Book 2 · Book Guide
The morning after Athena’s visit, Telemachus calls the men of Ithaca to their first public assembly since Odysseus sailed for Troy. In front of everyone he demands that the suitors leave his house. They refuse, blame his mother for stringing them along, and brush aside the warnings of the elders, even an omen sent by Zeus.
So Telemachus changes his plan. With Athena’s help, again disguised as a man, this time as the old family friend Mentor, he quietly fits out a ship and gathers a crew. He has the old nurse pack food and wine in secret, swears her to silence so his mother will not be frightened, and slips away by sea after dark to seek news of his father.
When Telemachus calls the men of Ithaca to assembly, he’s using the basic machine of Greek public life: the townsmen gather, a herald hands the speaker’s staff to whoever has the floor, and grievances are aired in the open. There’s no vote and no police force — the point is witness. Everyone now knows the suitors have been warned. And one detail is damning: this is the first assembly held on Ithaca in twenty years. That’s how leaderless the island has been since Odysseus sailed.
Two eagles tearing at each other over the assembly is an omen, and the old man Halitherses reads it professionally — bird-reading was a real and respected craft in the Greek world. Notice that the omen forces nothing. The suitors are free to laugh it off, and they do. That’s how signs work in Homer: the gods post the warning, and men walk past it at their own price.
For three years Penelope held off more than a hundred suitors with wool. She said she couldn’t remarry until she finished a burial shroud for old Laertes — refusing to weave one would have been shameful, so the suitors had to wait. By day she wove; by night she unpicked the day’s work. Weaving was the signature work of a noblewoman, so the trick was hidden in plain sight. It’s worth noticing what this makes her: Odysseus is famous for cunning, and his wife runs the same brand of warfare with the tools she has. They are a matched pair.
At first light Telemachus dresses, straps on his sword, and goes out looking like a god. He sends the heralds to summon the men of Ithaca, and they gather quickly. Athena pours a strange grace over him, so that every man stares as he walks in with his spear and his two dogs. He sits down in his father’s seat, and the old men make room.
The first to speak is Aegyptius, bent with age and grieving for a son the Cyclops killed. He points out that there has been no assembly since Odysseus left, and asks who has called this one and why. Whoever it is, he says, must be a good man, and he hopes the gods grant his wish.
Burning to speak, Telemachus takes the staff and pours out his trouble. He has lost his father, and now a crowd of suitors is destroying his house, slaughtering his flocks and draining his wine day after day, while no one stops them. He begs the men to feel shame and to fear the gods, and to leave him alone in his grief. Then, in anger and tears, he throws the speaker’s staff to the ground. The whole crowd pities him.
Only Antinous answers, and he answers harshly. It is not the suitors’ fault, he says, but Penelope’s, for she is full of tricks. He tells the famous one: she set up a great loom and promised to choose a husband once she had finished a burial shroud for old Laertes. By day she wove it, and every night she secretly unraveled it. For three years she fooled them, until a slave woman gave her away. Send your mother back to her father, Antinous demands, and the suitors will keep eating the house until she marries.
Telemachus answers steadily that he cannot drive out the mother who bore him; her father would punish him, the gods would punish him, and his mother’s curse would follow him. If the suitors have any shame, he says, they should leave on their own. If not, he calls on Zeus for payback, and warns them they will die in the house with no one to avenge them.
As he finishes, Zeus sends two eagles soaring down from the mountain. Over the middle of the assembly they wheel and tear at each other with their talons, then dart off to the right above the town. The men are shaken. Old Halitherses, who can read birds, explains it plainly: Odysseus is near, bringing death to the suitors, and they should stop while they can.
Eurymachus sneers at the old prophet and tells him to keep his omens for his own children. Birds fly around all the time, he says, and mean nothing; Odysseus is dead. He threatens Halitherses with a heavy fine and repeats the demand that Penelope go back to her father. The suitors fear no one, he says, and will keep eating the house until she marries.
Telemachus gives up arguing. He asks only for a ship and twenty rowers so he can sail to Pylos and Sparta and search for news of his father. If he learns Odysseus is alive, he will wait one more year; if he learns he is dead, he will hold the funeral rites and give his mother to a new husband.
Mentor, the old friend Odysseus left in charge, rises in anger, not at the suitors so much as at everyone else. The whole town sits silent, he says, and will not lift a word to stop a few men from wrecking the house of the king who was gentle to them all. Leiocritus, one of the suitors, mocks him in return, says even Odysseus himself could not beat so many, and breaks up the assembly. The crowd scatters and the suitors go back to the house.
Telemachus walks off alone to the shore, washes his hands in the grey sea, and prays to the goddess who came to him. Athena comes near in the shape and voice of Mentor. If his father’s spirit truly lives in him, she says, the voyage will not be wasted. She tells him to go home, gather food and wine, and leave the suitors to their doom. She herself will round up a crew, find the best ship, and sail with him.
Telemachus goes home and finds the suitors preparing their feast. Antinous takes his hand with a laugh and tells him to relax and eat with them. Telemachus pulls free and says plainly that he cannot sit at ease among men who have been devouring his property since he was a boy; now he is grown, and he means to bring ruin down on them. The suitors jeer, joking that he means to fetch helpers or fetch poison, or that he will die at sea like his father and leave them his goods to split.
Telemachus goes down to his father’s treasure storeroom, where gold, bronze, oil, and old wine are kept against the day Odysseus comes home. He calls in the trustworthy nurse Eurycleia and tells her to draw off twelve jars of wine and pack twenty measures of barley meal, all in secret. She cries and begs him not to go, sure the suitors will plot his death. He swears her to silence so his mother will not cry, and she takes a great oath and prepares the stores.
Meanwhile Athena, taking the shape of Telemachus, goes through the town gathering volunteers and borrows a fast ship from Noemon. After dark she launches it, stocks it with gear, and moors it at the harbor’s edge. Then she goes to Odysseus’s house and pours sweet sleep over the suitors as they drink, so the cups drop from their hands and they stagger home to bed.
As Mentor, Athena calls Telemachus out and tells him the crew is waiting at the oars. They carry the stores down to the ship and load them. Telemachus boards, Athena takes the stern, and the crew casts off. The goddess sends a strong west wind; they raise the mast and the white sail, and the ship runs hissing across the dark water. They pour offerings to the gods, above all to Athena, and sail on through the night until dawn.
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