Summary
The poem opens with the councils of the gods. Athena persuades Zeus that Odysseus must be released from Calypso, then goes to Ithaca in the form of Mentes.
Telemachus receives her, complains about the suitors, and is told to call an assembly and sail to Pylos and Sparta. Penelope’s web is described: she weaves a shroud by day and unweaves it by night. Telemachus begins to act like the son of Odysseus.
Opening lines
Tell me, O Muse, of the man of many devices, who wandered full many ways after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy. Many were the men whose cities he saw and whose mind he learned, aye, and many the woes he suffered in his heart upon the sea, [5] seeking to win his own life and the return of his comrades. — Homer, Odyssey I.1ff., trans. A. T. Murray (Loeb; Perseus Digital Library, CC BY-SA 4.0).
Relations
Backlinks 1
The following entries mention “Odyssey I · Athena and Telemachus”.