Odyssey 4.700 · Book 4, lines 700–702
They mean to kill Telemachus
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Τηλέμαχον μεμάασι κατακτάμεν ὀξέι χαλκῷ οἴκαδε νισόμενον· ὁ δʼ ἔβη μετὰ πατρὸς ἀκουὴν ἐς Πύλον ἠγαθέην ἠδʼ ἐς Λακεδαίμονα δῖαν.
they are eager to cut down Telemachus with the sharp bronze as he sails home; but he has gone in quest of news of his father, to most holy Pylos and to bright Lacedaemon.
Word by word
The setting
Medon is telling Penelope of the graver evil: the ambush the suitors have laid, to kill Telemachus at sea. She has not known until now that her son has even sailed.
A note on this passage
Now the evil has a shape: the suitors mean to cut Telemachus down with the sharp bronze as he sails back home. And in the same breath Medon tells the mother where her son has gone — after news of his father, to holy Pylos and to Sparta.
The two facts land together, and that is the cruelty of the moment. Penelope learns that her boy is at sea and that men are waiting to kill him on the return, both at once. He has gone seeking the father's νόστος, his homecoming; the danger is that the son may lose his own before he has one. The house's next generation is being drawn into the same sea that swallowed the first.
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