Okay. Athena goes to pay Telemachus, Odysseus' son, a visit. It's been decided on Mount Olympus that Hermes, the messenger of the gods, will be sent to Calypso, the nymph who's been hanging on to Odysseus, and tell her that she's just going to have to find some other guy to be her love-slave. Meanwhile, Athena is off on winged sandals to see how the big O's son is faring.
Not too well, it turns out. He was a baby when Odysseus left him, and is now a young man. Living in his father's home, grieving for the man he never really knew, he'd be sadly situated enough. But he's also surrounded by suitors for his mother's hand.
Penelope is certainly not young by ancient standards. Even if she married at the age of fourteen, as women often did in classical Greece, and had her son soon after that, she's still at least in her mid- to late thirties. Sue Blundell, in her "Women In Ancient Greece," writes that although it's impossible to estimate life expectancies of the ancient Greeks, one scholar estimated (from a study he did of skeletons from that time) that the median age of death ("that is, the age by which fifty per cent of the population had died") was about 34 1/2 for women and about 44 1/2 for men. So Penelope was no spring chicken.
Perhaps, chillingly, that was part of her appeal to all the men now eagerly courting her. She is, we are told, still beautiful; she is wealthily and powerfully connected. If she remarries and dies soon after, her husband will have enjoyed his time with her and be left with a fine inheritance.
As the men cluttering up the place at Ithaca are showing themselves to be complete slobs in every sense of the word, we're hardly doing wrong by them in assuming the worst about them. They are forcing their presence on a grieving household; they are abusing hospitality. They are eating Telemachus and his family out of house and home, and show no signs of leaving, though Penelope gives them no encouragement to stay.
So Telemachus is lounging moodily around the place. He's trying to imagine his father, and although chronologically he may be an adult, he's still taking a childish pleasure in imagining what Daddy would do to these guys if he could just suddenly drop down from the sky and take them by surprise.
Then he sees Athena, who has disguised herself as Mentes, a Greek king. Telemachus doesn't yet know she's a goddess; he only sees a guest who hasn't yet been waited on properly, and scolds himself for daydreaming and neglecting his duties as host. He greets her courteously, relieves her of her spear (apparently a polite thing to do back then), and brings her to a seat of honor "with a stool to rest her feet." Then he draws up a low chair next to her. They're seated as far as possible from the noise of the party-boy suitors. Telemachus is embarrassed by their presence and lack of manners, worried about what this new guest might think to see them.
Next is a very homey passage, in which the household offers its best to the newcomer. I like the little domestic details:
"A maid brought water soon in a graceful golden pitcher and over a silver basin tipped it out so they might rinse their hands, then pulled a gleaming table to their side. A staid housekeeper brought on bread to serve them."
This passage illustrates the beautiful, seemingly effortless scene-setting Homer is capable of. One feels immediately grounded in this unfamiliar, but hardly alien, household.
The suitors demand that the bard sing a song for them. Telemachus takes the opportunity to speak low and privately under the covering sound of the song to his new guest, whom he seems already fond of and eager to please. He confides in this stranger all his wishes and fears -- the hopes he has of his father's return, the certainty he knows he ought to feel of that father's death.
Then he seems to realize that he's being rude, monopolizing the conversation and taking the focus off his guest and on himself. He asks Athena where she came from, how she got there. Is she a friend of his father's?
Athena tells her cover story, keeping her real identity hidden. It's handy to be an immortal god, and go by whatever appearance you choose. She says that she's been friends with Telemachus' father for a very long time. She insists that Odysseus is not in fact dead, only held captive against his will.
She then adds that she wants to make for Telemachus
"a prophecy, one the immortal gods have planted in my mind -- it will come true, I think..."
Odysseus will come home soon, she insists -- he's working towards that goal even as they speak.
Now Athena, playing dumb as befits her persona, asks in turn who Telemachus is. Is he Odysseus' son? He looks uncannily like him.
Telemachus makes a rather harsh statement. He reminds me so much, here and other places, of a teenager toughing it out, thinking he knows all about the cruel world when really he hasn't seen a thing and is almost painfully naive. He answers bitterly that his mother has always claimed he's Odysseus' son, but who knows?
Athena answers mildly, asking about the presence of so many guests. Is this
"some wedding feast, some festival?... How obscenely they lounge and swagger here, look, gorging in your house."
She's trying to get him to rouse himself out of bitterness and sadness into action. Will it work?
