Odyssey 4.707 · Book 4, lines 707–710
Penelope: why has my child gone?
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Penelope — κῆρυξ, τίπτε δέ μοι πάϊς οἴχεται; οὐδέ τί μιν χρεὼ νηῶν ὠκυπόρων ἐπιβαινέμεν, αἵ θʼ ἁλὸς ἵπποι ἀνδράσι γίγνονται, περόωσι δὲ πουλὺν ἐφʼ ὑγρήν. ἦ ἵνα μηδʼ ὄνομʼ αὐτοῦ ἐν ἀνθρώποισι λίπηται;
Herald, why has my child gone? He had no need to board the swift ships, which for men become the horses of the sea and cross the great watery deep. Was it so that not even his name might be left among men?
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Overcome, Penelope has at last found her voice. She turns to Medon — the κῆρυξ, herald — with a mother's disbelieving questions about the voyage.
A note on this passage
Penelope turns on the herald with a mother's questions. Why did her child go? He had no need of the swift ships — those ‘horses of the sea’ that carry men across the great water. Was it, she asks bitterly, so that his very name might vanish from the earth?
Her fear inverts the whole heroic economy. To a young man, a voyage after news of a famous father is exactly how a name is made; to his mother it looks like the way a name is lost. The poem lets both readings stand. Telemachus sails to win the fame of a son worthy of Odysseus; Penelope hears only that the sea took the father and now reaches for the son.
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