Homer’sThe Odyssey

Telemachus and Peisistratus arrive at Sparta in the middle of a celebration. Menelaus is holding a double wedding feast: his daughter Hermione is being sent to marry Achilles’ son, and his own son Megapenthes is marrying a Spartan girl. The hall is full of music, dancers, and light.

The herald Eteoneus sees the two young men at the gate and hesitates. Should he turn them away? The king is busy. But Menelaus hears and is furious: We two have eaten our share of other men’s bread before now — turn no stranger from our door.

The young men are bathed, oiled, given fresh cloaks, and brought to the table. Telemachus leans close to Peisistratus and whispers what he sees: bronze, gold, silver, amber, ivory — everywhere. The walls themselves seem to glow.

“This is what the court of Zeus on Olympus must be like.”

Menelaus hears the whisper and smiles, but sadly. All this wealth was gathered on his long, painful journey home from Troy. He would trade it all, he says, to have the men who died at Troy alive again — and especially one man. There is one whose loss I grieve above all others, who robs me of my sleep and appetite. He means Odysseus.

At the mention of Odysseus, Telemachus begins to cry. He pulls his cloak over his face, but too late — Menelaus has already seen it. And then Helen comes down from her chamber. She takes one look at the boy and knows. I have never seen such a likeness — this must be the son of Odysseus.

Menelaus confirms it. The resemblance is unmistakable: the same hands, the same feet, the same glance. The hall fills with weeping. Everyone has lost someone. Peisistratus thinks of his own brother Antilochus, killed at Troy.

Helen acts. She drops a drug into the wine — nepenthe, given to her in Egypt. A drug that banishes all grief and anger. Anyone who drinks it cannot weep for a whole day, not even if their mother and father died, not even if a brother or son were killed before their eyes.

They drink. The tears stop. And now, in the drugged calm, Helen tells a story. She tells how Odysseus disguised himself as a beggar — scarring himself, wearing rags — and slipped into Troy alone. Only Helen recognised him. She bathed him, gave him oil, swore not to reveal him, and he told her the Greek plan.

“He scarred himself with degrading blows and threw a ragged garment over his shoulders — like a slave.”

Menelaus counters Helen’s war story with his own. He tells of the Trojan Horse — how the Greeks hid inside and Helen walked around it, calling out in the voices of each man’s wife. Odysseus held them all silent. One man almost cried out, and Odysseus clamped a hand over his mouth.

Next morning, Telemachus asks directly: Have you heard anything of my father? Menelaus answers with a long story. After Troy, he was stranded on the island of Pharos, off Egypt, his ships becalmed. His men were starving. A sea-nymph named Eidothea took pity on him and told him how to trap her father, the shape-shifting god Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea.

The plan was disgusting. Menelaus and three men hid under fresh sealskins among the sleeping seals, waiting for Proteus to come ashore and count his flock. The stench was unbearable — Eidothea had to put ambrosia under their noses. When Proteus lay down, they leapt on him.

Proteus shifted through every shape: lion, serpent, panther, boar, running water, and a tall tree. Menelaus held on through all of them.

Put the shapes of Proteus in the order Menelaus endured them.

When Proteus finally yielded, he answered Menelaus’s questions. Ajax the Lesser was dead, drowned by Poseidon. Agamemnon was murdered by Aegisthus in his own hall. And Odysseus? Alive — but trapped on an island, held by the nymph Calypso, weeping, with no ship and no crew.

“He sits on an island, weeping, held captive in the nymph Calypso’s halls.”

The scene cuts back to Ithaca. Antinous and the suitors have just learned that Telemachus sailed to Pylos. They are furious — and frightened. If the boy finds allies, if he brings back men and ships, their position collapses. Antinous proposes a solution: Give me a ship and twenty men. I will wait for him in the strait between Ithaca and Samos. He will never reach home.

The suitors agree. The ship is readied.

Meanwhile, Penelope learns everything at once: that her son sailed without telling her, and that the suitors plan to kill him on the way home. She collapses. The herald Medon, who overheard the plot, has told her. Eurycleia, the old nurse, confesses she knew of the voyage and helped pack his supplies.

Penelope prays to Athena. And Athena answers — not with a visit, but with a phantom. She sends a dream-image in the form of Penelope’s sister Iphthime to stand at the foot of her bed and whisper: Take heart. Your son has a companion no man would refuse — Athena herself walks beside him.

Penelope asks the phantom about Odysseus. But the shape gives no answer. It slips through the bolt-hole of the door and dissolves into air.

Did you follow the tale?

Five questions from Sparta, Egypt, and Ithaca. Answer to see where each one leads.