Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

In the twentieth year of Odysseus’s absence, suitors from Ithaca and the neighboring islands feasted in his hall, wasting the household and pressing Penelope to choose a husband. Telemachus, grown but powerless, sat among them in silent anger. Athena, with Zeus’s leave, came to Ithaca in the guise of Mentes (and later Mentor), stirred the youth to call an assembly, denounce the suitors, and sail for news of his father. Penelope’s web-trick—weaving by day, unpicking by night—had delayed remarriage until a maid betrayed it; the pressure now fell on the son. Telemachus sailed with Athena as Mentor. At Pylos Nestor received him with sacrifice and story: the quarrel of the Atreidae, the scattered returns, Agamemnon’s murder, and his own safe homecoming; he sent the boy on to Sparta with Peisistratus. At Menelaus’s palace Helen recognized Telemachus by likeness; Menelaus and Helen told of the wooden horse and of Proteus’s prophecy that Odysseus still lived, captive on Calypso’s island. Meanwhile the suitors plotted to ambush Telemachus on his return. The Telemachy thus sets the household crisis, the divine sponsorship of the son, and the first clear word that Odysseus survives—before the poem turns to the hero himself on Ogygia.