Odyssey 2.331 · Book 2, lines 331–336
A suitor wishes the son dead
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ἄλλος δʼ αὖτʼ εἴπεσκε νέων ὑπερηνορεόντων· τίς δʼ οἶδʼ, εἴ κε καὶ αὐτὸς ἰὼν κοίλης ἐπὶ νηὸς τῆλε φίλων ἀπόληται ἀλώμενος ὥς περ Ὀδυσσεύς; οὕτω κεν καὶ μᾶλλον ὀφέλλειεν πόνον ἄμμιν· κτήματα γάρ κεν πάντα δασαίμεθα, οἰκία δʼ αὖτε τούτου μητέρι δοῖμεν ἔχειν ἠδʼ ὅς τις ὀπυίοι.
Another in turn would say, one of the overbearing youths: “Who knows if he too, setting out on a hollow ship, far from his friends, might perish wandering, just as Odysseus did? So he would swell for us the toil even more; for we would divide all his possessions, and the house in turn we would give his mother to keep, and whoever might wed her.”
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The setting
The suitors mock on in the assembly. One of them voices aloud the wish that Telemachus might die at sea on the very voyage he has just threatened to make — so that they can divide the estate among themselves.
A note on this passage
The suitors keep up their jeering. One of them wishes aloud that Telemachus might die at sea on his voyage, wandering and lost like his father — so that they could share out his goods and hand the house to whoever marries Penelope. The threat is now open: not just eating the estate, but planning for the heir's death.
The word Homer pins on them is ὑπερηνορέων, ‘overbearing, past all manhood’ — the epithet fixes their crime as sheer excess, the hubris Zeus named in the first council. And there is a grim irony under the curse: they wish Telemachus his father's fate as pure ruin, not knowing the poem has already turned that fate toward home. To wish the son the father's wandering is, unawares, to wish him the father's return.
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