Halitherses

In Homer, Halitherses is the elder soothsayer of Ithaca. He stands up at Telemachus’s first assembly and reads the omen of the two eagles overhead: Odysseus is alive, he is coming home, the suitors will pay. The suitors laugh and dismiss him. At the end of the poem, when the fathers of the dead suitors are gathering for revenge, Halitherses stands up again and tells them to back off, this is your own doing, your sons brought it on themselves, do not march on Odysseus. Half listen, half don’t, and the half who march die. The retelling cuts him because Mentes/Athena already does the work of pushing Telemachus into action and the reading of omens is handled by Penelope’s dream and Tiresias’s prophecy. Halitherses would just be a third voice saying the same thing. The opening assembly chapter compresses into Telemachus standing alone, and that is the stronger beat.