ἀλλ’ ἄγε μοι τόδε εἰπὲ καὶ ἀτρεκέως κατάλεξον
This same formula appears below at 10.405 and also at Iliad 24.380, when the disguised Hermes says it to Priam as he goes to the Achaean camp. See above on 10.1ff. for the ways in which Priam’s journey is thematically similar to a spying mission. Higbie (1995:86–87) identifies both of these passages as places where we might expect the first question to be a request for the addressee to identify himself by name, but this happens in neither case. (In fact, after Hermes asks Priam questions about what he is doing using this formula, Priam asks Hermes to identify himself, and Hermes tells a false story in reply.) In the Odyssey, the formula generally introduces a series of further questions (Odyssey 1.169, 1.224, 8.572, 15.383; the exception is Odyssey 11.140, which has only one question that follows). See Finkelberg 1987 for her argument that the verb καταλέγω “connotes both an ordered succession and truth” (Finkelberg 1987:138) and that Homeric epic uses it to represent its own genre.