Laertes

He taught his boy to work wood. The knowledge was still in Odysseus’s hands when he built the raft on Calypso’s shore. After Anticleia died and the suitors moved into the palace, the old man could not bear it. He left. He took himself to a farmstead in the hills with his vines and his spade. In winter he slept inside near the fire on the floor in a servant’s clothes. In summer he slept outside in the dirt of his own vineyard on fallen leaves. He would not be comforted. He was waiting for a sail that did not come. [SPOILER: Odysseus comes to him last, after the slaughter, and tells him a Cretan lie about a man who died at sea, just to watch the wound open one more time. Then he shows him the boar scar. Athena touches Laertes and the weakness falls away. When Eupeithes leads the avenging fathers up from the town, the old man stands in the courtyard, throws his spear across the open ground, and puts it through Eupeithes’s breastplate. Three generations stand together. Then Athena calls it done.]