Odyssey 3.91 · Book 3, lines 91–95
To your knees: tell me how he died
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Telemachus — εἴτε καὶ ἐν πελάγει μετὰ κύμασιν Ἀμφιτρίτης. τοὔνεκα νῦν τὰ σὰ γούναθʼ ἱκάνομαι, αἴ κʼ ἐθέλῃσθα κείνου λυγρὸν ὄλεθρον ἐνισπεῖν, εἴ που ὄπωπας ὀφθαλμοῖσι τεοῖσιν ἢ ἄλλου μῦθον ἄκουσας πλαζομένου· πέρι γάρ μιν ὀιζυρὸν τέκε μήτηρ.
Or whether on the deep, amid the waves of Amphitrite — therefore now I come to your knees, in hope you may be willing to tell of that man's mournful death, if perhaps you saw it with your own eyes, or heard the tale from another of him wandering; for beyond all others his mother bore him to misery.
Word by word
The setting
Telemachus closes the question he had put to Nestor — was Odysseus killed on land or lost at sea? — and turns it into a formal appeal, clasping the old king's knees and begging for the plain account of his father's death, whether Nestor saw it or heard of it.
A note on this passage
Telemachus finishes the two-branch question he began — killed on the mainland, or drowned at sea — and folds it into the gesture of a suppliant: he comes to Nestor's knees and asks for the truth, however he came by it, eye-witness or report.
The closing line is the boy speaking of a father he has never known. Everything he has of Odysseus is secondhand, a story he is begging strangers to finish. Touching the knees is not a flourish but the working machinery of supplication: a guest may bind his host to answer. And “beyond all others his mother bore him to misery” turns the plea toward grief before Nestor has said a word.
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