вЂњMore than all other men he was born for painвЂќ (Book III: 106). Nestor tells him to go to Menelaus using his stallions with his son Pisistratus to travel Laedemon, or Sparta. The Myrmidons made it home safe, Orestes claimed revenge on his father Agamemnon by killing Aegisthis who first killed Agamemnon and took Clytemnestra. Therefore Nestor can only recount hearsay of the fate of the Achaeans. He recounts both his and MenelausвЂ™s speedy plan to flee the inner conflicts breaking out between the Achaeans, while brothers Menelaus and Agamemnon went thier separate ways, Menelaus and Nestor traveled back to Achaea, and Odysseus and Agamemnon stayed behind in Troy sacrifice. On Pylos, Nestor recalls the many felled men in Troy: Ajax, Achilles, Patroclus, Antilochus -the son of Nestor. In answering the pressing question of his origins,В Telemachus travels to Pylos to encounter Nestor and his children after sailing over the вЂњwine-dark sea.вЂќ He tells only Eurycleia, his familyвЂ™s long-serving nurse of his departure. Rather than putting the poet on trial, Telemachus puts those who weep and lament in a position of choice. The song causes Penelope much despair, and Telemachus commands that retire to her chambers if she does not like the song of the bard. The question of the life or death of a father cannot remain unanswered.Д¬uriously, in the courtyard, a beautiful bard is singing of the suffering of the Achaeans in Troy. The son lives according to the story of his father. He must be led out to learn of his father. Athena, rather than simply explaining to Telemachus the current status and whereabouts of Odysseus, must compel him to learn. Perhaps TelemachusвЂ™s naГЇvetГ© prevents his future kingship from being realized. вЂњThe Farewell of Telemachus and EucharisвЂќ by Jacques-Louis David (1819) Why does Athena beckon Telemachus to leave his fatherвЂ™s house? He relies, ultimately, on Athena to guide him as he ventures out. He is not yet compelling and persuasive like his father.

Unlike Orestes, Telemachus is greatly outnumbered by the suitors, particularly Antinous and Eurymachus, who look to grow fat and rich off the pleasures of the house of Odysseus.In response, he calls a council for the leaders of Ithaca, yet he fails to speak to the men in a way that persuades them of his cause and his problem.

Telemachus is regularly compared, or rather contrasted with Orestes, son of Agamemnon, who avenges his father by killing Aegisthus for claiming AgamemnonвЂ™sВ throne by taking Clytemnestra, AgamemnonвЂ™s wife, as his own. Upon her departure, Telemachus is filled with courage and the memory of his father. One who gives guidance, a teacher, is more a friend than a stranger. Telemachus soon knows the stranger to whom he speaking as a god, and rather than continuing to call Athena a вЂњstrangerвЂќ, he calls her a вЂњfriendвЂќ. Like Oedipus he yearns for knowledge of his origins, and like Orestes, later expounded upon in AeschylusвЂ™s Oresteia, Telemachus longs for revenge. He is also skeptical of his origins -Is Odysseus his true father? With Odysseus absent, Telemachus can only rely on the word of Penelope, his mother (Book I:248-255). Telemachus, now twenty years old, laments his fatherвЂ™s probable death. Telemachus welcomes a вЂњstranger,вЂќ who is Athena disguised as Mentes lord of Tapian men, and as he joins the goddess for a banquet he also explains the downfall of his fatherвЂ™s house (Book I, 180-205). Both are passionate and wrathful, for different reasons, yet as the character of Telemachus begins to emerge in this prelude to the story of OdysseusвЂ™s homecoming, so does his guile and tact. In the Telemachia, the first four books of the Odyssey, we encounter a strange kinship between the speeches and actions of Telemachus and the warrior Achilles.

Telemachus in the odyssey