The Great Conversation

"Stop, old man!" Eurymachus, Polybus' son, rose up to take him on. "Go home and babble your omens to your children-

save them from some catastrophe coming soon. I'm a better hand than you at reading portents. Flocks of bird go fluttering under the sun's rays, not all are fraught with meaning. Odysseus? He's dead now, far from home-

would to god that you'd died with him too. We'd have escaped your droning prophecies then and the way you've loosed the dogs of this boy's anger-

your eyes peeled for a house-gift he might give you.

Here's my prophecy, bound to come to pass.

If you, you old codger, wise as the ages,

talk him around, incite the boy to riot,

he'll be the first to suffer, let me tell you.

And you, old man, we'll clap some fine on you

you'll weep to pay, a fine to crush your spirit!"

(Book II, line 198-215)

This is a perfect example of the behavior of the suitors, they are everything except heroic. They take all the goods from the king's house and they also are not civilized. When the old man is warning them with a prophecy that he got from the Gods, the suitors simply ignored what he had to say and treat him badly. An old man in the classical world is viewed as full of wisdom and more if he is a prophet. We see not only that the suitors are unjustce (no Dike), they also don't respect their elders resulting in chaos. I consider them as hubris as well, because they are mocking the prophecies that ultimately comes from the gods, so if they mock the gods they think they are supperior to them.