Odyssey 4.594 · Book 4, lines 594–596
I would gladly stay a year
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Telemachus — Ἀτρεΐδη, μὴ δή με πολὺν χρόνον ἐνθάδʼ ἔρυκε. καὶ γάρ κʼ εἰς ἐνιαυτὸν ἐγὼ παρὰ σοί γʼ ἀνεχοίμην ἥμενος, οὐδέ κέ μʼ οἴκου ἕλοι πόθος οὐδὲ τοκήων·
Son of Atreus, do not hold me here a long time. Indeed even for a year I would gladly stay beside you, sitting here, and no longing for home or parents would seize me;
Word by word
The setting
Telemachus begins his courteous reply to Menelaus. Before declining, he pays his host the compliment that he could happily linger at Sparta for a year without a pang of homesickness.
A note on this passage
Telemachus answers the lavish welcome with perfect tact. He opens not by refusing but by flattering: he would happily sit here a whole year and never once be gripped by homesickness for Ithaca or his parents. The compliment is real — Sparta is that pleasant — and it softens the ‘no’ that is coming.
Under the courtesy is the boy's growth. A year ago this is not a speech he could have made; the poem has spent four books teaching him to speak to kings. And πόθος, the ‘longing’ he says he would not feel, is the very ache the whole poem turns on — the pull toward home and parent. He names it only to set it politely aside, and in doing so shows he has learned to master it.
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