Follow Your Passion: A Seamless Tumblr Journey
I think it was really fitting for Odysseus and Penelope to have met at that specific type of tree for multiple reasons.
Olive trees are meant to symbolize longevity, rebirth, endurance, and peace as well as being a sacred symbol of Athena. All of those qualities fit with the pair. Longevity and endurance because of how their love never faded despite all the years apart. Odysseus comes back to Ithaca after all the tragedies had changed him, something that you could argue is a rebirth of sorts.
Peace was the hardest one to think of but I settled on it being symbolic of the peace that is now in the palace without the suitors. Apart, there had been over a hundred men threatening Penelope and Telemachus and disrespecting their hosts’ home. With Odysseus returning, there is no longer that danger that had been lurking and peace is restored to the halls. The Athena part is pretty self-explanatory.
Learning how to be a warrior was typically a fairly important part of an Ancient Greek prince’s education. That would likely be the case in Ithaca too as we can see with Odysseus even as a boy. No untrained child would have been able to defeat Athena’s boar so he clearly was taught to fight. So why was Telemachus not given the same? There’s perfectly able guards so it wouldn’t be from a lack of people to teach him.
Then I started thinking about how much more threatened by his presence the suitors would be if Telemachus could hold his own in combat. His mere existence is already a claim to the throne but they see him as unfit and too soft for the crown. They might not have waited so long to try to get rid of him if that perception didn’t hold. So Penelope might have intentionally withheld that part of his studies to make him seem less dangerous to the suitors.
No one would have thought twice about pushing around someone they knew could take it no matter their age, but the way that Telemachus says that they’re “getting” dangerous in ‘Legendary’ implies that it’s a new development. Sure, they could just be tired of waiting (which certainly still plays a part) but fighting an untrained twenty year old sounds much better than fighting an untrained fourteen year old.