Telemachus calls the assembly

At dawn Telemachus calls the first assembly of the Ithacans in the twenty years since his father left for Troy. He stands before them, his father's staff in his hand, and weeps from anger. He denounces the suitors — they should be ashamed; they would not dare any of this if Odysseus were here. He demands that they leave his house. The herald reports omens: two eagles fighting in the sky overhead, claws raked across each other's throats. The seer Halitherses interprets them. Odysseus is alive, he is coming home, and the suitors will pay for what they have done.

The suitors are unmoved. Antinous and Eurymachus, their leaders, blame Penelope for stringing them along. The trick of the shroud has just been discovered: she promised to choose a suitor when her weaving for old Laertes was finished, and for three years she wove by day and unwove the work at night. Now the maids have given her up. The suitors refuse to leave until she chooses one of them. Telemachus, seeing he will get no help from the assembly, announces that he will sail himself to find news of his father. The suitors mock him.

Athena, again in disguise — this time as Mentor, the family friend Odysseus left in charge of the household — quietly helps Telemachus gather a ship and crew. They sail at sunset. The suitors, drinking in the great hall, do not yet know he has gone. The chapter is a small, important political moment: the first time since Odysseus left that anyone in Ithaca has stood up in public and named the wrong out loud. The suitors will not be defeated by speeches, but the speeches had to come first.