Upon first meeting Telemachus, both Athena (in the disguise of family friend the Mentor) and Menelaus remark upon the uncanny physical resemblance between father and son: Athena exclaims, “you must be, by your looks, Odysseus’ boy?/ The way your head is shaped, the fine eyes – yes,/ how like him”, and Menelaus also notes the “likeness”, observing that “Odysseus’ hands and feet were like this boy’s;/ his head, and hair, and the glinting of his eyes” (I.244-6; IV.155-7). This familial resemblance grows over the course of the Odyssey, as Telemachus also becomes more like his father in terms of personality and character traits. While he first appears before Athena (Mentor) as a resentful “boy” who is unable to defend his father’s household and
