Odyssey 3.205 · Book 3, lines 205–207
Would that I had such power
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αἲ γὰρ ἐμοὶ τοσσήνδε θεοὶ δύναμιν περιθεῖεν, τίσασθαι μνηστῆρας ὑπερβασίης ἀλεγεινῆς, οἵ τέ μοι ὑβρίζοντες ἀτάσθαλα μηχανόωνται.
Would that the gods might put such power around me, to take vengeance on the suitors for their grievous transgression, who against me, in their insolence, devise reckless deeds.
Word by word
The setting
Telemachus turns Nestor's example on himself: he wishes the gods would grant him the strength Orestes had, to punish the suitors devouring his house and plotting against him.
A note on this passage
The praise of Orestes turns, without warning, into a wish about himself. If only, Telemachus says, the gods would give him such power — power to punish the suitors for their outrage, the men who insolently plot ruin against him and his house. The example has become personal.
This is the quiet hinge of the reply. Orestes had one clean enemy; Telemachus has a houseful, and no strength to answer them. The word ἀτάσθαλα names their crime with the poem's own vocabulary of doomed recklessness — the same self-blinding arrogance the proem says destroys men. He is naming the suitors as already marked for the fall he cannot yet deliver.
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