Father of Odysseus and once lord of the Cephallenians, who in his old age withdrew to a farm on Ithaca while suitors consumed his son's house — the aged man for whose funeral shroud Penelope was compelled to weave, and whom Odysseus found at last in his orchard when the slaughter of the wooers was done.1
Long ago Laertes bought the nurse Eurycleia, daughter of Ops son of Peisenor, for twenty oxen when she was in her first youth, and honored her in his halls as he honored his faithful wife Anticleia — though he never lay with her, fearing his queen's anger. She would nurse Telemachus from infancy and still carry blazing torches when the boy went to his bed.2
In his old age he no longer came to the city. Men said he suffered woes on a farm far from Ithaca, attended by an aged handmaid who set food and drink before him after weariness laid hold of his limbs — while suitors devoured his son's house and the people were minded to destroy the race of godlike Arceisius.3
Homer makes him son of Arceisius and father of Odysseus in a house that ran in a single male line: Arceisius begot Laertes as his only son, Laertes begot Odysseus alone, and Odysseus left Telemachus the sole heir — until the suitors threatened to wipe the race of godlike Arceisius from Ithaca.4
Apollodorus names him father of Ulysses by Anticlia in the catalogue of ships that sailed to Troy.5
In his old age he withdrew to a country farm, grieving for Anticleia and for the son who had not returned. Odysseus found him alone in the well-ordered vineyard, digging about a plant in a foul patched tunic, with ox-hide greaves on his shins and gloves against the thorns. The king tested him with a false tale of having entertained Odysseus abroad, then named the trees they had planted together — thirteen pear, ten apple, forty fig, fifty rows of vines — and father and son embraced weeping.6
When the kin of the slain suitors rallied, a Sicilian handmaid bathed Laertes and Athena made his limbs greater and his frame taller than before. The goddess called him Son of Arceisius, breathed might into him, and he cast his spear beside Odysseus and Telemachus — rejoicing that his son and his son's son vied with one another in valor — until Athena ended the strife.7
Penelope's famous delay turned on a funeral shroud promised for Laertes in his old age: Apollodorus says she was compelled to vow that she would wed when that garment was finished — the pretext under which she wove for three years by day and unravelled the web by night, deceiving the suitors until she was detected.8
Homer adds that a faithless handmaid betrayed the stratagem in the fourth year and Penelope was caught undoing the cloth, and compelled at last to finish the shroud.9
Menelaus urged Telemachus not to trouble a troubled old man: the race of the son of Arceisius was not, he thought, utterly hated by the blessed gods — there would still be one to hold the high-roofed halls and the rich fields far away.10
Homer knows him through his son at Troy: Laertes' son, Odysseus of many wiles, reared in rugged Ithaca. In the underworld Anticleia tells how she died not of sickness nor of Artemis' arrows but of longing for Odysseus and the kindness of Laertes.11
Apollodorus says that when Odysseus had slain the suitors, he made himself known at last to his wife and to Laertes — the aged father for whose shroud Penelope had held the wooers at bay.12
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story