Odyssey 4.681 · Book 4, lines 681–683
“Why have the suitors sent you?”
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Penelope — κῆρυξ, τίπτε δέ σε πρόεσαν μνηστῆρες ἀγαυοί; ἦ εἰπέμεναι δμῳῇσιν Ὀδυσσῆος θείοιο ἔργων παύσασθαι, σφίσι δʼ αὐτοῖς δαῖτα πένεσθαι;
Herald, why have the lordly suitors sent you forth? Is it to bid the handmaids of divine Odysseus cease from their work, and prepare a feast for themselves?
Word by word
The setting
Penelope speaks first, guessing at the herald's errand — and her guess sketches the suitors' daily insolence in her house.
A note on this passage
Penelope opens with a question, and her guess is telling: she assumes the herald has come to order her serving-women off their tasks to lay yet another meal for the suitors. It is the routine intrusion she has learned to expect from these men.
The undercurrent is the sting hidden in the courtesy. She calls them μνηστῆρες ἀγαυοί, the ‘lordly suitors,’ the polished formula — and in the same breath names the maids as belonging to ‘divine Odysseus,’ the absent husband whose house and servants they treat as their own. The honorific and the grievance sit side by side; she has not yet heard the real news, which is far worse than an unwanted dinner.
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