Odyssey 3.211 · Book 3, lines 211–215
Tell me the truth: willing, or hated?
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Nestor — ὦ φίλʼ, ἐπεὶ δὴ ταῦτά μʼ ἀνέμνησας καὶ ἔειπες, φασὶ μνηστῆρας σῆς μητέρος εἵνεκα πολλοὺς ἐν μεγάροις ἀέκητι σέθεν κακὰ μηχανάασθαι· εἰπέ μοι, ἠὲ ἑκὼν ὑποδάμνασαι, ἦ σέ γε λαοὶ ἐχθαίρουσʼ ἀνὰ δῆμον, ἐπισπόμενοι θεοῦ ὀμφῇ.
O friend, since you have reminded me of these things and spoken them, they say that many suitors, because of your mother, contrive evil in your halls against your will. Tell me, whether you are willingly subdued, or whether the people hate you through the land, obeying the voice of a god.
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The setting
Nestor, the old king of Pylos, has just told Telemachus how Orestes avenged his murdered father. Now he turns to the boy's own trouble — the suitors besieging his mother in Ithaca — and presses him for the plain facts.
A note on this passage
Nestor turns from the tale of Orestes to Telemachus's own house. He has heard the report — many suitors eating the home for the mother's sake — and asks the plain question a host asks a troubled guest: do you yield to this willingly, or has the whole community turned against you?
The two alternatives Nestor offers are both worse than the truth. Either the young man is a coward who submits, or he is a lord the people have rejected at a god's prompting. Neither fits. The real answer — one house devoured by many strong men while the gods look away — is a thing Homeric politics has no tidy category for.
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