The narrator of the Odyssey invokes the
Muse, asking for inspiration as he prepares to tell the story of
Odysseus. The story begins ten years after the end of the Trojan
War, the subject of the Iliad. All of the Greek
heroes except Odysseus have returned home. Odysseus languishes on
the remote island Ogygia with the goddess Calypso, who has fallen
in love with him and refuses to let him leave. Meanwhile, a mob
of suitors is devouring his estate in Ithaca and courting his wife,
Penelope, in hopes of taking over his kingdom. His son, Telemachus,
an infant when Odysseus left but now a young man, is helpless to
stop them. He has resigned himself to the likelihood that his father
is dead.
With the consent of Zeus, Athena travels to Ithaca to
speak with Telemachus. Assuming the form of Odysseus’s old friend
Mentes, Athena predicts that Odysseus is still alive and that he
will soon return to Ithaca. She advises Telemachus to call together
the suitors and announce their banishment from his father’s estate.
She then tells him that he must make a journey to Pylos and Sparta
to ask for any news of his father. After this conversation, Telemachus
encounters Penelope in the suitors’ quarters, upset over a song
that the court bard is singing. Like Homer with the Iliad, the
bard sings of the sufferings experienced by the Greeks on their
return from Troy, and his song makes the bereaved Penelope more
miserable than she already is. To Penelope’s surprise, Telemachus
rebukes her. He reminds her that Odysseus isn’t the only Greek to
not return from Troy and that, if she doesn’t like the music in
the men’s quarters, she should retire to her own chamber and let
him look after her interests among the suitors. He then gives the
suitors notice that he will hold an assembly the next day at which
they will be ordered to leave his father’s estate. Antinous and
Eurymachus, two particularly defiant suitors, rebuke Telemachus
and ask the identity of the visitor with whom he has just been speaking.
Although Telemachus suspects that his visitor was a goddess in disguise,
he tells them only that the man was a friend of his father.
