Friday, December 28, 2018

Who says the following and why? You’re on the spot he’d need a humiliating in if you thought against. You’re talking nonsense - idiocy

We're in book 2 of the Odyssey, and Penelope's suitors have taken over the royal palace, eating the absent Odysseus out of house and home. Penelope has tried her very best to stall the suitors until her husband's return, promising to marry one of them when she's finished spinning an elaborate shroud. Each night, as part of her cunning delaying tactics, she secretly destroys her handiwork so that she can start all over again.
The suitors are arrogant, insolent, and disrespectful. Even when Telemachus plucks up the courage to call an assembly and pleads with the suitors to leave, they still treat him like he's just a kid. But they are no more respectful of age than they are of youth. The wise old Mentor addresses the assembly. He says that he doesn't begrudge the suitors for their behavior. But he certainly does resent the men of Ithaca for sitting around and doing nothing, instead of rising up and sending the suitors packing. After all, they greatly outnumber the suitors:

Sitting here in silence . . . never a word put forth to curb these suitors, paltry few as they are and you so many.

But one of the suitors, Leocritus, son of Euenor, rounds angrily on Mentor for his boldness:

Even if Odysseus of Ithaca did arrive in person, to find us well-bred suitors feasting in his halls, and the man were hell-bent on routing us from the palace—little joy would his wife derive from his return, for all her yearning. Here on the spot he’d meet a humiliating end if he fought against such odds. You’re talking nonsense—idiocy.

These are fighting words. Leocritus is openly saying that, even if Odysseus did return, he'd be so heavily outnumbered by the suitors that he'd end up being totally humiliated if he ever tried to drive them from his palace. As with all but one of the unfortunate suitors, Leocritus will be forced to eat his ill-chosen words in due course.

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