Odyssey 4.739 · Book 4, lines 739–741
Lest Laertes go out and mourn to the people
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εἰ δή πού τινα κεῖνος ἐνὶ φρεσὶ μῆτιν ὑφήνας ἐξελθὼν λαοῖσιν ὀδύρεται, οἳ μεμάασιν ὃν καὶ Ὀδυσσῆος φθῖσαι γόνον ἀντιθέοιο.
in case that man, weaving some counsel in his mind, might go out and lament to the people — those who are eager to destroy the offspring both of himself and of godlike Odysseus.
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The setting
Penelope explains why Laertes must be told: perhaps the old man, warned, will devise some plan and appeal openly to the people of Ithaca — against the suitors who mean to wipe out the whole line of Arceisius, Laertes's own house and Odysseus's son alike.
A note on this passage
The reason unfolds: told the news, Laertes might spin some counsel and go out to appeal to the people — the assembly of Ithaca — against those who plot the family's ruin. Penelope frames the suitors' aim at its widest: not merely to marry her, but to "destroy the offspring" of the whole royal house, Laertes's line and Odysseus's son together.
The undercurrent is the political stakes hiding inside the domestic ones. A wooing has become a dynastic threat: if Telemachus dies, the line of Arceisius ends and Ithaca's kingship is up for the taking. Penelope, weeping over her son, has grasped what the suitors are really after — and her one weapon is the old, near-forgotten authority of Laertes and the voice of the assembled people.
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