Theoclymenus

In Homer, Theoclymenus is a prophet on the run from a blood-feud who meets Telemachus on the beach at Pylos and asks for passage. Telemachus takes him aboard. He turns up in the palace later and has one of the strangest scenes in the poem: in the middle of the suitors’ feast he goes into a vision and tells them their walls are dripping blood, their food is raw meat, the air is full of ghosts walking down to the underworld. They laugh at him. He walks out. Then they die. The retelling cuts him probably because the omen-load is already heavy, Penelope has the eagle-and-geese dream, the bow contest carries its own dread, Athena’s shadow runs through every chapter, and adding a second-tier seer with one prophetic outburst would dilute the build. The chapters lean toward Penelope and Telemachus carrying the foreboding themselves. A clean compression.