Odyssey 4.61 · Book 4, lines 61–64
First the meal, then your names
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Menelaus — δείπνου πασσαμένω εἰρησόμεθʼ, οἵ τινές ἐστον ἀνδρῶν· οὐ γὰρ σφῷν γε γένος ἀπόλωλε τοκήων, ἀλλʼ ἀνδρῶν γένος ἐστὲ διοτρεφέων βασιλήων σκηπτούχων, ἐπεὶ οὔ κε κακοὶ τοιούσδε τέκοιεν.
When we have eaten dinner we will ask who you two are among men; for your fathers' stock is not lost, but you are the line of Zeus-nurtured men, of sceptred kings, since base men could never beget sons such as these.
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The setting
Telemachus and Peisistratus, Nestor's son, have arrived unannounced at Sparta during a double wedding-feast. Menelaus has ordered them brought in to eat, and here finishes his welcome: only after the meal, by custom, will he ask who they are — though he already reads noble blood in their looks.
A note on this passage
Menelaus keeps the order of hospitality exactly. First the food, then the questions: a guest is fed before he is interrogated, and only when he is satisfied is he asked who he is. Even so, Menelaus cannot help guessing — the bearing of the two young men tells him they are no common travellers but the sons of kings.
The compliment carries the poem's theory of breeding: good stock breeds good men, and it shows. It is also a dramatic irony the audience feels and Menelaus does not. The boy across the table is the son of the one comrade Menelaus most longs for, Odysseus, and the ‘stock of kings’ he praises is the house of Ithaca itself. He reads the father in the son without yet knowing whose son he reads.
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