Sparta: Golden Halls and Old Wounds

Telemachus and Pisistratus ride on from Pylos to Sparta, where Menelaus and Helen are holding a double wedding feast in their glittering palace. Over dinner and the next morning Telemachus hears two stories about his father at Troy and, through Menelaus’s account of the sea-god Proteus, the first firm news that Odysseus is alive. Back on Ithaca the suitors discover that he has gone and set an ambush to kill him on his way home.

What happens

• Telemachus and Pisistratus arrive at the wealthy court of Menelaus, who welcomes them before he even knows who they are.
• Menelaus grieves aloud for Odysseus; Telemachus weeps, and Helen recognises him by his likeness to his father.
• Helen drugs the wine, and she and Menelaus tell rival stories of Odysseus’s daring and endurance at Troy.
• Menelaus recounts how he wrestled the truth from Proteus, the shape-shifting Old Man of the Sea, in Egypt.
• Proteus reveals that Odysseus is alive on Calypso’s island; meanwhile the suitors set an ambush to kill Telemachus on his way home.

Who we meet

Menelaus

the grander model host, rich and generous

Helen

famous, self-aware, complex

Proteus

the shape-shifting Old Man of the Sea

The suitors

now turning murderous back in Ithaca

Why it matters for essays

Sparta is the second and grander model household, after Nestor’s Pylos, and the richest source of character material in Books 2–4. The rival stories told by Helen and Menelaus show Odysseus’s cunning and endurance from the outside, and Proteus’s news is the hinge of the plot, tying Telemachus’s journey to Book 5, where Odysseus himself appears.

Remember. The workbook marks Book 4 as unprescribed. Read it for the story and as background for your essays: you need to know what happens, but it is never set as a passage in the context questions.

Arrival at Sparta lines 1–26

• Telemachus and Pisistratus drive through the rolling hill country of Lacedaemon and up to the palace of Menelaus.
• They find Menelaus entertaining a large company of relatives to celebrate two weddings.
• His daughter Hermione is to be sent with chariot and horses to marry the son of Achilles, king of the Myrmidons, as Menelaus promised long ago at Troy.
• His son Megapenthes is marrying Alector’s daughter from Sparta. Megapenthes was born to Menelaus by a slave, because the gods gave Helen no other child after Hermione.
• The guests feast under the high roof of the great hall while a minstrel sings to the lyre and two acrobats dance among them.
• The two travellers halt their chariot at the courtyard gate.
• Eteoneus, Menelaus’s squire, sees them and hurries through the palace to the king.
• He reports strangers at the gate who look to be of divine descent, and asks whether to unharness their horses or send them on to find someone else to entertain them.

Note. Menelaus is the brother of Agamemnon and the husband of Helen. It was Helen’s running off to Troy that started the whole Trojan War.

Menelaus welcomes them lines 27–62

• Menelaus is indignant at the question. He tells Eteoneus that, for all his good sense in the past, he is now talking nonsense like a child.
• He reminds Eteoneus that the two of them enjoyed a great deal of hospitality from strangers before they reached home, and orders the horses unyoked and the visitors brought to the feast at once.
• Eteoneus runs off shouting for his assistants. They stable the sweating horses with grain and white barley, tilt the chariot against the wall by the gate and lead the newcomers in.
• Telemachus and Pisistratus gaze in wonder: the lofty hall seems lit by the splendour of the sun or the moon.
• Maids bathe them, rub them with oil and dress them in thick cloaks and tunics, and they are seated beside Menelaus.
• A maid pours water from a golden ewer over a silver basin for their hands, the housekeeper brings bread and delicacies, and a carver serves meat and sets gold cups beside them.
• Menelaus welcomes them and tells them to eat first: after dinner he will ask who they are.
• He says their looks show their breeding: they must be the sons of kings, “sceptred favourites of Zeus”, since inferior parents could never produce such men.
• With his own hands he passes them the rich piece of roast that was given to him as the portion of honour.
• When they have eaten, Telemachus leans close to Pisistratus so that no one else can hear.

‘Eteoneus, son of Boethus, you have not always been a fool; but at the moment you are talking nonsense like a child. You and I enjoyed much hospitality from strangers before we reached our homes and could expect that Zeus might grant us a life without suffering in time to come. Unyoke their horses at once, and bring our visitors to join us at the feast.’

Book 4, workbook lines 27–32

Unpacking the passage

“talking nonsense like a child”

Menelaus treats any hesitation over admitting strangers as foolish, so his angry answer states the rule for the audience.

“You and I enjoyed much hospitality from strangers”

He grounds the duty in memory: he and Eteoneus were once strangers who depended on other people’s welcome.

“Zeus might grant us a life without suffering”

Hospitality is linked to the gods; giving it is part of hoping for Zeus’s favour in the future.

“Unyoke their horses at once”

The welcome is immediate and practical, before anyone knows who the guests are.

Note. This is the idea behind xenia: you look after strangers because one day you might be the stranger needing help, and the gods are watching to make sure everyone plays their part.

Note. The bath, the oil and the clean clothes are the full hospitality routine, and they come before anyone asks who the guests are. The polite order was always food first and questions later.

Worth noticing. The textbook calls Menelaus’s answer the clearest statement in the Telemachy of why xenia exists. Eteoneus’s hesitation gives Menelaus the chance to give the right answer.

The splendour of the hall lines 63–66

• Telemachus whispers to Pisistratus, calling him “friend of my heart”, and tells him to look round the echoing hall.
• The whole place gleams with bronze and gold, amber, silver and ivory, and he marvels at the quantity of treasure.
• He imagines that the court of Zeus on Olympus must look like this inside, and says the sight fills him with awe.

Worth noticing. The textbook points out that the palace shows Menelaus’s status through visible material display, in gold, silver and ivory.

Menelaus mourns Odysseus lines 67–99

• Menelaus overhears. He says no mortal can compete with Zeus, whose house and possessions last for ever, but few men or none can rival his own wealth.
• It took him seven years and great hardship to gather this fortune and bring it home in his ships.
• He lists his travels: Cyprus, Phoenicia and Egypt, the Ethiopians, Sidonians and Erembians, and Libya, where lambs grow horns almost at once, ewes lamb three times a year and even shepherds have cheese, meat and milk all year round.
• While he was away making his fortune, an enemy of his house struck down his brother, caught off guard through the treachery of his wife.
• So the wealth gives him little pleasure. He would be happy with a third of his former estate if the friends who died on the plains of Troy were still alive.
• He grieves for them all, but for one man most of all, whose loss makes sleep and food hateful to him.
• That man is Odysseus, who strove hardest and achieved most of all the Greeks at Troy, and whose labour ended in misery.
• No one knows whether Odysseus is alive or dead, and Menelaus supposes that Laertes, Penelope and Telemachus, a new-born baby when he left, are already mourning him.
• Menelaus does all this without knowing that Odysseus’s son is sitting beside him.

For of all the Achaeans who strove at Troy it was Odysseus who strove the hardest and achieved the most. Yet all that labour was to end in misery for him, and in a haunting sense of loss for me, so long has he been gone, leaving us in ignorance of whether he is dead or not; though I suppose his people are already mourning for him as dead – the old man Laertes, loyal Penelope, and Telemachus, whom he left a new-born baby in his home.’

Book 4, workbook lines 93–99

Unpacking the passage

“strove the hardest and achieved the most”

Menelaus ranks Odysseus first among all the Greeks at Troy, which is high praise from a fellow king.

“in ignorance of whether he is dead or not”

Even Menelaus, who knows more than anyone on Ithaca, speaks as if Odysseus’s fate were unknown.

“Telemachus, whom he left a new-born baby”

He names the young man in front of him without realising it, which brings on Telemachus’s tears.

Note. Menelaus took seven years to get home after Troy: his own long nostos, or homecoming. Odysseus’s is taking even longer. The brother he mentions is Agamemnon, leader of the whole Greek army at Troy, who got home safely and was then murdered; the full story comes later in this book.

Worth noticing. The textbook notes that for all his gold Menelaus says he would gladly have less if the men who died at Troy could have come home. A completed nostos can still be a sorrowful one.

Telemachus weeps lines 100–106

• Hearing his father spoken of, Telemachus is overcome and lets the tears roll down his cheeks to the ground.
• He holds up his purple cloak in front of his eyes with both hands.
• Menelaus recognises who he must be.
• He debates with himself whether to wait for the young man to mention his father or to question him straight away.

Helen enters lines 107–136

• While Menelaus hesitates, Helen comes down from her perfumed room, looking like Artemis with her golden distaff.
• Her maids attend her: Adreste draws up a chair, Alcippe brings a rug of soft wool, and Phylo carries her silver work-basket.
• The basket was a gift from Alcandre, wife of Polybus of Egyptian Thebes. Polybus gave Menelaus two silver baths, a pair of three-legged cauldrons and ten talents of gold, and Alcandre gave Helen a golden spindle and this basket on silver wheels with a gold rim.
• Helen sits with a footstool for her feet and at once asks her husband about everything.
• She asks whether they have been told the guests’ names, wonders aloud whether to hold back the truth, and decides she must speak.
• She has never seen such a likeness: this must be Telemachus, the son Odysseus left as a baby when the Greeks went to Troy for her sake, “shameless creature that I was”.
• Menelaus agrees. Odysseus had just such feet and hands, the same movement of the eyes, the same shape of head and the same hair.
• He adds that the young man wept and covered his face with his purple cloak when Menelaus spoke of all that Odysseus had done and suffered for him.

‘Menelaus, favourite of Heaven, have we been told the names of these men who have come to our house? Shall I withhold the truth, or speak the truth? I feel that I must speak. For never in man or woman have I seen such a likeness before – I am lost in admiration. Surely this must be great-hearted Odysseus’ son Telemachus, whom his father left as a new-born baby in his home, when you Achaeans came to Troy with war in your hearts for my sake, shameless creature that I was!’

Book 4, workbook lines 122–129

Unpacking the passage

“I feel that I must speak”

Helen takes the lead in the conversation; Menelaus has been hesitating, and she simply says what she sees.

“such a likeness”

She recognises Telemachus purely from his resemblance to his father, before anyone has introduced him.

“for my sake, shameless creature that I was”

She names herself as the cause of the war and condemns herself before anyone else can.

Note. Helen is compared to the goddess Artemis. A distaff is the stick that holds a bundle of wool ready for spinning.

Worth noticing. The textbook adds three points. Telemachus has neither disguised nor introduced himself; his face does it for him. Helen is more present and more articulate than any mortal woman in the Telemachy except Penelope, and her past hangs over every word. And the Trojan War began when Paris, a guest in Menelaus’s house, left with his host’s wife, so the greatest war in Greek memory started as a breach of xenia; the poem leaves this unsaid and expects you to know.

Peisistratus explains lines 137–192

• Pisistratus confirms that his friend is Odysseus’s son, but says he is modest and too bashful on a first visit to speak uninvited in front of a man whose conversation is like a god’s.
• He explains that Nestor sent him as escort, because Telemachus hoped Menelaus might give advice or suggest a course of action.
• A son whose father is gone has many difficulties at home, he says, especially with no friends to protect him from injustice, which is Telemachus’s position.
• Menelaus is moved that the son of his dear friend, who undertook so many heroic tasks for his sake, has come to his house.
• He says he had meant to honour Odysseus above all the Greeks: he would have built him a house, emptied one of his own towns in Argos and moved him there from Ithaca with his possessions, his son and his people.
• They would have lived close together and met continually until death, but a jealous god made Odysseus the only one who never reached home.
• Everyone weeps: Helen, Telemachus and Menelaus, and Pisistratus too, remembering his brother Antilochus, killed by the son of the Dawn.
• Pisistratus says his father Nestor always called Menelaus the wisest of men, and asks him to hold back his grief: he takes no pleasure in weeping over dinner, and it is nearly dawn.
• He adds that weeping for the dead is right, since a lock of hair and a tear are the only tribute mortals can pay, and mentions his brother Antilochus, whom he never knew, said to be a superb runner and a great fighter.
• Menelaus praises him for speaking with the good sense of a much older man, the true son of his father.
• He says Nestor was blessed by Zeus at birth and at marriage, and is ageing peacefully at home with sons who are good spearmen and intelligent.
• Menelaus proposes that they forget their tears and return to supper; in the morning he and Telemachus will have much to discuss.

Note. A guest is passed carefully from one household to the next: Nestor at Pylos has sent the boys on to Menelaus at Sparta. That is xenia working as it should. A bond of guest-friendship also lasted beyond a lifetime and passed down the family, which is why Menelaus welcomes Odysseus’s son like one of his own.

Note. People in Homer are quick to blame a “jealous god” for bad luck, because they assumed the gods lay behind almost every misfortune. Weeping openly as a group at a feast was a normal way of honouring the dead, and cutting a lock of hair and shedding tears were the proper ways to mourn.

Helen’s drug lines 193–216

• The squire Asphalion pours water over their hands, and they return to the food.
• Helen has an idea and slips a drug into the bowl in which the wine is mixed.
• The drug takes the sting out of grief and anger and banishes painful memories: anyone who drank it could shed no tear that day, even if his parents died or he saw his brother or son killed in front of him.
• It was given to Helen by an Egyptian woman, Polydamna, the wife of Thon. Egypt is rich in herbs, some healing and some poisonous, and Egyptians are the best doctors in the world.
• Once the cups are filled, Helen says everyone has good times and bad, and Zeus sees to that, so they should enjoy listening to each other’s stories.
• She cannot count all Odysseus’s daring feats, but offers one exploit he carried out in Troy when the Greeks were hard pressed.

Note. Homer calls Helen “child of Zeus” because she was a daughter of Zeus by a mortal woman, Leda. The grief-numbing drug, which later writers call nepenthe, lets the group tell painful stories without breaking down. It comes from Egypt, which in the poem is the far-off land of wonders and secret knowledge.

Worth noticing. The textbook observes that the Telemachy knows stories about the past hurt: the drug is there so that painful memories can be told without pain.

Helen’s tale of Odysseus lines 217–234

• Odysseus disfigured himself with terrible cuts, put dirty rags on his back and slipped into Troy looking like a slave.
• Disguised as a beggar he looked utterly different from the Odysseus of the Greek camp, and no one detected him.
• Helen alone saw through the disguise, but whenever she questioned him he cleverly evaded her.
• When she bathed him, anointed him, gave him clothes and swore not to reveal his name to the Trojans until he was back at the ships, he told her all the Greeks’ plans.
• He killed a number of Trojans with his long sword and got back to the Greek camp with a great deal of information.
• The Trojan women wailed, but Helen says she rejoiced, because she already longed to go home.
• She had had “a change of heart”, repenting the blindness Aphrodite sent her when she brought her to Troy and made her leave her daughter, her bridal chamber and a husband “who lacked nothing in intelligence and looks”.

He disfigured himself with appalling lacerations and then, with dirty rags on his back, looking like a slave, he slunk into the broad streets of the enemy city. Disguised as a beggar he looked utterly different from the Odysseus of the camp by the ship. He made his way like this into the Trojan city, and was not detected by anyone. I was the only one who penetrated his disguise, but whenever I questioned him he was clever enough to evade me.

Book 4, workbook lines 217–223

Unpacking the passage

“He disfigured himself with appalling lacerations”

Odysseus is willing to injure himself to make the disguise convincing, which shows his endurance as well as his cunning.

“Disguised as a beggar”

This is the same disguise the audience will later see him use on Ithaca.

“I was the only one who penetrated his disguise”

Helen places herself at the centre of the story as the one person clever enough to see through him.

“clever enough to evade me”

Even when recognised, Odysseus gives nothing away until he can trust her.

Note. Helen’s story shows off Odysseus’s trademark skill, the cunning and love of disguise the Greeks called mētis. In it she blames Aphrodite, the goddess of love, for the madness that made her run off with Paris.

The Wooden Horse lines 235–260

• Menelaus praises Helen’s tale as well told, and says that in all his travels he has never met a man with the endurance of Odysseus.
• He gives another example: he and the pick of the Greek army were sitting inside the Wooden Horse when Helen came up, prompted, he supposes, by some god who wanted Troy to win, and accompanied by Prince Deiphobus.
• She circled the Horse three times, feeling it with her hands, and called out the names of the Greek captains, imitating each man’s wife.
• Menelaus and Diomedes were tempted to jump out or answer, but Odysseus held them back.
• The others kept still except Anticlus, who wanted to reply, so Odysseus clapped his hands over his mouth and held him until Pallas Athene led Helen away, saving the whole army.
• Telemachus replies that this only makes things worse: such qualities could not save his father from disaster, and even a heart of iron could not have saved him.
• He asks to go to bed.

Three times you circled round our hollow lair, feeling the outside with your hands, and you called out the name of all the Argive captains in turn, altering your voice to mimic each man’s wife. Diomedes and I, who were sitting right in the middle with the good Odysseus, heard you calling and were both tempted to jump up and come out or give an instant answer from within. But Odysseus held us back and checked our impetuosity.

Book 4, workbook lines 244–250

Unpacking the passage

“Three times you circled round”

Menelaus speaks to Helen directly, and the “you” in his story is the person working against the Greeks.

“altering your voice to mimic each man’s wife”

Helen is shown using a trick to draw the hidden soldiers out, which sits awkwardly beside her own claim to have wanted the Greeks to win.

“Diomedes and I … were both tempted”

Menelaus admits that he himself nearly gave the game away.

“Odysseus held us back”

Odysseus is the one man who keeps control, and his restraint saves the whole plan.

Note. The Wooden Horse is the famous trick that finally won the war. The Greeks built a giant hollow horse, hid their best fighters inside and left it outside Troy as a fake gift; the Trojans dragged it inside their walls, and that night the hidden Greeks climbed out.

Worth noticing. Neither version can simply be taken as the plain truth. Both stories praise Odysseus, but Helen’s makes her his ally and Menelaus’s makes her the danger. The poem sets them side by side without judging and leaves the audience to weigh them; each teller is shaping the story to cast themselves in a better light. The textbook calls Odysseus’s restraint inside the Horse “mētis within mētis”.

Nightfall at Sparta lines 261–276

• Helen tells her maids to set up two beds in the portico, laid with purple fleeces, rugs and thick coverlets.
• The maids make the beds by torchlight and a squire shows the guests to them.
• Telemachus and Pisistratus sleep in the forecourt, while Menelaus and Helen sleep in their room at the back of the palace.
• At dawn Menelaus dresses, slings on his sword, ties on his sandals and comes out “looking like a god”.
• He sits beside Telemachus and asks what brought him over the sea to Lacedaemon, public business or private, and tells him to speak the truth.

Worth noticing. The question about the guest’s purpose comes only on the second day, after a feast and a night’s rest, completing the pattern of food first and questions later.

Menelaus questions him lines 277–302

• Telemachus explains that he has come to find out whether Menelaus has any news of his father.
• He is being eaten out of house and home: his estate is ruined and his palace is full of enemies who slaughter his sheep and cattle and compete in their brutal pride for his mother’s hand.
• He begs for the truth about his father’s end, whether Menelaus saw it himself or heard it from another wanderer.
• He asks him to tell it straight, without softening it out of pity.
• He appeals to the past: if Odysseus ever kept his word to Menelaus at Troy, Menelaus should remember it now and tell him everything.
• Menelaus is hot with indignation that cowards want to creep into a brave man’s bed, and compares the suitors to fawns left in a lion’s den.
• He recalls seeing Odysseus throw Philomeleides in a wrestling match on Lesbos, to the delight of the Greeks.
• He swears by Zeus, Athene and Apollo that he would like the suitors to meet that Odysseus: there would be “a swift death and a sorry wedding” for them all.

‘So the cowards want to creep into the brave man’s bed? It’s just as if a deer had put her two little unweaned fawns to sleep in a mighty lion’s den and gone to range the high ridges and the grassy dales for pasture. Back comes the lion to his lair, and the fawns meet a grisly fate – as will the Suitors at Odysseus’ hand.

Book 4, workbook lines 293–297

Unpacking the passage

“the cowards want to creep into the brave man’s bed”

Menelaus sees the courtship as cowardly theft from an absent hero, aimed at his wife and his place.

“two little unweaned fawns … in a mighty lion’s den”

The suitors are compared to helpless baby deer settled where they have no business being.

“Back comes the lion to his lair”

Odysseus is the lion, and his return is pictured as certain.

“as will the Suitors at Odysseus’ hand”

Menelaus predicts outright that Odysseus will kill them.

Note. This is a simile, an extended “like…” comparison: the suitors are little fawns a deer has foolishly left asleep in a lion’s den, with the lion, Odysseus, about to come home.

The Old Man of the Sea lines 303–318

• Turning to Telemachus’s question, Menelaus promises to hide nothing and to pass on every word he heard from the Old Man of the Sea.
• It happened in Egypt. He was anxious to get home, but the gods held him back because he had failed to make them the correct offerings.
• Off the mouth of the Nile, a day’s sail out, lies the island of Pharos, with a sheltered cove and a well where sailors draw water.
• The gods kept him there for twenty days without a breath of the off-shore wind that carries ships out to sea.
• His supplies would have run out and his men lost their strength if a god had not taken pity on him.

Note. Menelaus was stranded in Egypt because he had forgotten to make the proper offerings to the gods. This rule runs through the poem: if you skip what you owe the gods, your journey home grinds to a halt.

Eidothee’s plan lines 319–387

• Eidothee, daughter of Proteus, finds Menelaus walking alone, away from his men, who are scattered round the coast fishing because they are starving.
• She asks whether he is a fool, completely stupid, or simply enjoys suffering, to stay trapped so long while his men grow weaker.
• Menelaus replies that he has no wish to stay. He must have offended the immortals, and since gods know everything, he asks which one is holding him and how he can get home.
• She explains that the island is the haunt of Proteus of Egypt, an immortal seer who serves Poseidon and knows the depths of every sea; “He is my father too, so people say.”
• If Menelaus can catch him, Proteus will tell him his route home and the distances, and everything that has happened in his palace while he has been away.
• Menelaus fears Proteus will see him coming, since “a god is not easily defeated by a mortal”, and asks her for a plan.
• She explains: at midday Proteus comes out of the sea and sleeps in a cave among his seals. Menelaus must choose his three best men, and she will hide them at daybreak.
• Proteus will count his seals and lie down among them like a shepherd with his flock. Then they must seize him and hold on as he turns into every kind of beast, into water and into blazing fire.
• When he speaks to them in his own shape, they can let him go and ask which god is hindering Menelaus and how to get home.
• She disappears into the waves; Menelaus goes back to his ships troubled, and they eat and sleep on the shore.
• At dawn he sets out with many prayers and his three most reliable men. Eidothee brings four freshly flayed seal-skins, part of her plan to deceive her father, scoops hiding places in the sand and covers each man with a skin.
• The stench of the seals is almost unbearable (“Who would choose a monster of the deep for bed-fellow?”), so she puts sweet-smelling ambrosia under each man’s nostrils.

Note. The workbook’s translation spells the nymph Eidothee; the textbook calls her Eidothea. Ambrosia is the gods’ own food, and it smells wonderful: Eidothee uses it to cover the reek of the seal-skins.

Catching Proteus lines 388–431

• They wait all morning. Crowds of seals come out of the sea and lie down in rows on the beach.
• At midday Proteus emerges, counts his seals and, quite unsuspecting, counts the four disguised men as the first of his flock, then lies down to sleep.
• With a shout they seize him. He turns into a bearded lion, a snake, a panther, a giant bear, running water and a great tree, but they cling on.
• Worn out, Proteus asks which god helped Menelaus trap him, and why.
• Menelaus tells him to stop stalling, since he already knows, and asks again which god is keeping him there and how he can get home.
• Proteus answers that he should have offered rich sacrifices to Zeus and the other gods before sailing; he must sail back to the Nile and make the proper offerings before the gods will let him go home.
• Menelaus’s heart sinks at the long voyage back to Egypt, but he agrees.
• He then asks whether all the Greeks he and Nestor left behind at Troy reached home safely.
• Proteus warns him that he will weep: many were killed and many spared, but of the commanders only two died on the way home, and a third is alive but a prisoner somewhere in the wide sea.

With a shout, we charged and grabbed hold of him. But the old man’s skill and cunning had not deserted him. He began by turning into a bearded lion and then into a snake, and after that a panther and a giant bear. He changed into running water too and a great tree in leaf. But we set our teeth and clung on grimly.

Book 4, workbook lines 393–398

Unpacking the passage

“skill and cunning”

Proteus has his own mētis, so this is cunning set against cunning.

“a bearded lion … a snake … a panther and a giant bear”

The list of shapes builds up the struggle, each form more frightening or harder to hold.

“we set our teeth and clung on grimly”

Menelaus wins by endurance and by sticking to the plan; strength alone would be useless against a god.

Note. Proteus will turn himself into a lion, a snake, running water, blazing fire, anything to break free. This is where we get the word “protean”, meaning constantly changing.

Worth noticing. The textbook makes three points here. Divine knowledge is earned through struggle. Menelaus disguises himself as a seal to catch a god who disguises himself in every shape, so it is disguise against disguise. And his mētis is borrowed: he gets home by following Eidothee’s trick, without fighting his way out.

The fates of the Greeks lines 432–443

• Proteus begins with Ajax. Poseidon wrecked his ships and drove him onto the great cliff of Gyrae, then rescued him from the surf.
• Ajax would have escaped his doom, in spite of Athene’s hatred, if he had not boasted in his blind folly that he had escaped the sea in defiance of the gods.
• Poseidon heard the blasphemy, struck the Gyraean rock with his trident and split it in two.
• The half where Ajax had been sitting crashed into the sea and carried him down, and he drowned.

Note. This is the “lesser” Ajax, a different man from the huge warrior of the Iliad. He drowned because he boasted that he had survived without the gods’ help: the kind of arrogance the Greeks called hubris, which the gods always punish.

The murder of Agamemnon lines 444–468

• Agamemnon, Menelaus’s brother, slipped away from Troy with Hera’s help.
• Near Cape Malea a hurricane drove him towards the land where Thyestes once lived and his son Aegisthus now lived, but the gods turned the wind and he came home safely.
• He stepped onto his native soil with a happy heart, kissed the ground and wept for joy.
• A spy whom Aegisthus had posted in a watch-tower for a year, for a fee of two talents of gold, saw him land and reported it.
• Aegisthus hid twenty of his best soldiers in one part of the palace, had a banquet prepared in another, and drove out in his chariot to bring the king home.
• He feasted Agamemnon and then killed him “as a man might fell an ox at its manger”.
• None of Agamemnon’s followers survived, and none of Aegisthus’s company either: they were all killed in the palace.

Note. The leader of the Greek army sailed home safely from Troy only to be murdered at a welcome-home feast by Aegisthus, the man who had moved in with his wife Clytaemnestra while he was away. This grim homecoming is the dark shadow hanging over the whole poem.

Worth noticing. The textbook adds that Agamemnon has the wrong kind of kleos: he is remembered as a warning.

News of Odysseus lines 469–513

• Menelaus tells Telemachus that the story broke his heart: he sat down on the sand and wept, with no wish to live.
• Proteus told him he had wept long enough and should hurry home: either Aegisthus would still be alive, or Orestes would have killed him and Menelaus might be in time for the funeral feast.
• Cheered, Menelaus asked about the third man, still alive but a prisoner, or perhaps dead by now; he wanted to know, whatever sorrow it caused.
• Proteus answered that it is Odysseus, whom he saw weeping on Calypso’s island, held captive with no ship or crew to take him home.
• Proteus then told Menelaus his own destiny: when his time comes, the gods will send him to the Elysian Fields at the end of the world, to join Rhadamanthus where there is no snow, wind or rain, so he will escape death in Argos.
• This is because Menelaus is Helen’s husband and, in the gods’ eyes, the son-in-law of Zeus.
• Proteus sank back into the sea. Next morning Menelaus sailed back to the Nile and made the proper offerings.
• He built a mound of earth so that Agamemnon’s glory would last for ever, and the gods sent him a fair wind home.
• Menelaus invites Telemachus to stay for twelve days or so, and promises to send him off with three horses, a splendid chariot and a lovely cup to remember him by when he pours drink-offerings.

“The third,” said Proteus, “is Odysseus, Laertes’ son, whose home is in Ithaca. I caught a glimpse of him on an island, in the Nymph Calypso’s home, with tears streaming down his cheeks. She keeps him captive there, for without a ship and crew to carry him so far across the sea it is impossible for him to reach his home.

Book 4, workbook lines 481–486

Unpacking the passage

“The third”

Odysseus comes last in a list of Greek leaders, after Ajax and Agamemnon, both of whom are dead.

“in the Nymph Calypso’s home”

This is the first time anyone tells Telemachus where his father is.

“with tears streaming down his cheeks”

Odysseus is alive, but he is unhappy where he is.

“without a ship and crew”

Proteus explains why Odysseus cannot leave: he has no means of making the journey.

Key moment. This is the answer Telemachus’s whole journey was for, and the most concrete, direct news of Odysseus he receives anywhere in the Telemachy. Book 5 picks up the story right there, on Calypso’s island.

Note. Orestes is Agamemnon’s son, who grew up and killed Aegisthus to avenge his murdered father, the classic example of a son doing his duty. The Elysian Fields are a kind of paradise at the edge of the world kept for a lucky few. Menelaus’s burial mound keeps his brother’s fame (kleos) alive; honouring the dead in this way was a sacred duty.

Worth noticing. The textbook calls Elysium an exception to the normal rule, a fate altered by family connection to the gods. It also points out that the news reaches Telemachus as a story within a story: Menelaus tells what Proteus told him, so even the truth arrives as someone’s narrative.

The parting gift lines 514–537

• Telemachus asks Menelaus to keep his visit short. He enjoys his stories so much that he could stay a year without feeling homesick, but his companions are waiting for him at Pylos.
• For the gift he asks for a keepsake he can carry. He will leave the horses for Menelaus’s own stables.
• Sparta is a broad plain rich in clover, galingale, wheat, rye and barley, he explains, while Ithaca has no room for horses to run and no meadows at all.
• Ithaca is goat country, and to him more attractive than horse country; of all the islands it is the least suited to chariots.
• Menelaus smiles, pats him and says he likes the way he talks, which shows he has the right blood in his veins.
• He changes the gift to the loveliest treasure in his palace: a mixing-bowl of solid silver with a gold rim, made by Hephaestus himself.
• Menelaus was given the bowl by Phaedimus, king of Sidon, when he stayed with him on his way home.

Note. A bowl made by Hephaestus, the blacksmith god, is a treasure of divine craftsmanship. Giving a departing guest a fine gift sealed the friendship between two households.

Worth noticing. The textbook judges Telemachus a good guest here: gracious, tactful about the gift and careful about overstaying. Menelaus, pleased, adapts his gift, which completes his record as a good host.

Back in Ithaca lines 538–569

• At Sparta, guests arrive for the banquet, bringing sheep and wine, with bread sent by their wives.
• The scene switches to Ithaca, where the suitors are amusing themselves as usual in front of Odysseus’s palace, throwing the discus and the javelin.
• Antinous and Eurymachus, the boldest and the leaders, are sitting nearby when Noemon, son of Phronius, comes up with a question for Antinous.
• Noemon asks when Telemachus will be back from Pylos: he has taken Noemon’s ship, and Noemon needs it to cross to Elis, where he keeps twelve brood mares with young mules to break in.
• The suitors are dismayed. They had no idea Telemachus had gone to Pylos and thought he was nearby on the farm, with the flocks or the swineherd.
• Antinous demands the truth: when did Telemachus leave, and did he take men from the town or his own serfs and servants?
• He also asks whether Telemachus took the ship by force or whether Noemon gave it willingly.
• Noemon says he gave it of his own accord, since it would be hard to refuse a man of Telemachus’s standing with so much trouble on his mind.
• The crew were the best young men in the land after the suitors themselves, and their captain was Mentor, or some god exactly like him.
• That puzzles Noemon, because he saw Mentor in town only yesterday at dawn, yet Mentor certainly boarded the ship for Pylos that night.

Worth noticing. The audience knows the answer to Noemon’s puzzle. In Book 2 Athene took Mentor’s form to help Telemachus prepare his ship in secret, so the “Mentor” on board was the goddess, while the real Mentor stayed on Ithaca.

The ambush plotted lines 570–594

• Noemon goes home, leaving Antinous and Eurymachus appalled and furious.
• They make the others leave their games and sit down, and Antinous, his heart seething and his eyes like points of flame, gives vent to his fury.
• He says Telemachus has pulled off the expedition they swore would come to nothing, picking the best men in the place with all of them against him.
• He calls Telemachus “the young puppy”, warns that he will give them more trouble, and hopes Zeus clips his wings before he reaches manhood.
• He asks for a fast ship and a crew of twenty, so that he can lie in wait in the straits between Ithaca and Samos and catch Telemachus on his way home.
• The others welcome the scheme, tell him to carry it out, and go into the palace.
• Medon the herald has been eavesdropping outside the courtyard and goes straight to tell Penelope.
• Before he can speak, Penelope asks bitterly whether the suitors have sent him to tell the maids to prepare them another feast.
• She wishes they would give up their courtship and never gather there again, and says how she hates their pursuit of her and the way they swarm around.

With all of us against him, the young puppy calmly sets out, after picking the best men in the place and getting them to launch a ship for him! He is going to give us still more trouble. I hope Zeus clips his wings before he reaches manhood! However, give me a fast ship and a crew of twenty, and I’ll lie up for him in the straits between Ithaca and the bluffs of Samos, and catch him on his way. And a grim ending there’ll be to this sea-trip of his in search of his father!’

Book 4, workbook lines 576–583

Unpacking the passage

“the young puppy”

Antinous still talks about Telemachus with contempt, even while admitting he has outwitted them.

“He is going to give us still more trouble”

He recognises that Telemachus is growing into a real threat.

“before he reaches manhood”

The suitors want to stop him before he comes into his full power as his father’s heir.

“give me a fast ship and a crew of twenty”

The plan is murder by ambush, the worst crime a guest could commit against his host’s family.

Remember. This ambush plot is left unresolved at the end of Book 4. It sets up real danger for Telemachus’s return journey, still hanging over the story.

Worth noticing. The textbook calls the ambush a plan, but a crude one, which the poem has already told the audience will fail. Scheming without the intelligence to read the situation falls short of mētis; the suitors have missed the stranger, the omen and the god.

Penelope warned lines 595–659

• Medon wishes that were the worst of her troubles: the suitors mean to kill Telemachus with their swords as he comes home from Pylos and Lacedaemon, where he has gone for news of his father.
• Penelope’s knees tremble and her heart grows faint; for a long time she cannot speak, and her eyes fill with tears.
• She asks why her son has gone, when there was no need for him to sail the wide seas, and whether he wants his very name to be forgotten.
• Medon replies that he does not know whether a god urged him or his own heart, but his purpose was to learn about his father’s return, or how he died.
• When Medon leaves, Penelope cannot bear to sit on a chair. She sinks down on the threshold of her room, weeping, while her maids stand round her sobbing.
• She asks them whether Zeus has treated any woman worse: she has lost her lion-hearted husband, and now the whirlwinds have snatched her son away without a word.
• Eurycleia confesses that she knew everything and gave Telemachus bread and wine, but he made her promise to say nothing for a dozen days or until Penelope missed him, so that tears would not spoil her cheeks.
• Eurycleia tells Penelope to wash, change her clothes, go upstairs with her women and pray to Athene, who may still save him from death.
• Penelope does so. With a basket of sacrificial grain she asks Athene to remember the fat thighs of heifers and sheep Odysseus burnt in her honour, and to save her son from the suitors.
• She ends with a loud cry, and the goddess hears her prayer.
• Downstairs the suitors break into uproar. One jokes that the queen must be about to give them a wedding, little knowing that her son’s death has been arranged; the poet comments that it was they who little guessed what had really been arranged.
• Antinous silences them in case someone goes in and tells, and reminds them to carry out the plan they agreed.
• He picks his twenty best men. They launch a black ship, fit the mast, sail and oars, bring down their armour, moor out in the water and wait on shore for evening.
• Upstairs Penelope lies without food or drink, wondering whether her son will escape, until at last she falls asleep.

‘Listen, my friends,’ she said between her sobs. ‘Is there a woman of my time whom Zeus has treated worse than me? I had a husband years ago, the best and bravest of the Danaans, a lion-hearted man, famous from Hellas to the heart of Argos. That husband I have lost. And now the whirlwinds have snatched my darling son from the house without a word.’

Book 4, workbook lines 616–621

Unpacking the passage

“whom Zeus has treated worse than me”

Penelope sees her suffering as coming from the gods and as worse than any other woman’s.

“famous from Hellas to the heart of Argos”

She remembers Odysseus by his kleos, his fame across Greece.

“That husband I have lost”

She speaks of Odysseus as gone for good, which makes the loss of her son even harder.

“without a word”

Telemachus left without telling her, so she has lost him twice: to the voyage and to the secret.

Note. Fear striking someone in the knees is Homer’s stock way of showing terror: the Greeks imagined strength and nerve as living in the limbs. In her prayer Penelope reminds Athene of all the sacrifices Odysseus once made to her. This is how prayer worked for the Greeks: you remind the god of your past gifts, so that they owe you a favour now.

Worth noticing. The textbook notes that the poem’s most powerful mortal woman ends the Telemachy with no move left to make: she cannot act, she can only pray, and Athene answers with a dream.

A dream of comfort lines 660–699

• Athene makes a phantom in the likeness of Iphthime, Penelope’s sister, another daughter of Icarius, who married Eumelus and lives in Pherae.
• It slips into the bedroom by the strap that works the bolt and stands by Penelope’s head.
• It tells her the gods do not want her to weep, because it is settled that her son will come home safe; he has done no wrong in their eyes.
• Penelope answers from her sleep “at the Gate of Dreams”, asking why her sister has come when she lives so far away.
• She asks how she can forget her sorrows, when she has lost her lion-hearted husband and now her son, whom she grieves for even more, has sailed away, “a child like him, untrained for action or debate”, with enemies plotting his death.
• The phantom tells her to be brave: Telemachus has the best escort any man could pray for, Pallas Athene, who in pity for Penelope has sent this message.
• Penelope asks the phantom, if it is really divine, whether Odysseus is alive or dead in the Halls of Hades.
• The phantom refuses to give any news of Odysseus, alive or dead, saying it does no good to speak empty words, and slips away past the bolt into the wind.
• Penelope wakes with a start, comforted by the vividness of the dream.
• Meanwhile the suitors sail out with murder in their hearts.
• They set their ambush at Asteris, a small rocky island between Ithaca and Samos with a harbour that has two entrances, and the book ends with the trap waiting.

‘Are you asleep, Penelope, worn out with grief? The gods, who live such easy lives themselves, do not mean you to weep and be distressed, for it is settled that your son shall come home safe. The boy has done no wrong in their eyes.’

Book 4, workbook lines 666–669

Unpacking the passage

“who live such easy lives themselves”

The phantom contrasts the gods’ untroubled existence with Penelope’s suffering.

“it is settled that your son shall come home safe”

The gods guarantee Telemachus’s return, which also tells the audience the ambush will fail.

“The boy has done no wrong in their eyes”

His safety is linked to his innocence, in contrast with the guilty suitors.

Note. Athene sends a phantom, a ghostly dream-image, to comfort Penelope in her sleep; in Homer the gods often reach people through dreams like this. The “Gate of Dreams” is Homer’s image for the misty border between sleeping and waking, the place dreams come through when the gods send them.

Worth noticing. The textbook sees this as divine help aimed at emotional relief, a gentler kind of patronage that leaves events unchanged. It is also the first homecoming the gods explicitly guarantee to anyone on Ithaca, and it is the son’s. Penelope half-recognises the dream as more than a dream and asks about Odysseus, so recognition is offered and then withheld.

Xenia

Menelaus gives the clearest statement in the Telemachy of why xenia exists: he and Eteoneus were once strangers in need, so strangers must be welcomed. The guests are bathed, dressed, seated and fed before any questions, and Telemachus proves a tactful guest who declines the horses and does not overstay. Helen’s presence is a reminder that the Trojan War began when Paris broke xenia in this very house. Lesson 1 · Xenia

Nostos

Book 4 is full of homecomings: Menelaus’s own, which took seven years and needed Proteus’s help; Ajax’s, which ended in drowning; and Agamemnon’s, which ended in murder. Proteus’s news that Odysseus is alive comes wrapped in these lost and ruined returns, and Menelaus shows that a completed nostos can still be sorrowful. Penelope now waits on two homecomings, and the dream guarantees the son’s. Lesson 2 · Nostos

Kleos and timē

Menelaus’s palace of gold, silver and ivory displays his status for all to see. Helen and Menelaus each tell a Troy story their own way, which is a way of managing their own future kleos. Agamemnon has the wrong kind of kleos, remembered as a warning, though Menelaus builds a mound so that his glory will last. Lesson 3 · Kleos and timē

Gods, fate and responsibility

Menelaus is held in Egypt for failing to sacrifice, and he gains knowledge of fate only by wrestling Proteus through his transformations. Proteus reveals that Menelaus will go to Elysium because he is married to a daughter of Zeus, an exception to the normal rule. Athene’s dream for Penelope aims at emotional relief and leaves events as they are. Lesson 4 · Gods, fate and responsibility

Mētis

Both Troy stories show Odysseus’s cunning: the beggar who spies inside Troy, and the man who keeps the Wooden Horse silent, which the textbook calls mētis within mētis. Menelaus gets home by following Eidothee’s trick with the seal-skins, so his mētis is borrowed. The suitors’ ambush is a crude plan by men who cannot read their situation. Lesson 5 · Mētis

Disguise and recognition

Helen names Telemachus on sight from his likeness to his father, and her story of Odysseus as a beggar in Troy rehearses the disguise he will use on Ithaca. Menelaus disguises himself as a seal to catch a god who changes shape at will. Athene’s dream wears Iphthime’s face, and when Penelope asks about Odysseus the answer is withheld. Lesson 6 · Disguise and recognition

Storytelling

Helen drugs the wine so that painful stories can be told without pain. The two Troy stories both praise Odysseus but treat Helen very differently, and the poem leaves the audience to weigh them. Menelaus’s account of Proteus is the longest first-person adventure in the Telemachy, and the only hard news of Odysseus arrives as a story within a story. Lesson 7 · Storytelling

Women

Helen is compared to a goddess, recognises Telemachus, drugs the wine and tells her own version of Troy: more present and articulate than any mortal woman in the Telemachy except Penelope. Penelope learns of the voyage and the plot, collapses in grief, and can only pray, so the Telemachy’s most powerful mortal woman ends it with no move left to make. Lesson 8 · Women

Characters introduced in Book 4

Next. Now read the themes, starting with Lesson 1 · Xenia.