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Telemachus and Pisistratus arrive in Sparta and find Menelaus celebrating the double wedding of his daughter to the son of Achilles, and his son, Megapenthes, to the daughter of Alector, with a feast and entertainment. In attendance is also Hermione, the only daughter of Helen and Menelaus. Eteoneus, an aide-in-arms to Menelaus, reports their arrival and asks whether they should be sent to another house. Menelaus recalls the hospitality shown to them on the return journey from Troy, and insists the two travellers be brought inside and their horses tended to. Telemachus and Pisistratus are impressed by the opulence of Menelaus’ house. They are washed by women and they are fed with the choicest part of the meat that would otherwise have been Menelaus’. Telemachus is struck by Menelaus’ wealth, He has objects of bronze, gold, amber, silver and ivory throughout his mansion. Menelaus acknowledges that he is a wealthy man, but he speaks of long journeys and his sufferings to acquire his wealth. While he was roaming Aegisthus killed Agamemnon. He regrets his journeys and wishes he had remained home and that his brother was still alive. He also mourns for Odysseus. He admired his ability to work hard and pities his sufferings, and the suffering of Odysseus’ family – Laertes, Penelope and Telemachus – who do not know his fate. Telemachus cries at these words and Menelaus’ recognises who he must be. He wonders whether he should reveal this, or allow Telemachus to introduce himself.
Helen enters with servants who bring a chair and fleece for her to continue weaving. She questions Menelaus about Telemachus and says that he reminds her of Odysseus. Menelaus agrees. Hearing this, Pisistratus steps forward, saying that Telemachus is modest. He confirms Telemachus’ identity, and alludes to the situation in his home with the suitors. Menelaus is delighted to have Telemachus as a guest. He says that had Odysseus not been lost he would have brought him from Ithaca and set him up in a sister city and they would have been close friends. Menelaus’ recollections of Odysseus cause Pisistratus to remember Antilochus, his brother killed fighting at Troy, whom he never met. Menelaus approves of Pisistratus’ words and his breeding, and promises to speak to Telemachus the following day.
The mood has become sombre, so Helen mixes a drug, heart’s ease, into the wine, so that the men’s spirits might be raised. She encourages them to tell stories. She begins by telling the story of how Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, infiltrated Troy as a spy. She claims to have recognised him and been trusted by Odysseus with the plan to defeat Troy. She says she was overjoyed at the prospect of returning home with Menelaus.
But Menelaus tells a different story that undermines Helen’s account and puts her loyalty into doubt. He describes how Helen almost gave the men hiding in the wooden horse away as she circled it, calling out their names temptingly. Odysseus had to physically restrain Anticlus from falling for her wiles. Telemachus diffuses the tension caused by these opposing stories by suggesting that they all go to bed.
The next day Menelaus asks Telemachus why he has come. Telemachus tells him how suitors have taken over his palace and consume his food and riches, hoping to marry his mother. He says he has come to hear news about his father’s fate. Menelaus feels outrage over the situation with the suitors. He feels that should Odysseus return, he would kill them and resolve the situation. Menelaus promises to tell Telemachus what he knows about his father, but first starts with his own story of his encounter with Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea.
Menelaus says that he had been marooned on an island, Pharos, off the coast of Egypt, for twenty days with no winds after the gods were offended by his unsatisfactory offerings. Eidothea, the daughter of Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, came to Menelaus, wondering why he had not done more to escape. She says that Menelaus could force her father to reveal how to leave the island and give him news of his home if he captures him. She says that her father sleeps in a cave after rising from the sea at noon and counting his seals. She advises Menelaus to take with him three of his most trusted men to capture Proteus. Eidothea advises that once Proteus is caught, he will turn into all manner of creatures to escape, and that he must be held onto until he gives up, exhausted. Once this happens, he must be released and Menelaus should ask him which god he has offended. Eidothea leaves momentarily and returns with four seal skins to help disguise Menelaus and his men.
They lay waiting for Proteus to emerge from the sea and count his seals. When he lays down to sleep, Menelaus and his men capture Proteus. Proteus transforms into a lion, then a serpent, a panther, a wild boar, a torrent of water and then a tree, but they hold onto him, regardless. Proteus demands to know which god conspired with Menelaus and why, but Menelaus demands to know which god is punishing him and how he can return home. Proteus says Menelaus should have offered a sacrifice to the gods before leaving Egypt. He says Menelaus must now return to Egypt and make a proper offering before he can return home. Menelaus feels demoralised by this prospect, but agrees to do it. Menelaus next asks the fate of his companions on their return journeys from Troy. Proteus says that only two died on the way home, and another is alive but being held captive. He says that Ajax was shipwrecked by Poseidon but saved, only to be then killed as he became boastful about his survival. And Agamemnon was initially swept off course by a hurricane, but made it home, overjoyed upon his return, only to be betrayed by a watchman in the service of Aegisthus. Aegisthus, warned of Agamemnon’s arrival, held a feast for him and then had him and his men-at-arms killed. Proteus urges Menelaus to return home to either deal with Aegisthus, or share the funeral feast if Orestes has already killed him.
Finally, Menelaus demands to know the name of the captive he spoke of. Proteus reveals that it is Odysseus, being held by Calypso by force. But Proteus gives no details. Instead, he speaks of Menelaus’ destiny. He says Menelaus will eventually be taken to the Elysian Fields, a kind of heavenly paradise ruled by Rhadamanthys, Zeus and Europa’s son, because, having married Helen, Menelaus is now related to the gods by marriage. Helen is the daughter of Zeus.
The next day Menelaus and his men set sail for Egypt once again where he observed the required rites and raised a mound in memory of Agamemnon.
Upon finishing his story, Menelaus encourages Telemachus to accept his hospitality for another ten or twelve days. Telemachus diplomatically declines this offer, as well as a gift of horses, which he says would be impractical in Ithaca. Menelaus offers to change the gift to a mixing bowl forged by Hephaestus, himself. The scene ends with preparations for another feast.
Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, the suitors continue to abuse the hospitality of the house. Phronius reveals to Antinous and Eurymachus that he is awaiting the return of Telemachus, who borrowed his ship. Neither Antinous nor Eurymachus knew Telemachus was gone and they are dumbfounded. Phronius says he suspects Telemachus was accompanied by a god disguised as Mentor.
Antinous and Eurymachus call a meeting of the suitors to tell them what they have learned. Antinous proposes they take a ship with twenty men to ambush Telemachus in the strait between Ithaca and Same.
The herald, Medon, overhears the plan, and rushes to inform Penelope. Penelope complains to Medon of the suitor’s behaviour and says she loathes their ingratitude when Odysseus is owed so much. Medon then tells Penelope of the plot. She is distressed and fearful for her son. She weeps and laments the loss of her husband. And she did not know Telemachus had gone. She is upset that no one told her. Desperate, she calls for Dolius, her old servant. She intends to send word to her father, Laertes, and vaguely hopes he might solve the situation. Eurycleia admits that she knew of Telemachus’ departure and had been sworn to keep quiet about it as long as possible. She encourages Penelope to pray to Athena and not to worry her father about the matter. Penelope bathes and prays to Athena, asking her to save Telemachus. The goddess hears her prayer as one of the suitors, overly excited, speaks loudly of the plan to kill Telemachus. Penelope hears.
The suitors prepare a ship for their mission. Penelope wonders about her son’s fate as she is finally overcome by sleep. Athena sends a phantom in the guise of Penelope’s sister, Iphthime, to the sleeping Penelope, to reassure her that Telemachus will live. Penelope voices her fears to the phantom, given that Telemachus is so inexperienced and untrained in combat. The phantom assures Penelope that Telemachus is guided by Athena. At this, Penelope demands to be told news of Odysseus, but the phantom says it cannot speak of this. Penelope awakens.
Meanwhile, the suitors sail to a rocky island, Asteris, where they plan to ambush Telemachus as he returns home.
In lines 754-755 of Book 4 of The Odyssey Antinous says his group of suitors will ambush Telemachus “coming back / in the straits between Ithaca and rocky Same”. At the end of Book 4, we are told,
This last describes the place where the suitors will wait to attack Telemachus as her returns home. I have had trouble reconciling the distance between Sami (Same) and Asteris, which I have indicated on the above map. They lie approximately 20 kilometres apart. Either location would require Telemachus to sail somewhere close to the route I have indicated. However, Homer seems to locate Asteris closer to Same than they are in reality. Could he have meant somewhere else?
I have taken some comfort in finding out that this is a difficulty scholars have also struggled with, according to Wikipedia. The Wikipedia page states “Wilhelm Dörpfeld in his essay "Alt-Ithaka: Ein Beitrag zur Homer-Frage" proposed that Same was present day Ithaca.” Of course, this is one proposal, but it does not square with the information provided by Homer. I present the map above not as a solution, but as context for the issue for those interested in further pursuing it.
Helen is the casus belli of The Iliad: the face that launched a thousand ships. The most simplistic version of the tale is that Paris either abducts or seduces Helen from Menelaus and returns to Troy with her. Achaean, Argive and Danaan forces are mustered at Aulis to prepare their campaign against Troy. A ten year battle then begins to retrieve Helen from Troy.Though she rarely appears in the first epic, Helen is the reason everything is happening, and the Trojans’ refusal to surrender her is why the war drags on so long.
But allusions to Egypt and the alternate representations of Helen in this book remind us what a truly unknowable character she is. Through history Helen has been portrayed as a victim of circumstance, but she has also been portrayed as the epitome of infidelity, even evil. In Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, it is the demonic appearance of Helen that sucks Faustus’ soul away.
Book 4 of The Odyssey reveals more about Menelaus’ return home with Helen. Like Odysseus, his return is delayed many years. Just as winds and storms affect the return journey of Agamemnon and Odysseus, Menelaus is blown off course to Crete and later to Egypt, where he makes a protracted stay, unable to sail away because there is no wind.
There are many references to Menelaus and Helen’s time in Egypt in Book 4 of The Odyssey, which is all the more interesting given the alternative versions of Helen’s story from ancient times.
Rather than going to Troy with Paris, there are alternative versions of the story which have Helen staying in Egypt for the course of the war. In his play, Helen, set after the war when Menelaus travels to Egypt looking for her, Euripides has Hera make an eidolon of Helen – a kind of doppelganger or copy – which goes to Troy at the beginning of the war in her stead. Hera has the real Helen taken to Egypt by Hermes. King Proteus protects Helen for the duration of the war.
Ultimately, these versions attempt to reform Helen’s reputation. In his poem, ‘Palinode’, Stesichorus adopts the same idea – that Helen remained in Egypt – as a means to retract criticisms he made of Helen in his earlier poem, ‘Helen’, in which he portrays her as unvirtuous and to blame for the whole war. Instead, the second poem exonerates Helen:
Herodotus also writes that Helen never went to Troy, although his version of events does not include an eidolon. Instead, he claims that Paris was blown off course and forced towards Egypt after he abducted Helen. Some of Paris’ slaves escaped while in Egypt to seek sanctuary in a temple, and they told what they knew of the circumstances of Helen’s abduction to the warden of the Nile, Thonis. Paris was arrested and was taken to Memphis with Helen, where he was questioned by King Proteus. Proteus was disgusted by Paris’ actions but felt that he could not put him to death. Instead, he insisted Helen stay in Egypt and that Paris leave.
Herodotus claims to have personally questioned priests about this version of events, and makes a convincing argument that Helen remained in Egypt. He reasons that had Helen been at Troy the Trojans would have given her up to avoid a costly war:
I cannot believe that either Priam or any other kinsman of his was mad enough to be willing to risk his own and his children’s lives and the safety of the city, simply to let Paris continue to live with Helen.
Herodotus argues that this reasoning would have become even more compelling as the war progressed and the casualties mounted. In short, he states, “The fact is, they did not give Helen up because they had not got her; what they told the Greeks was the truth …”
Herodotus writes that he believes Homer was familiar with this alternate version of Helen’s story although “he rejected it as less suitable for epic poetry”, and that “he left indications that it was not unknown to him.”
When we first see Helen in The Odyssey she appears with her servants Adreste, Alcippe and Phylo, who carry out items needed for Helen’s weaving. This detail is interesting because it recalls to mind the weaving undertaken in Book 2 of The Odyssey by Penelope to frustrate the suitors and protect her own virtue. If Helen is the woman of questionable virtue from The Iliad, then Penelope is the epitome of female virtue in The Odyssey, though both women will inspire violence. Phylo, Helen’s serving woman, carries a silver basket given to her by Alcandre, the wife of King Polybius of Thebes in Egypt. Later, when the conversation between Pisistratus and Menelaus grows maudlin, Helen spikes their wine with a drug she has procured from Egypt. Later still, when Menelaus tells Telemachus the story of his encounter with Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, it is an island of the coast of Egypt where he is becalmed, and to Egypt he must return in order to appease the gods. These allusions may contain the ghost of the story Herodotus alludes to, now incorporated into Homer’s narrative. Otherwise, it is a lot of extra detail to explain how Menelaus forced Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea living off the coast of Egypt, to tell him about Odysseus.
Just as there are alternative stories about Helen, there are opposing views of her character, also, with Book 4 of The Odyssey, itself. The reader may discern either the Helen who has truly reformed and understands what a wicked woman she once was, or a Helen who is a wicked woman but now must play the part of a dutiful wife. Either way, we sense Helen’s acute self-awareness. She finishes her recollection of her responsibility for the war with the observation, “shameless whore that I was.” When she tells the story of meeting Odysseus, disguised as a beggar in Troy, she makes her loyalty and trustworthiness the point of the story. Odysseus trusts her with his plan and even his life, and she doesn’t betray him. She says explicitly, “my heart had changed by now – I yearned to sail back home again.” In fact, Helen makes Aphrodite the villain of her story:
The last line is a little jarring. While Helen is telling her story about Odysseus to Menelaus’ court, it is Menelaus who is the obvious audience for this part of her tale: the tale of a wronged and faithful wife.
Menelaus counters her story immediately with the tale of Helen’s actions around the Trojan Horse. He describes how Helen walked three times around the Trojan Horse as Menelaus and his men waited inside, trying to seductively lure them with her voice to betray their presence. Like Helen, Menelaus is full of praise for Odysseus but in his story, Helen is the antagonist, not the ally of Odysseus:
Menelaus’ story is a two-pronged criticism of Helen, though they have learned to live is some kind of harmony, now. The first aspect of the story questions Helen’s stated loyalty to the Greeks: that she was, in fact, invested in her role as a Trojan wife. The second is Menelaus’ reference to Prince Deiphobus, who “squired your every step”. Prince Deiphobus became a lover of Helen and married her after the death of Paris. That is, Helen took another Trojan husband before she was eventually returned to Menelaus. In other words, Helen’s assertion that she is a faithful wife is also dubious in Menelaus’ eyes, as is her assertion, “I yearned to sail back home again!”
Underpinning these conflicting views of Helen is her own confused representation of her character. She cannot be both a reformed woman who recognises she was once a “shameless whore” as well as the innocent victim of Aphrodite’s machinations.
As a result, beginning with her entrance and her weaving materials, Helen recalls Penelope’s faithfulness to us, and her infidelity seems heightened by her own duplicity.
This image is from an edition of The Odyssey published in Amsterdam in 1731. It depicts the scene in which Telemachus and Pisistratus are welcomed by Menelaus during the double wedding of his daughter and son. The scene is strangely formal, with the image divided by the table, separating the wedding party from servants and guests. I find the arrangement of the seated wedding party reminiscent of the tableau of da Vinci’s Last Supper, with the figure of Menelaus seated centre, much like that of Christ in da Vinci’s fresco. While Christ’s hand is not raised in that painting, the raised hand is a symbol of blessing and Christ is often portrayed with a raised hand as Menelaus is here. Here the gesture seems to signify benevolence and munificence. The formal canopy above the wedding party reflects the opulence of Menelaus’ house, as suggested by Homer’s descriptions of the riches and grandeur of Menelaus’ house.
This painting by Jean Jacques Lagrenee captures the moment at line 135 of Fagles translation when Helen first appears in The Odyssey. Menelaus is seated, centre, with a purple robe. Telemachus, to the left with a red robe, is weeping after hearing Menelaus speak about his missing father. Seated next to him, Pisistratus attempts to comfort Telemachus.
This scene is the moment when Helen intuits who Telemachus must be, based upon his physical resemblance to his father. Helen stands with her right arm raised, wearing a blue himation around her body. Behind her we can identify with some confidence, from left to right, Phylo, Alcippe and Adreste from the following lines:
The identity of the older man who stands behind Telemachus and Pisistratus to the left is uncertain. However, he may be intended to represent Asphalion, one of Menelaus’ aides-in-arms, who rinses their hands with water at line 240 of Fagles’ translation.
This engraving represents the scene in which Menelaus and his three chosen companions subdue Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, so that they might discover which god they have offended and how to escape the island. Of course, Menelaus’ companions are not depicted in this engraving. Menelaus, alone, subdues Proteus and binds his hands. In Homer’s version, Menelaus does not bind Proteus, but lets him go once he starts asking questions, as instructed by Proteus’ daughter, Eidothea.
The artist’s representations of Proteus’ cave and his seal companions are wonderfully eccentric. The scene is like a stage, with the cave depicted like a shallow proscenium arch. And it is easy to believe that Giulio Bonsone may never have seen a seal in life. Three seals lay at Proteus feet. Each has flippers very much like the hand of a human, and a coiled tale. Two seals have faces like men and are horned while a third resembles a horse. An alternative interpretation of these figures might be that they are Menelaus’ men, disguised still in the seal skins given to them by Eidothea. However, their size, compared to Menelaus, is wrong, and they are too passive for men who were tasked with helping Menelaus subdue Proteus.
This engraving was produced as part of series of illustrations for depicting scenes from The Odyssey.
This statue by Sébastien Slodtz is not a representation of a scene from The Odyssey though the scene could easily be mistaken for Menelaus subduing Proteus. This is, in fact, Aristaeus subduing Proteus. Aristaeus subdues Proteus in much the same way that Menelaus did in order to extract information from him. Aristaeus is a minor figure, a shepherd who kept bees. When his bees began to die, he sought advice from his mother, Cyrene, who told him to ask Proteus, known for his wisdom. Once subdued, Proteus told Aristaeus that he was being punished for his unwitting part in the death of Eurydice.
Aristaeus’ story further demonstrates the character of Proteus, a difficult and slippery character who did not give up his knowledge willingly.