Telemachus

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (August 2007)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

Slaughter of the suitors by Odysseus and Telemachus, Campanian red-figure bell-krater, ca. 330 BC, Louvre (CA 7124)

Telemachus and Mentor

Telemachus departing from Nestor, painting by Henry Howard (1769–1847)

This article is about the figure in greek mythology. For the Christian saint, see Saint Telemachus, and for the South African cricketer, see Roger Telemachus.

Telemachus (also transliterated as Telemachos or Telémakhos; literally, "far-away fighter")^[1] is a figure in Greek mythology, the son of Odysseus and Penelope, and a central character in Homer's Odyssey. The first four books in particular focus on Telemachus's journeys in search of news about his father; they are, therefore, traditionally accorded the collective title the Telemachy.

1 In the Iliad
2 In the Odyssey
3 In the Telegony
4 In later classical authors
5 Other appearances
6 Notes

[edit] In the Iliad

Telemachus was born on the day that Odysseus was summoned to fight in the Trojan War. Attempting to renege on his oath to defend Helen, Odysseus sowed salt into his fields in feigned madness. The emissary Palamedes, who was sent to call Odysseus to battle, tested his veracity by placing the infant Telemachus before the plow. Odysseus duly stopped it, proving his sanity and obliging himself to fight.

[edit] In the Odyssey

After his father is gone almost twenty years, young Telemachus is met by the goddess Athena, who assumes the male disguise of Mentor and accompanies him on a journey in search of news about his father. They travel to Pylos and to Sparta, whose rulers, Nestor and Menelaus, while friendly (having held Odysseus in high regard), do not know what has become of him. Telemachus forms a close friendship and implied sexual relationship with Nestor's son Peisistratus, who accompanies him on the search for his father, but the two are able to find out only that Odysseus is being held captive by Calypso. When Telemachus returns to Ithaca, Athena in another disguise prompts him to visit the swineherd Eumaeus instead of returning home. At the pigkeeper's cottage, he discovers that the beggar staying with Eumaeus is his father, recently returned from Calypso's island. He helps his father to plan and carry out the killing of Penelope's suitors and the servants who conspired with them.

It is universally held in Homeric scholarship that the Telemachy depicts Telemachus' necessary transition from boyhood to manhood. Thus, while the boy Telemachus in Book 1 demands but cannot force the departure of Penelope's suitors, the young man Telemachus is able in Books 19 and 22 to help his father to plan and carry out his revenge.

[edit] In the Telegony

The Telegony was a short 2-book epic poem recounting the life and death of Odysseus after the events of the Odyssey. In this mythological postscript, Odysseus is murdered by Telegonus, his unknown son by the goddess Circe. After Odysseus' death Telemachus returns to Aeaea with Telegonus and Penelope, and there marries Circe.

[edit] In later classical authors

In The Contest of Homer and Hesiod, it is alleged that the Roman Emperor Hadrian asked the Delphic Oracle about Homer's birthplace and parentage. The Oracle replied that Homer came from Ithaca, and that Telemachus was his father by Epicasta, daughter of Nestor. [1]

According to Aristotle and Dictys of Crete, Telemachus married Nausicaa, King Alcinous' daughter, and fathered a son named Perseptolis or Ptoliporthus.

[edit] Other appearances

In The Adventures of Krytolandros, Telemachos also marries Nausicaa, but has a son named Krytolandros who goes on a journey to learn of Odysseus' wanderings.
Telemachus is the subject of François Fénelon's The Adventures of Telemachus, Son of Ulysses (1699), a scathing attack on the monarchy of France.
In James Joyce's Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus is the analogue of Telemachus.
In Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's The Illuminatus! Trilogy the fictional book Telemachus Sneezed is described which is a parody of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

In the French-Japanese anime Ulysses 31, which adapts Homer's Odyssey in a futuristic setting, Telemachus appears as a 12 year old boy, son of Ulysses. He is always followed by his robot-friend Nono and an alien girl called Themis (renamed Yumi in the English dub).