and parted them. Odysseus then returned to Ithaka, leaving the Thesprotian kingdom to Polypœtês, his son by Kallidikê. Telegonus, his son by Circê, coming to Ithaka in search of his father, ravaged the island and killed Odysseus without knowing who he was. Bitter repentance overtook the son for his undesigned parricide: at his prayer and by the intervention of his mother Circê, both Penelopê and Têlemachus were made immortal: Telegonus married Penelopê, and Têlemachus married Circê.[1]
We see by this poem that Odysseus was represented as the mythical ancestor of the Thesprotian kings, just as Neoptolemus was of the Molossian.
It has already been mentioned that Antenôr and Æneas stand distinguished from the other Trojans by a dissatisfaction with Priam and a sympathy with the Greeks, which is by Sophoklês and others construed as treacherous collusion,[2]—a suspicion indirectly glanced, though emphatically repelled, by the Æneas of Virgil.[3] In the old epic of Arktinus, next in age to the Iliad and Odyssey, Æneas abandons Troy and retires to Mount Ida, in terror at the miraculous death of Laocoon, before the entry of the Greeks into the town and the last night-battle: yet Leschês, in another of the ancient epic poems, represented him as having been carried away captive by Neoptolemus.[4] In a remarkable
- ↑ The Telegonia, composed by Eugammôn of Kyrênê, is lost, but the Argument of it has been preserved by Proclus (p. 25, Düntzer; Dictys, vi. 15).
Pausanias quotes a statement from the poem called Thesprôtis, respecting a son of Odysseus and Penelopê, called Ptoliporthus, born after his return from Troy (viii. 12, 3). Nitzsch (Hist. Homer, p. 97) as well as Lobeck seem to imagine that this is the same poem as the Telegonia, under another title.
Aristotle notices an oracle of Odysseus among the Eurytanes, a branch of the Ætolian nation: there were also places in Epirus which boasted of Odysseus as their founder (Schol. ad Lycophrôn. 800; Stephan. Byz. v. Βούνειμα; Etymolog. Mag. Ἀρκείσιος; Plutarch, Quæst. Gr. c. 14).
- ↑ Dionys. Hal. i. 46-48; Sophokl. ap. Strab. xiii. p. 608; Livy, i. 1; Xenophon, Venat. i. 15.
- ↑ Æn. ii. 433.
- ↑ Argument of Ἰλίου Πέρσις; Fragm. 7. of Leschês, in Düntzer's Collection, p. 19-21.
Hellanikus seems to have adopted this retirement of Æneas to the strong-
