Odyssey 4.841 · Book 4, lines 841–843
The dream departs; the ambush sets sail
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ὥς οἱ ἐναργὲς ὄνειρον ἐπέσσυτο νυκτὸς ἀμολγῷ. μνηστῆρες δʼ ἀναβάντες ἐπέπλεον ὑγρὰ κέλευθα Τηλεμάχῳ φόνον αἰπὺν ἐνὶ φρεσὶν ὁρμαίνοντες.
So the vivid dream sped to her in the dead of night. And the suitors, having gone aboard, sailed the watery ways, pondering in their hearts sheer murder for Telemachus.
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The setting
Athena has sent a phantom in the shape of Penelope's sister Iphthime to comfort the grieving queen, who fears for the son who sailed off for news of Odysseus. The vision has just reassured her and now slips away.
A note on this passage
The dream-phantom Athena sent — cast in the likeness of Penelope's sister — has spoken its comfort and now speeds away into the dark, and the queen wakes with her heart eased. In the very same breath the poem cuts far out to sea: the suitors are already aboard, sailing the watery ways, turning sheer murder for Telemachus over in their minds.
The two halves sit against each other — a mother consoled, her son marked for death — and she does not know it. Homer builds the dramatic irony straight into the scene-cut: the comfort is real and the danger is real, and only the reader holds both at once. The book that spent hundreds of lines at Sparta's shining feast ends on cold water and a plot to kill.
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