Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

In the assembly Telemachus calls, Zeus sends two eagles that tear each other above the crowd. Halitherses son of Mastor, an aged seer who alone among his generation kept bird-lore clear, interprets: Odysseus is near; disaster already hangs over the suitors. He reminds them he foretold at Odysseus’s departure that the king would return in the twentieth year unknown to all—and that the term is fulfilled. Eurymachus mocks him: go home and prophesy to your children; many birds fly under the sun meaning nothing; Telemachus should leave justice to the suitors’ will. The assembly breaks without redress. After the suitors die, Halitherses again speaks against Eupeithes’s war-party, urging peace. Catalogue the seer’s bird-omen and scorned warning as the Telemachy’s public prophecy, parallel to Theoclymenus’s later doom-vision inside the hall.