Reading Troy — chapter 52 of 74 · Odyssey, Book 2

Odyssey, Book 2 — Telemachus Calls Assembly; Sails for Pylos (Day 2 of the Telemachy; twenty years after Odysseus left for Troy; Ithaca, agora and harbour)

Rosy-fingered Dawn. Telemachus puts on his clothes, slings his sword, binds his sandals, and goes to the place of assembly; the criers call. Minerva pours grace upon him as he comes, and the elders give way: he sits in his father's seat. Aegyptius, bent double with age and grieving still for his son Antiphus eaten by the Cyclops, asks who has called the meeting — Ithaca has not met since Odysseus sailed.

Telemachus rises with the herald's staff in his hand and speaks his first public speech. He has two complaints: he has lost his father, who was once gentle to them all; and the suitors are eating up the house. They are sons of "the chief men among you" — let them go to Penelope's father Icarius and pay the bride-gifts and woo her in form, not camp here daily killing his oxen and drinking his wine. He throws the staff to the ground and weeps. Pity moves the people. Antinous answers harshly: blame Penelope, who for three years deceived them with the shroud of Laertes — weaving by day, unravelling by night — until a maid betrayed her. Let her father send her home and let her choose, or the suitors will stay.

Telemachus refuses to dismiss his mother. As he speaks Jove sends an omen: two eagles wheel down from the mountains, fight in the upper air with bloody talons, and tear away to the right above the assembly. Halitherses the bird-reader reads it: Odysseus returns soon and unknown, in the twentieth year, "to deal out death and destruction" on the suitors. Eurymachus jeers — birds fly everywhere; old man, prophesy to your own children. The suitors will not leave until Penelope marries. Mentor, Odysseus's old friend left in charge of the house, shames the people: I do not blame the suitors so much as I blame you, for you sit silent and do nothing, though you are many and they are few. Leiocritus dismisses him; the assembly breaks up.

Telemachus walks alone to the grey sea, washes his hands in the foam, and prays. Minerva comes again, this time in the shape of Mentor, with Mentor's voice. She promises a ship and a crew; sons are rarely the equals of their fathers, but you have his discernment. Telemachus returns to the house. Antinous, smiling, takes his hand and offers a ship as if in friendship; Telemachus snatches his hand back — "I will do you all the harm I can."

The boy goes secretly down into the storeroom of Odysseus, the place of heaped gold and bronze, oaken chests of clothing, jars of fragrant olive oil, casks of strong unmixed wine kept against the master's return. He calls the old nurse Euryclea, swears her to secrecy for ten or twelve days, and has her fill twelve sealed jars of the second-best wine and twenty leather bags of barley meal. Euryclea weeps — your father's bones are bleached somewhere, do not go upon the barren sea — but obeys. Meanwhile Minerva in his own shape goes through the town, gathers a crew, and borrows a ship from Noemon, son of Phronius. At dusk she casts sleep upon the suitors so they stagger home. She comes for Telemachus as Mentor. The provisions are carried down. They board, the wind comes whistling from the west, the white sails fill, the foam hisses against the bow; they pour wine to the immortals, and chiefly to Athena. The ship runs all night through the watches of the dark.

Analysis

Chapter 0052 — Analysis

Ithaca's first assembly in twenty years

Aegyptius's astonished question — who called this assembly, since none has been called since Odysseus sailed — is one of the Odyssey's quietly devastating details. Twenty years of no public meeting. Ithaca has had no king, and its elders have not bothered with the absence; only the disappearance of one old man's son in the Cyclops's cave kept Aegyptius coming to look. The polity is rusted shut. Telemachus's first public act is to convene it, and the assembly's failure to do anything — the people sit silent, Mentor shames them, Leiocritus dismisses Mentor, everyone goes home — diagnoses what Odysseus is returning to. The poem is not only about a man getting home; it is about whether a kingdom that has forgotten how to meet can be recovered.

The shroud of Laertes

Antinous's complaint contains one of the Odyssey's most famous embedded stories: Penelope's three-year deception with the shroud. She told the suitors she could not remarry until she had finished weaving a funeral pall for old Laertes; for three years she wove by day and unpicked her work by night under torchlight. A maid betrayed her, the suitors caught her at it, she was forced to complete the cloth. The story is told twice more in the poem (book 19 by Penelope herself; book 24 by Amphimedon's ghost to Agamemnon), each time with small variants — the kind of repetition that suggests an oral lay older than the Odyssey, fixed in three different framing positions. It is also the structural emblem of Penelope's intelligence: a weaver's stratagem, the female counterpart of Odysseus's polymetis deceptions.

The eagles and the credibility of omens

Bird-omens punctuate the Odyssey: eagles here, an eagle with a goose in book 15, a hawk killing a dove in book 15 again, the great eagle of Penelope's dream in book 19. Halitherses reads this one explicitly — Odysseus returns in the twentieth year, unknown, to slaughter the suitors — and Eurymachus dismisses it with sceptical realism: birds fly all the time; what is your evidence? The Odyssey is more interested in this scepticism than the Iliad is. The suitors are not impious in some grand sense; they are men who do not credit signs, who calculate without the gods, and who therefore walk into the trap. Halitherses, twenty-two years from now, will be one of the few villagers who tries to dissuade the suitors' kinsmen from revenge in book 24. He is the consistent reader of the divine semaphore.

Mentor

Mentor's brief, blistering speech in this book ("I do not blame the suitors so much as I blame you") is the etymological source of our English word for a trusted counsellor. The disguise Athena chooses for almost all her appearances to Telemachus and Odysseus on Ithaca — Mentor — is the figure she becomes by association with this scene. Fenelon's Télémaque (1699) — the most influential French novel of the seventeenth century — made Mentor the central pedagogical figure of European literature; from there comes the modern noun. The Odyssey at this assembly invents a Western category.

Storeroom inventories

The descent into the storeroom is the first of the Odyssey's set-piece interior descriptions — heaped gold and bronze on the floor, oaken chests of fine cloth, jars of fragrant olive oil, casks of "old wine, unmixed and fit for a god," locked behind double doors with Euryclea as keeper day and night. The poem returns again and again to the inventory of the house: armour in book 22, the marriage-bed in book 23, the orchard's rows of pear and fig trees in book 24. Possessions, in the Odyssey, are not décor. They are the proof that the house has been kept against the master's return, the answer to the question the whole poem is asking.

What to watch for

• Aegyptius and his lost son Antiphus — the Cyclops's victims are remembered here; we will see them eaten alive in book 9.
• The shroud of Laertes: re-told twice more. Notice variations.
• The eagles. There will be more bird-omens; mark each.
• Mentor in this book; Athena-as-Mentor henceforward.
• The storeroom: keep the inventory in mind for the suitors' theft (book 22) and Odysseus's recovery (book 23).
• Antinous taking Telemachus's hand smiling: his last gesture in book 22 will be reaching for his wine-cup as the arrow takes him.

Echoes across the cycle

Chapter 0052 — Echoes Across the Cycle

Backward echoes

The assembly scene rhymes deliberately with Iliad 1, where Achilles called the Greek assembly to break the plague and ended quarrelling with Agamemnon. Telemachus stands in his father's seat with the herald's staff — the same staff-and-assembly procedure of Iliad 1 and 2 — but as a son, untried. Aegyptius's lost son Antiphus reaches forward in this poem to book 9 but reaches back in the cycle to the immediate aftermath of Troy: Odysseus's first landfall, the Cicones, the Lotus-Eaters, then the Cyclops. The eagles fighting in the upper air recall the bird-omens of the Iliad — most famously Hector's eagle-with-serpent in Iliad 12, which Polydamas reads correctly and Hector dismisses, exactly the pattern repeated here between Halitherses and Eurymachus. Penelope's shroud for Laertes echoes back to Andromache weeping over Hector's body in Iliad 24, where weaving was the woman's authoritative act in the face of male death; Penelope weaves to prevent her husband's symbolic death.

Forward echoes

Almost every plot thread of the second half is planted in book 2.

• Telemachus's voyage (books 3–4) and the suitors' ambush waiting for him on his return (book 4 closing scene, book 15 escape) both flow from this departure.
• The shroud is re-narrated by Penelope herself in book 19 to the disguised Odysseus, and again by Amphimedon's ghost in the second Nekyia at book 24 — the same lay set into three different positions to do three different works.
• Halitherses returns in book 24 with the same scepticism turned the other way: the suitors' kinsmen are about to march on Odysseus, and Halitherses tries to dissuade them — they ignore him a second time and die.
• Mentor as Athena's standard Ithacan disguise persists through the rest of the poem; the name will pass into European literature via Fenelon's Télémaque (1699) and from there into modern English as a common noun for trusted counsellor.
• The storeroom inventory is the implicit answer to the suitors' depredation: the best wine, against Odysseus's return, has been preserved. When he returns in book 23, the kingdom is recoverable because Penelope and Euryclea have kept it.
• Antinous's smiling hand-clasp has its mirror in book 22.1: he is the first suitor to die, the arrow striking his throat as he raises his cup to his mouth, blood and brain spurting from his nose, the cup ringing on the floor.
• The structural pattern of the corrupt assembly disregarding its prophet appears again in Aeneid 2: Cassandra and Laocoön warn against the Wooden Horse; the Trojans bring it in. Halitherses here belongs to the same tradition.

Cast in this chapter

Chapter 0052 — Cast In This Chapter

On stage

• Telemachus — calls the assembly, makes his first public speech, weeps, prepares the secret voyage
• Athena — "Minerva"; pours grace on Telemachus, returns as Mentor, gathers a crew, casts sleep on the suitors
• Antinous — chief suitor; blames Penelope's shroud trick, offers a false handshake
• Eurycleia — keeper of the storeroom; weeps for Telemachus, swears secrecy, fills jars and bags

Mentioned / off-stage

• Odysseus — "Ulysses"; subject of the eagle omen; his storeroom and best wine kept against his return
• Penelope — the shroud weaver; not seen, but the suitors' grievance and Antinous's accusation
• Zeus — "Jove"; sends the two eagles
• Polyphemus — Aegyptius's son Antiphus died in his cave; first explicit cycle-forward reference

Non-cast named figures (no dossier): Aegyptius and his son Antiphus; Halitherses the bird-reader (will return in book 24); Eurymachus the suitor; Mentor the historical man (whose name Athena borrows); Leiocritus son of Evenor; Noemon son of Phronius (lender of the ship); Laertes (off-stage, the shroud's intended recipient); Icarius, Penelope's father.

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This post is part of Reading Troy, a slow daily readalong through the four canonical Trojan-cycle epics — Homer's Iliad, Quintus Smyrnaeus's Posthomerica, Virgil's Aeneid, and Homer's Odyssey — read in chronological narrative order.