Odyssey 4.745 · Book 4, lines 745–747
The nurse's confession and the sworn oath
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ᾔδεʼ ἐγὼ τάδε πάντα, πόρον δέ οἱ ὅσσʼ ἐκέλευε, σῖτον καὶ μέθυ ἡδύ· ἐμεῦ δʼ ἕλετο μέγαν ὅρκον μὴ πρὶν σοὶ ἐρέειν, πρὶν δωδεκάτην γε γενέσθαι
I knew all this, and I gave him all that he ordered, food and sweet wine; but he took from me a great oath not to tell you before the twelfth day should come,
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The setting
Eurycleia admits the whole truth: she knew of the voyage, she stocked the ship with food and wine at Telemachus's command — and he bound her by oath not to tell his mother for twelve days.
A note on this passage
The confession is complete and unflinching. Eurycleia knew everything, and she was an active hand in it — she drew the food and wine that stocked the ship. Then comes the hinge: Telemachus made her swear a great oath of silence, twelve days' worth, so the plan could not be undone. Her guilt and her innocence are the same fact — she obeyed a binding she could not honorably break.
The undercurrent is the collision of two loyalties inside one servant. Eurycleia belongs to mother and son alike, and Telemachus used that double bond deliberately, making the person Penelope most trusts the keeper of the secret against her. The oath is his masterstroke of growing up: he has learned to command the household's love, to turn its own devotion into an instrument — the first sign that the boy is becoming a man who can rule.
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