Odyssey 4.727 · Book 4, lines 727–728
Now the son, snatched by the storm-winds
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νῦν αὖ παῖδʼ ἀγαπητὸν ἀνηρείψαντο θύελλαι ἀκλέα ἐκ μεγάρων, οὐδʼ ὁρμηθέντος ἄκουσα.
Now again the storm-winds have snatched away my beloved son, inglorious, from the halls, and I did not hear of his setting out.
Word by word
The setting
From the old grief Penelope turns to the new. Telemachus has slipped away to sea without a word to her; to her ear it is as if a whirlwind carried him off, and she did not even hear him go.
A note on this passage
The second grief arrives in the language of abduction: storm-winds have snatched the boy away, inglorious, out of his own house. Penelope does not yet know the plain fact — that he sailed by choice — so she reaches for the image of a helpless child seized by weather. The word "inglorious" stings twice: he vanishes with no fame won and no farewell given.
The undercurrent is her not-hearing. "I did not hear of his setting out" is the true center of the complaint — not that he left, but that he left silently, past her, while she slept. The house she thought she guarded let her son slip through it unnoticed, and that failure of watchfulness is what she is about to turn on the maids.
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