ABSTRACT
In Book 1 the action is set in motion when Athene gives him 'might and courage',2 and so releases him from the impotence in which he seemed fettered by the presence of the Suitors and the lack of his father. In his new-found power he immediately asserts himself: first against his mother, whom he sends upstairs, saying: 'Speech will be the business of men, all of them, but mostly myself. For mine is the power in the house'; and secondly against the Suitors, whom he addresses uncompromisingly as 'Suitors of my mother, men of overbearing violence and insolence.' In his naive spiritedness he tells them that he will call an assembly for the next morning and there in public order them to leave his house. When Antinous suspects the influence of Zeus behind young Telemachus' courage and shows his fear that Zeus might make him king, Telemachus speaks lightly of the possibility of becoming the supreme king of Ithaca and the islands, but again insists on his lordship in his father's house.3
