#eteoneus

Eteoneus, I think, is not simply being inhospitable in proposing to dispatch the young men to someone else’s house, for he has reason to be wary of visits from handsome young foreigners. In other words, I detect an allusion here to the earlier visit of Paris. [...] Now, a comparison between Telemachus and Paris may seem most unlikely. But young men are young men, and Telemachus is no longer a boy; he is later described as entering upon manhood, and now possessing beauty or κάλλος (18.219), a word associated with sexual attractiveness and applied in the Homeric epics particularly to Paris and Helen [...] Indeed, when Helen first sees Telemachus, she wonders who he is, and says: "Shall I lie or tell the truth? But my heart bids me: I say that no one has ever seemed more similar, neither man nor woman – awe seizes me as I gaze at him – as this man resembles... the son of great-hearted Odysseus!" (4.140–3). She is right, of course: but might one not have thought for a moment that she was about to name Paris? Perhaps this is too Plautine a reading, with the significant pause, which editors tend to represent visually by a dash, before the word or phrase that constitutes the punch line.