Odyssey 4.164 · Book 4, lines 164–167
A fatherless son has many griefs
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πολλὰ γὰρ ἄλγεʼ ἔχει πατρὸς πάϊς οἰχομένοιο ἐν μεγάροις, ᾧ μὴ ἄλλοι ἀοσσητῆρες ἔωσιν, ὡς νῦν Τηλεμάχῳ ὁ μὲν οἴχεται, οὐδέ οἱ ἄλλοι εἴσʼ οἵ κεν κατὰ δῆμον ἀλάλκοιεν κακότητα.
For many griefs a son has when his father is gone, in the halls, for whom no other helpers are at hand, as now for Telemachus: the father is gone, and for him there are no others who throughout the land could ward off ruin.
Word by word
The setting
Peisistratus closes his explanation with a general truth, then turns it on Telemachus by name: a boy whose father is gone, and who has no protectors at home, is defenseless — as Telemachus now is, with Odysseus vanished and the suitors unchecked in his halls.
A note on this passage
A maxim sharpened into a particular case. First the general law — a fatherless boy with no allies is exposed to endless grief — then its living example, named: Telemachus, whose father is gone and who has no one in the land to fend off disaster. The gnomic frame makes the boy's plight sound like a rule of the world.
The undercurrent is the danger waiting in Ithaca. 'No helpers to ward off ruin' (ἀλάλκοιεν κακότητα) is a quiet, exact description of the suitors' siege of Penelope's house — a threat Telemachus has left behind him to make this very journey. Peisistratus speaks of a hazard he only half-knows; the audience knows it in full, and hears the words land heavier than the speaker means them to.
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