Visit to Laertes

The Visit to Laertes is the culminating recognition of the Odyssey, the moment when the hero, having reclaimed his house and wife, must restore the broken chain of fathers and sons. After the slaughter of the suitors and the long-delayed reunion with Penelope, Odysseus turns to the one figure who has been worn down by grief more than any other: his father Laertes, who has retreated to a life of squalor on his country farm, mourning the son he believes dead. The scene completes the poem's pattern of delayed recognitions—Telemachus, Euryclea, the loyal herdsmen, Penelope—and anchors Odysseus's return not merely in the reconquest of a household but in the reknitting of a lineage that had seemed broken beyond repair.

The Setting and Laertes's Condition

Odysseus, accompanied by Telemachus, Eumaeus, and Philoetius, leaves the town at dawn and walks to the well-tilled farm that Laertes had reclaimed with immense labor. The farmhouse has a lean-to running around it where the slaves sleep and eat; inside lives an old Sicel woman who looks after the aged king. When Odysseus arrives, he tells his son and the two servants to go to the house and kill the best pig for dinner, while he himself turns off into the great orchard to make trial of his father. Laertes is alone in the vineyard, hoeing a vine. He wears a dirty old shirt, patched and very shabby; his legs are bound with thongs of oxhide to protect them from brambles; he has leather sleeves and a goatskin cap on his head. He looks utterly woe-begone. Odysseus, seeing him so worn, so old, and so full of sorrow, stands still under a tall pear tree and weeps.

The Test and the Recognition

Odysseus hesitates whether to embrace his father immediately or first to test him with a story. He chooses craft. Approaching Laertes, he praises his gardening skill but remarks that he takes better care of his plants than of himself, and then spins an elaborate false tale: he claims to be Eperitus, son of Apheidas, from Alybas, and says that he once entertained a guest from Ithaca—a man named Odysseus, son of Laertes—whom he loaded with magnificent presents: seven talents of fine gold, a silver cup, twelve cloaks, twelve rugs, twelve mantles, twelve shirts, and four skilled women. Laertes, hearing this, is overwhelmed. He pours dust over his grey head and groans heavily. Odysseus's heart is touched; his nostrils quiver. He springs forward, flings his arms around his father, kisses him, and declares, "I am he, father, about whom you are asking—I have returned after having been away for twenty years." Laertes demands a manifest proof. Odysseus shows the scar from the boar's tusk that he got while hunting on Mount Parnassus with Autolycus, and then recites the exact inventory of the orchard that Laertes had given him when he was a boy: thirteen pear trees, ten apple trees, forty fig trees, and fifty rows of vines with corn planted between each row. Laertes' strength fails him when he hears these proofs; he throws his arms around Odysseus, and Odysseus has to support him or he would have swooned.

The Restoration and the Final Battle

When Laertes recovers, he expresses fear that the townspeople of Ithaca will rise up against them. Odysseus reassures him and leads him into the house, where the old Sicel woman washes and anoints him, and Athena makes him taller and stouter, so that his son is surprised to see him looking like an immortal. Laertes wishes aloud that he had been young and armed the previous day, so he could have helped kill the suitors. Soon the Ithacan families, led by Eupeithes, father of Antinous, gather to attack. Laertes, Dolius, and the six sons of Dolius arm themselves alongside Odysseus, Telemachus, Eumaeus, and Philoetius. As they sally forth, Athena, in the form of Mentor, urges Laertes to pray and then hurl his spear. He does so, hitting Eupeithes through the helmet, and the old man falls dead. The battle is about to become a massacre when Athena cries out and stops the fighting, and a covenant of peace is established between Odysseus and the Ithacans.

Thematic Significance

The visit to Laertes completes the Odyssey's exploration of identity, memory, and the continuity of the household. The recognition is achieved not through a dramatic action but through the shared recollection of a cultivated landscape—the orchard that Laertes planted and that Odysseus, as a boy, walked through with his father, learning the names of the trees. The scar, which earlier served to identify Odysseus to Euryclea and to the loyal herdsmen, here becomes the final token that convinces the one man who had given up all hope. The scene also fulfills the prophecy of Teiresias, who told Odysseus that after killing the suitors he must make peace with his people and that death would come to him from the sea in a gentle old age. By restoring his father to dignity and by ending the cycle of violence with a divinely sanctioned truce, Odysseus secures the future of his line and earns the peaceful end that the seer foretold.