After some mention of the fate of the other Greeks, Jupiter decrees that Ulysses shall return to Ithaca, where many suitors are besieging his wife Penelope.

In obedience with this decree, Pallas (Minerva) dons golden sandals--which permit her to flit with equal ease over land and sea--and visits Ithaca, where Ulysses' son, Telemachus, mournfully views the squandering of his father's wealth.

Here she is hospitably received, and, after some conversation, urges Telemachus to visit the courts of Nestor and Menelaus to inquire of these kings whether his father is dead.
Telemachus has just promised to carry out this suggestion, when the suitors' bard begins the recital of the woes which have befallen the various Greek chiefs on their return from Troy.

These sad strains attract Penelope, who passionately beseeches the bard not to enhance her sorrows by his songs! Assuming a tone of authority for the first time, Telemachus bids his mother retire and pray, then, addressing the suitors, vows that unless they depart he will call down upon them the vengeance of the gods.
These words are resented by these men, who continue their revelry until the night, when Telemachus retires, to dream of his projected journey.
_Book II._ With dawn, Telemachus rises and betakes himself to the market-place, where in public council he complains of the suitors' depredations, and announces he is about to depart in quest of his sire.

In reply to his denunciations the suitors accuse Penelope of deluding them, instancing how she promised to choose a husband as soon as she had finished weaving a winding sheet for her father-in-law Laertes.