Odyssey 2.80 · Book 2, lines 80–84
He dashed the scepter down
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ὣς φάτο χωόμενος, ποτὶ δὲ σκῆπτρον βάλε γαίῃ δάκρυʼ ἀναπρήσας· οἶκτος δʼ ἕλε λαὸν ἅπαντα. ἔνθʼ ἄλλοι μὲν πάντες ἀκὴν ἔσαν, οὐδέ τις ἔτλη Τηλέμαχον μύθοισιν ἀμείψασθαι χαλεποῖσιν· Ἀντίνοος δέ μιν οἶος ἀμειβόμενος προσέειπε·
So he spoke in anger, and dashed the scepter to the ground, bursting into tears; and pity seized all the people. Then all the others were silent, and no one dared to answer Telemachus with harsh words; but Antinous alone, answering, addressed him:
Word by word
The setting
Telemachus stops speaking, throws the speaker's staff to the ground, and weeps. Pity runs through the assembly. No one dares answer him harshly — no one but Antinous, boldest of the suitors, who alone rises to reply.
A note on this passage
A single gesture ends the speech: he throws down the σκῆπτρον, the staff that marks the man holding the floor, and breaks into tears. The whole assembly is moved to pity. It is a real turn — the crowd feels the wrong.
But the poem lets the pity die on the vine. ‘No one dared answer him’ — the sympathy is genuine and useless; not one man will convert feeling into action against the suitors. Into that failure of nerve steps Antinous, ‘alone.’ The single man willing to speak is the worst of them, and the assembly's inability to produce a defender is exactly the vacuum the suitors feed in. Ithaca has no working authority; that is the crisis of the whole book.
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