Odyssey 4.593 · Book 4, line 593
Wise Telemachus answers
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τὸν δʼ αὖ Τηλέμαχος πεπνυμένος ἀντίον ηὔδα·
Then in turn wise Telemachus answered him:
Word by word
The setting
The reply formula: the narrator turns from Menelaus to Telemachus, who is about to answer his host's invitation. πεπνυμένος, ‘wise,’ is Telemachus's standing epithet.
A note on this passage
A single verse of pure formula, the standard hinge that hands the floor from one speaker to the next. ‘Then wise Telemachus answered him’ is a fixed line the poem uses again and again; it does no work but to turn the scene from Menelaus to the young man across from him.
Even so, the epithet is chosen. πεπνυμένος — ‘shrewd, of sound sense’ — is Telemachus's recurring tag, and it lands just before he must gracefully refuse a king's warm pressure to stay. The formula quietly guarantees the courtesy of the reply before we hear it: whatever he says, he will say it well.
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