Summary: Book 15
Athena travels to Sparta, where she finds Telemachus
and Pisistratus, Nestor’s son. She tells Telemachus he must hurry
home to Ithaca before the suitors succeed in winning his mother’s
hand. She also warns him of the ambush that they have set and explains
how to avoid it. Finally, she instructs him to head first for the
home of the swineherd Eumaeus, who will convey the news of his safe
return to Penelope.
The next day, Telemachus announces his departure and accepts gifts
from Menelaus and Helen. As Telemachus pulls away from the palace
in his chariot, an eagle carrying a goose stolen from a pen swoops
down beside him. Helen interprets the incident as an omen that Odysseus
is about to swoop down on his home and exact revenge on the suitors.
Once at Pylos, Telemachus has Pisistratus drop him off
at his ship, insisting that he has no time to spare to visit Nestor
again. The ship is about to set off when Theoclymenus, a famous
prophet’s descendant who is fleeing prosecution for a crime of manslaughter that
he committed in Argos, approaches Telemachus and asks to come aboard.
Telemachus welcomes him and offers him hospitality when they get
to Ithaca.
In the hut of Eumaeus, Odysseus tests the limit of his
hospitality by offering to leave in the morning, a false gesture
that he hopes will prompt Eumaeus to offer to let him stay longer.
He urges the old man not to go out of his way and says that he will
earn his keep working for the suitors, but Eumaeus will have none
of it. To get mixed up with those suitors, he warns, would be suicide.
Odysseus and the swineherd then swap stories. Eumaeus explains how
he first came to Ithaca: the son of a king, he was stolen from his
house by Phoenician pirates with the help of a maid that his father
employed. The pirates took him all over the seas until Laertes,
Odysseus’s father, bought him in Ithaca. There, Laertes’ wife brought
him up alongside her own daughter, the youngest born.
The next morning, Telemachus reaches the shores
of Ithaca. He disembarks while the crew heads to the city by ship.
He entrusts Theoclymenus to a loyal crewman, Piraeus. As they part,
they see a hawk fly by carrying a dove in its talons, which Theoclymenus
interprets as a favorable sign of the strength of Odysseus’s house
and line.
Summary: Book 16
When Telemachus reaches Eumaeus’s hut, he finds the swineherd talking
with a stranger (Odysseus in disguise). Eumaeus recounts Odysseus’s
story and suggests that the stranger stay with Telemachus at the
palace. But Telemachus is afraid of what the suitors might do to
them. Eumaeus thus goes to the palace alone to tell Penelope that
her son has returned.
