Odyssey 3.375 · Book 3, lines 375–379
Nestor reads the omen: Athena herself
Read the full text in our reader
Nestor — ὦ φίλος, οὔ σε ἔολπα κακὸν καὶ ἄναλκιν ἔσεσθαι, εἰ δή τοι νέῳ ὧδε θεοὶ πομπῆες ἕπονται. οὐ μὲν γάρ τις ὅδʼ ἄλλος Ὀλύμπια δώματʼ ἐχόντων, ἀλλὰ Διὸς θυγάτηρ, κυδίστη Τριτογένεια, ἥ τοι καὶ πατέρʼ ἐσθλὸν ἐν Ἀργείοισιν ἐτίμα.
O friend, I do not think you will prove base and cowardly, if indeed, young as you are, gods thus attend you as escorts. For this was no other of those who hold the Olympian halls, but the daughter of Zeus, most glorious Tritogeneia, who also honored your noble father among the Argives.
Word by word
The setting
His hand on Telemachus, Nestor names what he has seen. A young man with a god for an open escort cannot turn out base — and this god, he declares, was Athena herself, the very deity who stood by Odysseus among the Greeks at Troy.
A note on this passage
Nestor draws the plain inference and reassures the boy: divine company is a guarantee of worth, so Telemachus is no coward-in-the-making. He then identifies the god without hesitation — not just any Olympian, but Zeus's daughter Athena, and he anchors the claim in memory: this is the goddess who honored Odysseus openly at Troy.
The undercurrent is inheritance. Nestor reads the son through the father: the same goddess who stood beside Odysseus now walks with his boy, and that continuity is the real comfort offered. For a fatherless Telemachus, still unsure he is truly his father's son, an old comrade's word that the family's divine patron has not lapsed is worth more than any praise of his own untested character.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 3.375 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
From the Great Library
You are reading a page of the Odyssey — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Odyssey 3.375 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/3.375/