Odyssey 1.88-1.95

|88 αὐτὰρ ἐγὼν Ἰθάκηνδε ἐλεύσομαι, ὄφρα οἱ υἱὸν |89 μᾶλλον ἐποτρύνω καί οἱ μένος ἐν φρεσὶ θείω, |90 εἰς ἀγορὴν καλέσαντα κάρη κομόωντας Ἀχαιοὺς |91 πᾶσι μνηστήρεσσιν ἀπειπέμεν, οἵ τέ οἱ αἰεὶ |92 μῆλ’ ἁδινὰ σφάζουσι καὶ εἰλίποδας ἕλικας βοῦς. |93 πέμψω δ’ ἐς Σπάρτην τε καὶ ἐς Πύλον ἠμαθόεντα |94 νόστον πευσόμενον πατρὸς φίλου, ἤν που ἀκούσῃ, |95 ἠδ’ ἵνα μιν κλέος ἐσθλὸν ἐν ἀνθρώποισιν ἔχῃσιν.

|88 As for me, I will go travel to Ithaca, going to his [= Odysseus’] son |89 in order to give him [= Telemachus] more encouragement and to put mental power [menos] into his heart [phrenes]. |90 He is to summon the long-haired Achaeans for a meeting in assembly, |91 and he is to speak out to all the suitors [of his mother Penelope], who persist in |92 slaughtering again and again any number of his sheep and oxen. |93 And I will conduct [pempein] him to Sparta and to sandy Pylos, |94 and thus he will learn [punthanesthai] the return [nostos] of his dear [philos] father, if by chance he [= Telemachus] hears [akouein] it, |95 and thus may genuine glory [kleos] possess him throughout humankind.

Here the nostos of Odysseus, O.01.094, is shown to be not only a ‘homecoming’ but also a ‘song of homecoming’. On the meaning ‘song of homecoming’, see the comment on O.01.326–327. On kleos in the sense of an overall reference to the ‘glory’ of poetry, see the comment on I.02.325. Here at O.01.088–095, we can see that nostos as a ‘song of homecoming’ is a prerequisite for the quest of Odysseus to achieve the kleos ‘glory’ of poetry. Odysseus will receive the kleos ‘glory’ of his own Odyssey only if he achieves a successful nostos ‘homecoming’, and it is the kleos ‘glory’ of poetry that turns his homecoming into a song of homecoming. What the goddess says at O.01.094 is not that Telemachus will learn about the nostos of Odysseus if he is fortunate enough to hear about it. In the original Greek text, the noun nostos is the direct object of both the verb punthanesthai, ‘learn’ and the verb akouein ‘hear’ at O.01.094 here, and that is why I chose to translate the verse this way: ‘and thus he will learn [punthanesthai] the return [nostos] of his dear [philos] father, if by chance he [= Telemachus] hears [akouein] it’. Elsewhere too in the Odyssey, we see nostos as the direct object of punthanesthai ‘learn’: O.02.215, O.02.264, O.02.360, O.04.714—as also of akouein ‘hear’: O.01.287, O.02.218, O.02.360. It is not a question of learning about a homecoming, of hearing about a homecoming. Rather, Telemachus will learn the actual song of the homecoming, the song of nostos, by hearing it. He will actually hear the song from the hero Nestor in Odyssey 3 and from the hero Menelaos along with his divine consort Helen in Odyssey 4. (This formulation is epitomized from H24H 9§20; see also Stone 2016.09.28.)

Athena (1810). Drawing by John Flaxman.
Image via Wikimedia Commons.