Summary
Telemachus arrives at the hut. The dogs, who barked at Odysseus, fawn on him. He sends Eumaeus to tell Penelope he is safe.
Alone with his son, Odysseus is transformed by Athena into a tall and handsome man. Telemachus takes him for a god and shrinks back. Odysseus says plainly that he is his father. Telemachus refuses to believe it, arguing that no mortal could change appearance so; Odysseus tells him no other Odysseus will ever come. They weep, longer and more loudly, the poem says, than birds robbed of their young.
They plan: Odysseus will come to the house as a beggar and endure whatever is done to him; Telemachus is to say nothing, and at the signal to remove the weapons from the hall.
In the town, the suitors' ambush ship returns unsuccessful. Antinous proposes killing Telemachus outright; Amphinomus objects that they should first ask the gods. Medon reports the plot to Penelope, who confronts Antinous, reminding him that Odysseus once sheltered his father. Eurymachus reassures her with elaborate lies.
Narrative function
The first recognition of the second half, and the formation of the conspiracy that produces Book 22.
Greek concepts in this book
- anagnōrisis
- Recognition. The poem stages six or seven of them, each by a different mechanism; this one is the least evidenced and the most immediately doubted.
- sēma
- A sign, token or proof. Its absence here is the point: Telemachus is given no sēma and must simply accept.
Connections to other books
Book 19 · Book 21 · Book 23 · Book 24
Contrast with the recognitions by the scar (19, 21), by the bed (23), and by the trees (24), each of which turns on a token.
Book 22
The removal of the weapons planned here is executed in Books 19 and 22.
Source notes
The number of the suitors is given in this book (16.245-253): fifty-two from Dulichium, twenty-four from Same, twenty from Zacynthus and twelve from Ithaca, with a herald, a bard and two attendants — one hundred and eight men.
Reading it responsibly
The poem is careful to make the easiest recognition the least persuasive. Telemachus has no memory of his father and no proof; he is asked to accept a stranger's word, and does, and the arrangement holds. Every subsequent recognition in the poem is harder and better evidenced, culminating in the one person who refuses to be convinced by anything short of a secret only two people share.