Telemachus

• 1. Far From Battle

  ›

  Telemachus carries a name that means "far from battle," or perhaps "fighting from afar," as a bowman shoots from a distance. He is the son of Odysseus and Penelope in Greek mythology, and a central character in Homer's Odyssey. His father left for Troy when Telemachus was still an infant. Twenty years passed. The household at Ithaca filled with crowds of suitors competing for Penelope's hand. Telemachus had grown to manhood in a house that was not entirely his own. What the Odyssey asks, on his behalf, is a harder question. What can a son do when his father is missing and the world has moved on without him?

• 2. The Telemachy

  ›

  Athena, described throughout as his divine guide, accompanies Telemachus on his search. Under her instructions, he sets out from home to find whatever news anyone might have about his father's fate. At Pylos, he meets Nestor, the old man who receives him warmly and fills the visit with stories of Odysseus's past glory. Telemachus does not continue alone. Nestor's son Peisistratus travels with him to the halls of Menelaus and his wife Helen, in Sparta. Both hosts treat the young man as an honored guest. Menelaus and Helen each give their own account of Odysseus's exploits at Troy. The accounts are described as complementary yet also contradictory, each offering a slightly different picture of the hero. From Menelaus, Telemachus receives the most concrete news of the entire journey: Odysseus was last seen stranded on the island of Ogygia. He sailed home from Sparta carrying that name. The answer he had been looking for was, unknown to him, already making its way to Ithaca.

• 3. The Swineherd's Guest

  ›

  In the fifteenth book of the Odyssey, the narrative pivots to Telemachus's return. He does not go straight to the palace. He visits Eumaeus, the swineherd who looks after the herds belonging to Odysseus's household. Eumaeus happens to be hosting a stranger, a beggar who has appeared at his door. That beggar is Odysseus, traveling in disguise. Athena advises Odysseus to reveal himself to his son, and the reunion happens there, in the swineherd's home, not in any grand hall. Father and son immediately begin to plan the destruction of the suitors who have taken over the palace. Telemachus returns to the palace ahead of his father, tasked with watching the suitors. Odysseus will follow later, still wearing his beggar's disguise. Odysseus's bow, which had been sitting in the palace all along, would become the instrument that forced a resolution.

• 4. The Twelve Axe Heads

  ›

  Penelope sets a challenge for the men who have gathered in her home. They must string Odysseus's own bow and shoot an arrow clean through the handle-holes of twelve axe heads arranged in a row. Telemachus steps up first to attempt the task. On his fourth try at stringing the bow, he nearly succeeds. Odysseus, watching from within the room in his beggar's disguise, sends his son a subtle signal to stop. Telemachus steps back. The suitors take their turns and fail. That collective failure removes any remaining claim they might have had. Odysseus reveals himself, and then father and son bring swift and bloody death to the suitors. The myths that followed, from the Telegony onward, took Telemachus somewhere no one who had read the Odyssey could have predicted.

• 5. Life After the Odyssey

  ›

  In the post-Homeric tradition, Palamedes placed the infant Telemachus before the plough that Odysseus was driving as he feigned madness. Odysseus was trying to avoid joining the Greek forces then gathering for the campaign against Troy. Palamedes's purpose, in this account, was to persuade Odysseus to join.

  The Telegony, a short two-book epic poem, took up the story immediately after the events of the Odyssey. Its version of events ends with Odysseus killed by accident, not in battle. His killer is Telegonus, a son he never knew he had by the goddess Circe. After Odysseus's death, Telemachus travels to the island of Aeaea with Telegonus and Penelope, and there he marries Circe. A later extension of the tradition introduced Cassiphone into the narrative, identified as the daughter of Odysseus and Circe and therefore Telemachus's half-sister. In some accounts, Circe resurrects Odysseus at some point; Telemachus's marriage to the goddess remains a constant throughout.

  Aristotle and Dictys of Crete recorded a different ending: Telemachus married Nausicaa, the daughter of King Alcinous, and their son was named Perseptolis or Ptoliporthus. Eustathius named Polycaste, the daughter of Nestor, as a mother of Telemachus's children. Other traditions said he fathered Latinus by Circe. A daughter named Roma appeared in some accounts, and she was said to have married Aeneas. Servius recorded a tradition in which Telemachus went on to found the town of Clusium in Etruria. The Roman emperor Hadrian reportedly consulted the Delphic Oracle about Homer's birthplace and parentage. The Oracle's answer linked Homer to Ithaca and named Telemachus as Homer's own father, by a woman named Epicasta, the daughter of Nestor.

• 6. A Life in Art

  ›

  François Fénelon's novel Les Aventures de Télémaque became the foundation for a wave of operatic adaptations in the eighteenth century. Most of those operas drew directly from Fénelon's telling. André Cardinal Destouches composed Télémaque in 1714. Alessandro Scarlatti's Telemaco followed in 1718. Gluck reworked the material as Telemaco, ossia L'isola di Circe in 1765. Giuseppe Gazzaniga contributed Gli errori di Telemaco in 1776. Jean-François Le Sueur's Télémaque dans l'île de Calypso ou Le triomphe de la sagesse appeared in 1796. The following year, both Simon Mayr and Fernando Sor premiered their own operas under the same title, Telemaco nell'isola di Calipso.

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson placed Telemachus in his 1833 poem "Ulysses." The title speaker, drawn from Dante's version of the hero, hands over his throne to Telemachus. He then leaves to spend the rest of his life wandering. Telemachus is also a frequent figure in the poetry of Louise Glück. In Epic: The Musical, a contemporary musical adaptation of the Odyssey, Telemachus is voiced by Miguel Veloso. In Tennyson's poem, Telemachus ends up with the throne his father could never stop leaving. The wanderer departs again; the son who spent his youth searching is left in charge.