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[594] Telemachus tells Menelaus that, notwithstanding his willingness to remain, he must set sail for Ithaca at once; his comrades are already fretting at the delay (cp. Od.3. 313); so we naturally expect to hear of his departure. Instead of this, if we follow the reckoning of time as given in the following books, we find him after the lapse of thirty days still at Sparta; for he does not appear on the scene again (Athena only making mention of him, Od.13. 414 foll.) till the opening of bk. 15, when the goddess is urging him in a dream to return home at once. In Od.15. 284 the start is actually made, and, ib. 499, his landing on Ithaca is described. There are two ways of meeting the difficulty. Nitzsch regards the discrepancy as a mere poetical licence, and maintains that the story of Telemachus is resumed at its natural place; viz. where he first comes into contact with Odysseus. Other critics (see Koes, de discrep. in Odys. p. 6-10; Hennings, Telemach. p. 198 etc.) discover in this confusion of the chronology a proof that we have the true story of Telemachus —the “Τηλεμαχία”, as they call it— interrupted at this point by an interpolation from the “Νόστος Ὀδυσσέως”, and that in the original form of the poem the scenes in bk. 15 followed immediately after v. 619 of the present book. It has been proposed to divide this ‘Telemachia’ into five separate lays: 1st, the visit and advice of Athena to Telemachus as he sits in his palace, vexed with the outrages of the suitors (bk. 1); 2nd, the assembly in Ithaca and the preparations for departure (bk. 2); 3rd, Telemachus at Pylos (bk. 3); 4th, Telemachus at Sparta (bk. 4); 5th, departure of Telemachus from Sparta and safe arrival in Ithaca (bk. 15, 16). See notes on Od.5, init.

Homer's Odyssey. W. Walter Merry. James Riddell. D. B. Monro. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1886-1901.

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