The Lessons of the Trojan Horse (4.301-4.324) Most Exalted Goddess, Thank you for your patronage and guidance. Even though our paths have diverged, I feel your presence, see your influence everywhere I turn. The nervousness that hampered me in Pylos has left me (3.24-3.27). Because of you, I have found my eloquence, my birthright from my great father. Because of you, I am learning more what it means to be the son of not just a hero, but the hero, the man whom Menelaus touts as "…my dearest friend… / That man who performed a hundred feats of arms for me” (4.186-4.187). Tonight, the king and queen of Sparta spoke of my father’s cleverness in effecting the fall of Troy practically single-handedly. While their accounts sounded very different, my father’s greatness was a point on which both converged. His idea of the horse had to have originated in inspiration Odysseus derived from you. Surely, no mortal could have hatched a plan of such brilliance unassisted by the gods, or, having conceived it, executed the plan so flawlessly. It is ironic that Poseidon, whose sea has kept me so long parted from my heroic father, should prove such an able accomplice in Troy’s destruction. (4.301-4.306) Long afflicted by my mother’s ill-wishing suitors, I know what’s it like to feel enemies’ pressing in on me from all sides. What I cannot imagine is willingly exposing myself to such danger or having the ability to entice others to make themselves so vulnerable. I could not even persuade those loyal to my father and myself among the Assembly to evict the suitors from my household (2.1-1.149), and yet my father was able to persuade men worn down by a decade of war to enter enemy territory blindly in a vehicle that could have as easily been burned as embraced—no glorious death that. He had to convince not only the men of our country, those Ithacans who surely already worshipped him as a god, but the hard-headed Myrmidons and harder-hearted Spartans and all those pledged to the defense of Menelaus’ honor and Helen’s marriage. He had to persuade them that a sneak attack within the walls of Troy is as worthy, as generative of kleos as a hundred reckless acts on the field of battle. Surely, you assisted him there, lending divine charisma to his already famous eloquence. Clearly, Odysseus is well-matched with my mother, the peerless Penelope, who works her own schemes as deftly as she works her loom. I will need both my mother’s and my father’s craftiness and your divine vision in the fight before me. The suitors, whom my mother has kept at bay but been unable to banish, pose a growing threat as the stretch of days lengthens and their patience wanes. (2.952.122) I know that they have taken advantage of my absence to scheme against me. Nestor’s warning did not fall on deaf ears (3.353-3.357). Obviously, those who wish me ill have the advantage of numbers, so I must rely on the wiliness inherited from my parents to see me through this test. And even that may not be enough. My father’s plan, so well-considered, had to survive the treachery of one he considered friend, that very Helen whom he and all the brave Achaeans journeyed so far and fought so hard to recover. When I think of my naiveté in trusting you, whom I thought a stranger when first you entered my household, with my complaints against my mother’s suitors, I blush (1.184-1.196). And yet I hold out hope that it was because it was you

who were listening that my trust was so instant. My father, whose solo infiltration into Troy Helen kept secret, was betrayed by her and her gift of mimicry (4.307-4.324). I only hope that I have grown enough that I could withstand the duplicity of one of my inner circle, small as it is, that I have the heart to insert myself back in to a place where those surround me wish me weak or dead, to do what must be done to restore my father’s kingdom and safeguard my father’s throne. I depend on you, sparkling-eyed goddess, to lend me your vision, your wisdom, your sword. Stand beside me as you have stood beside my father. Insure the continuance of his throne and his lineage, if not for me, then for he whom you have so long favored. I sail soon for Ithaca. Guide me past the shoals that would wreck me. Your loyal servant, Telemachus