Odyssey 2.40 · Book 2, lines 40–44
It was I who called you here
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Telemachus — ὦ γέρον, οὐχ ἑκὰς οὗτος ἀνήρ, τάχα δʼ εἴσεαι αὐτός, ὃς λαὸν ἤγειρα· μάλιστα δέ μʼ ἄλγος ἱκάνει. οὔτε τινʼ ἀγγελίην στρατοῦ ἔκλυον ἐρχομένοιο, ἥν χʼ ὑμῖν σάφα εἴπω, ὅτε πρότερός γε πυθοίμην, οὔτε τι δήμιον ἄλλο πιφαύσκομαι οὐδʼ ἀγορεύω,
Old man, this man is not far off, and soon you will know him yourself—[it is I] who gathered the people; grief above all comes upon me. Neither have I heard any news of the army returning, which I might tell you clearly, once I had learned it first, nor do I make known any other public matter, nor proclaim it,
Word by word
The setting
Telemachus answers the old man's question outright: the summoner is present, and it is he. He speaks driven by private grief, and — echoing Aegyptius's own words — disclaims any news of the army or any other public business.
A note on this passage
Telemachus opens by answering plainly: the man who summoned the assembly stands here, and it is he; he called it out of private grief, not public need. He then denies exactly the two things Aegyptius wondered about — army-news, or some other civic cause.
The undercurrent is that he echoes the old man word for word (no tidings of the host, no other public matter) only to overturn them. Aegyptius offered these as the ordinary reasons an assembly is called; Telemachus repeats them to say the first gathering in twenty years is for none of them. He bends a civic institution to one household's suffering — his right as Odysseus's son, and the measure of how far the normal order of Ithaca has failed.
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