ κέλευσας ἐπʼ ἠεροειδέα πόντον νόστον πευσόμενον πατρὸς δὴν οἰχομένοιο ἔρχεσθαι· τὰ δὲ πάντα διατρίβουσιν Ἀχαιοί, μνηστῆρες δὲ μάλιστα κακῶς ὑπερηνορέοντες.
Hear me, you who came yesterday as a god to our house, and bade me go in a ship over the misty sea, to learn of the return of my long-gone father. But the Achaeans delay all this, and the suitors most of all, in their wicked arrogance.
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The setting
Telemachus's prayer. He addresses Athena by what she did, not by name — she came to him yesterday in the shape of a stranger — and lays his grievance before her.
A note on this passage
The prayer is a reminder and a complaint. Telemachus recalls the god's own command — go by ship over the misty sea, seek word of your lost father — and then reports that the world will not let him obey: the Achaeans stall, and the suitors most of all. He is asking the deity to make good on her own instruction.
The undercurrent is that he prays to a face, not a name. He knows only that a god came χθιζός, 'yesterday,' wearing a guest's shape; he does not know it was Athena, and does not know she stands a few words away. The reader holds both halves the boy cannot: the disguise, and its nearness.
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