Readers ask: What Happens In Book 4 Of The Odyssey?

Summary: Book 4 Helen recalls how Odysseus dressed as a beggar to infiltrate the city’s walls. Menelaus tells the famous story of the Trojan horse, Odysseus’s masterful gambit that allowed the Greeks to sneak into Troy and slaughter the Trojans. The following day, Menelaus recounts his own return from Troy.

How does Book 4 of the Odyssey end?

Odysseus held the soldiers back and saved their lives. After Menelaus finishes the story, everyone retires to different rooms and goes to sleep. Helen displays her cunning both in guessing Telemachus’s identity and in tricking the men into pleasant forgetfulness.

Who visits Penelope in her dreams at the end of Book 4?

Athena often comes to her in dreams to reassure or comfort her, for Penelope would otherwise spend her nights weeping in her bed. Though her love for Odysseus is unyielding, she responds to the suitors with some indecision. She never refuses to remarry outright.

What happens in the first 4 books of the Odyssey?

These first four books represent the education of Telemachus, through both divine and mortal means, in absence of the influence of his missing father, Odysseus. Telemachus receives de facto training and education from three mentors in the first four books of the Odyssey, those being Athena, Nestor, and Menelaus.

Where is Telemachus at the end of Book 4 of the Odyssey?

Back in Ithaca, the suitors have discovered that Telemachus is gone and plan to ambush his ship on its return. Penelope is distraught to learn of her son’s trip and the planned assassination but is soothed by a vision sent by Athena.

Who is Menelaus wife?

Menelaus, in Greek mythology, king of Sparta and younger son of Atreus, king of Mycenae; the abduction of his wife, Helen, led to the Trojan War. During the war Menelaus served under his elder brother Agamemnon, the commander in chief of the Greek forces.

Who did Calypso marry?

Calypso loves Odysseus and wants to make him immortal so he can stay with her and be her husband forever, even though she understands that he doesn’t love her back and wants to return to Penelope.

Is Penelope Odysseus wife?

Penelope, in Greek mythology, a daughter of Icarius of Sparta and the nymph Periboea and wife of the hero Odysseus. They had one son, Telemachus.

Why is Penelope upset with Telemachus?

Penelope’s fault was that she did not stop to consider Telemachus’ feelings on the subject. She is so engrossed in her own pain for her lost love that she is blind to the problems of her son. She does not see his insecurities on his past and especially his future, or his lack of confidence in himself.

Who is Athena disguised as in Book 4?

Athena visited Telemachus disguised as Mentes, son of Anchialus, and the leader of the Taphians. She claimed that she was on a voyage to Temesa for purposes of trade. She further informed Telemachus that Anchialus and Odysseus, Telemachus’s father, were old friends.

Who is absent from Book 4 of the Odyssey?

As the book ends, the suitors plot to kill Telemachus on his way back to Ithaca. So what did I notice about these four books? 1) Despite being the hero of the epic, Odysseus is strangely absent in this part of the story. Instead, the focus seems to be Telemachus.

What does Athena do at the end of the book?

Having defeated the suitors, Odysseus reveals his identity to Penelope. Together, the men prepare to fight the fathers of the murdered suitors, but Athena intervenes to make peace.

Is the Trojan horse in the Odyssey?

The story of the Trojan Horse is well-known. First mentioned in the Odyssey, it describes how Greek soldiers were able to take the city of Troy after a fruitless ten-year siege by hiding in a giant horse supposedly left as an offering to the goddess Athena.

What story does Queen Helen tell Telemachus?

What story does Queen Helen tell Telemachus? She recounts how Odysseus infiltrated Troy (in beggars’ clothes).

How do Menelaus and Helen know that Telemachus is Odysseus’s son?

How do Menelaus and Helen know that Telemachus is Odysseus’s son? There is a distinctive family resemblance. They received word from Penelope. Athena introduces him as Odysseus’s son.

What makes Telemachus cry?

At the conclusion of his maiden-speech in the Ithacan assembly, Telemachus hurls the scepter to the ground and, enraged, bursts into tears, reducing all the people to pity and silence (2.80-3). These “sudden, passionate” tears are usually attributed to his immaturity and/or ineffectuality.