The Odyssey Telemachos Quotes

Telemachos

Quote 13

(Telemachos:) ‘I will not willingly thrust you away from my balanced ship. Come, then, with me. There you will be entertained, from what we have left.’ (15.280-281)

Telemachos shows hospitality even to a complete stranger. This means the laws of the gods are more important than the laws of the mortals.

Telemachos

Quote 14

(Telemachos:) ‘I should not have sorrowed so over his dying if he had gone down among his companions in the land of the Trojans, or in the arms of his friends, after he had wound up the fighting. So all the Achaians would have heaped a grave mound over him, and he would have won great fame for himself and his son hereafter. But now ingloriously the stormwinds have caught and carried him away, out of sight, out of knowledge, and he left pain and lamentation to me.’ (1.236-243)

Telemachos holds the common belief that a death in arms is noble and honorable.

Telemachos

Quote 15

(Telemachos:) 'For my mother, against her will, is beset by suitors, own sons to the men who are greatest hereabouts. These shrink from making the journey to the house of her father Ikarios, so that he might take bride gifts for his daughter and bestow her on the one he wished, who came as his favorite; rather, all their days, they come and loiter in our house and sacrifice our oxen and our sheep and our fat goats and make a holiday feast of it and drink the bright wine recklessly. Most of our substance is wasted.' (2.50-58)

We're pretty sure that, no matter what the millennium, this kind of behavior is not cool. You have to respect your host's wine and oxen, people.