"Odysseus is my father –
there was a man, or was he all a dream?"
– Homer
The Odyssey, Book 15, lines 297-298. When seer Theoclymenus asks Telemachus his name and where he is from, the prince gives this strange answer about his father. Penelope speaks the same line in a moment of despair in Book 19 – "There was a man, or was he all a dream?" And doubting father Laertes in Book 24 expresses the same lack of belief in Odysseus being still alive: "there was a son, or was he all a dream?"