Odyssey 4.686 · Book 4, lines 686–688
Eating the house of a wise son
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Penelope — οἳ θάμʼ ἀγειρόμενοι βίοτον κατακείρετε πολλόν, κτῆσιν Τηλεμάχοιο δαΐφρονος· οὐδέ τι πατρῶν ὑμετέρων τὸ πρόσθεν ἀκούετε, παῖδες ἐόντες,
you who, often gathering, devour much livelihood, the substance of wise Telemachus; nor at all did you hear from your fathers in time past, when you were children,
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The setting
Penelope's rebuke widens: the suitors gorge on Telemachus's inheritance, and they act as if they never learned from their own fathers what kind of man Odysseus was.
A note on this passage
The rebuke turns concrete. These men ‘often gather’ and eat away the βίοτος, the very means of life, of the household — the inheritance of Telemachus, whom she names δαΐφρων, ‘wise.’ The image is of a house being consumed from within.
The undercurrent is the appeal to memory and upbringing. Penelope charges that they act as though they never heard, as boys, what their own fathers told them of Odysseus. The measure of their guilt is not just theft but ingratitude across a generation: they wrong the house of the man their fathers honored. It is the same standard Homer sets everywhere — you are what you were taught to be, and these men have forgotten it.
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