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Updated: May 14, 2025
With one hand he clasped the rail of the chariot and the other he threw about the neck of the Golden Helen, who bent beneath his weight like a lily before the storm. Then he also cried aloud in answer: "Oh, Telegonus, son of Circe, what wickedness hast thou wrought before the awful Gods that this curse should have been laid upon thee to slay him who begat thee?
All them I slew, and in after years was slain by Telegonus, the son that Circe bare me. And now I am in the Island of the Blest, ruing the day when I left the life I had with you, and the everlasting life you proffered. I watch for opportunity, and meditate escape and return. Some words were added, commending us to her hospitality.
Here, indeed, the incident is outside the drama proper; but cases occur where it falls within the action of the play: one may cite the Alcmaeon of Astydamas, or Telegonus in the Wounded Odysseus. Again, there is a third case, <to be about to act with knowledge of the persons and then not to act.
O Maecenas, thou progeny of Tuscan kings, there has been a long while for you in my house some mellow wine in an unbroached hogshead, with rose-flowers and expressed essence for your hair. Disengage yourself from anything that may retard you, nor contemplate the ever marshy Tibur, and the sloping fields of Aesula, and the hills of Telegonus the parricide.
And thus for the first and last time did the Gods give it to Telegonus to look upon the face and hear the voice of his father, Odysseus. But when the Achæans knew that it was the lost Odysseus who had led the host of Pharaoh against the armies of the Nine Nations, they wondered no more at the skill of the ambush and the greatness of the victory of Pharaoh.
And there are earlier episodes which will not be out of place; they are all connected with the tale of Troy: such are the seclusion of Achilles in Scyrus, the madness of Odysseus, the solitude of Philoctetes, with the whole story of Odysseus's wanderings, of Circe and Telegonus, of Aeolus, controller of the winds, down to the vengeance wreaked upon the suitors of Penelope; and, earlier, Odysseus's plot against Palamedes, the resentment of Nauplius, the frenzy of the one Ajax, the destruction of the other on the rocks.
When Telegonus heard these words, and knew that he had slain his father, the famed Odysseus, whom he had sought the whole world through, he would have cast himself into the river, there to drown, but those with him held him by strength, and the stream took the curved ship and floated it away.
Yet, having foiled Circe in her purpose to turn him into a swine, and having forced her to restore his comrades to human shape, he did not let pass the barrier of his teeth any such winged words as 'Now will I bide no more under thy roof, Circe, but fare across the sea with my dear comrades, even unto mine own home, for that which thou didst was an evil thing, and one not meet to be done unto strangers by the daughter of a god. He seems to have said nothing in particular, to have accepted with alacrity the invitation that he and his dear comrades should prolong their visit, and to have prolonged it with them for a whole year, in the course of which Circe bore him a son, named Telegonus.
Then of a sudden he drew a mighty bow and loosed an arrow charged with death. "This gift to the Ghost of Paris from Telegonus, son of Circe and of Odysseus, who was Paris' foe," he cried with a loud voice. And as he cried it, and as the fateful words struck on the ears of Odysseus and the ears of Helen, the shaft, pointed by the Gods, rushed on.
Or he may do it, but in ignorance of his relationship, and discover that afterwards, as does the Oedipus in Sophocles. Here the deed is outside the play; but it may be within it, like the act of the Alcmeon in Astydamas, or that of the Telegonus in Ulysses Wounded.
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