Telemachus.
The only son of Penelope and Odysseus, Telemachus was born shortly before the outbreak of the Trojan War and did not remember his father, who was away from home for twenty years during and after that conflict. At the beginning of Homer’s Odyssey Telemachus appears as a somewhat weak and insecure young man, unable to control the suitors who beleaguer his mother, Penelope; by the end of the epic he has gained inner strength and resourcefulness, joining with his father to destroy the suitors and reestablish the dynasty.
       When Odysseus had been absent for nearly twenty years, Telemachus set out from Ithaca to try to get news of his father. Guided by Athena (Minerva), who was disguised as a family friend named Mentes, he went to King Nestor in Pylos and thence to Sparta, where he was the guest of Menelaus and Helen. On his return to Ithaca he found Odysseus there, disguised as a beggar. Telemachus kept Odysseus’s return a secret from everyone, even his mother. He then stood beside his father in the battle that killed all the suitors. After Odysseus’s death some years later, Telemachus married Circe (or, according to another tradition, Nausicaâ).
       Many postclassical treatments of Telemachus derive from Fénelon’s well-known didactic romance. Les avmtures de Télémaque, which was published surreptitiously in 1699. It extends the travels of Telemachus described in the Odyssey and, while not classical in substance, employs characters from mythology, including Idomeneus, Nestor, Protesilaus, and Philoctetes. In this work, Minerva, in the guise of Mentor, guides her pupil to Ogygia, the isle of Calypso, where Telemachus relates his adventures. Calypso falls in love with the youth, but Telemachus is smitten by one of her nymphs, Eucharis, and the jealous goddess forces him to leave her island. Telemachus goes on to several more adventures, including a visit to Hades and a protracted war, and is betrothed to Antiope, daughter of Idomeneus, before returning to Ithaca to resume Homer’s narrative. The episode on Calypso’s island became the most famous part of Fénelon’s narrative and has often been taken up by painters, writers, and particularly composers of operas.
      
       Classical Source. Homer, Odyssey 1-4,15-24 passim.
      
       See also Odysseus, General List, Return; Penelope.