4.1–48

Menelaus has arranged for the marriage of two of his children. While still at Troy, he had promised his daughter to Achilles’s son Neoptolemus, and she is on her way to Thessaly. His son by a slave woman, Megapenthes, will marry the daughter of a Spartan neighbor in the royal palace. Amid this joyful news, the poet lets drop, almost as an afterthought, that the gods have not given Helen any more children after Hermione, her daughter by Menelaus born before the war. Homer does not explore this infertility further, something for us to think about as we enter the sumptuous royal court. In Pylos, Telemachus encountered a predominantly masculine world, a king surrounded by his loyal subjects, well-behaved sons showing the way for an inexperienced young prince. The sadness he heard in wartime memories was painful, the loss of friends and fellow warriors, but straightforward, with no hint of unresolved enmities or submerged emotions. Now he will enter a more complex society, where the experience of women influences the portrait of the past. The “Odysseus” that emerges through the memories of others is a more ambiguous figure than Nestor described, preparing us for the hero’s encounter with the alluring nymph Calypso.

The welcome accorded Telemachus and Peisistratus is more elaborate than the spontaneous reception in Pylos. This tone fits with the special occasion, a wedding celebration, where the preparations for receiving guests would already be underway and would also explain why Menelaus’s henchman Eteoneus is cautious about what to do with the uninvited strangers at the palace gates. His earnest question brings a surprisingly tetchy response from the king: Are you a fool? Of course you should welcome them in! Spurred by the king’s rebuke, the servants hustle to lead the visitors inside. The two young men pause to admire the palace:  

                                      οἱ δὲ ἰδόντες
θαύμαζον κατὰ δῶμα διοτρεφέος βασιλῆος:
ὥς τε γὰρ ἠελίου αἴγλη πέλεν ἠὲ σελήνης
δῶμα καθ᾽ ὑψερεφὲς Μενελάου κυδαλίμοιο.

                                                              And gazing, 
they marveled at the palace of the Zeus-nourished king,
for as the shining of the sun or of the moon was
the gleam all through the high-roofed house of glorious Menelaus.

Odyssey 4.43–46 [i]

The lavish architecture promises an opulent world inside. The language of lines 45–46 reappears verbatim, with only the king’s name changed, when Odysseus approaches the royal palace of the Phaeacians:

ὥς τε γὰρ ἠελίου αἴγλη πέλεν ἠὲ σελήνης
δῶμα καθ᾽ ὑψερεφὲς μεγαλήτορος Ἀλκινόοιο.

for as the shining of the sun or of the moon was 
the gleam all through the high-roofed house of greathearted Alkinous.

Odyssey 7.84–85

This small repetition repays our attention in several ways. The poet again uses Telemachus as a model for Odysseus, something that we will see elsewhere in the episode. In both cases, the surface beauty of the royal palace covers a strained relationship between the king and queen. (see essay on Book 7.9, 14–16) In Sparta, the source for this trouble lies in the past, at Troy and ultimately in the royal palace where Telemachus comes to learn about his father and through him about himself.

The discrepancy between appearance and reality is a recurring theme in the stories that have come down to us about the Trojan War, beginning with Paris awarding the golden apple to Aphrodite and thus winning Helen for himself. The goddess of seduction and sexual desire passes to the Trojan prince the mortal embodiment of her power, a gift from which follows all the pain and death at Troy, Mycenae, and now Sparta. Though the judgement of Paris appears only fleetingly at the end of the Iliad (24.25–30), Homer marks its central meaning earlier in the poem, when Priam summons Helen to the walls of Troy. She has been in her boudoir, weaving a robe with images of the war being fought because of her:

                            πολέας δ᾽ ἐνέπασσεν ἀέθλους
Τρώων θ᾽ ἱπποδάμων καὶ Ἀχαιῶν χαλκοχιτώνων,
οὕς ἑθεν εἵνεκ᾽ ἔπασχον ὑπ᾽ Ἄρηος παλαμάων.

                        and she wove in the many struggles 
of horse-taming Trojans and bronze-clad Achaeans, 
who were suffering for her sake at the hands of Ares.

Iliad 3.126–28

The image is rich with meaning, representing the process by which human suffering passes into art and through its beauty offers solace, one of the few moments when the poet seems to refer obliquely to his own role. The power of Helen’s beauty to captivate is then on display as she makes her way to the tower. A group of old men are sitting with Priam when she approaches:

ἥατο δημογέροντες ἐπὶ Σκαιῇσι πύλῃσι,
γήραϊ δὴ πολέμοιο πεπαυμένοι, ἀλλ᾽ ἀγορηταὶ
ἐσθλοί, τεττίγεσσιν ἐοικότες οἵ τε καθ᾽ ὕλην
δενδρέῳ ἐφεζόμενοι ὄπα λειριόεσσαν ἱεῖσι:
τοῖοι ἄρα Τρώων ἡγήτορες ἧντ᾽ ἐπὶ πύργῳ.
οἳ δ᾽ ὡς οὖν εἴδονθ᾽ Ἑλένην ἐπὶ πύργον ἰοῦσαν,
ἦκα πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἔπεα πτερόεντ᾽ ἀγόρευον:
“οὐ νέμεσις Τρῶας καὶ ἐϋκνήμιδας Ἀχαιοὺς
τοιῇδ᾽ ἀμφὶ γυναικὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἄλγεα πάσχειν:
αἰνῶς ἀθανάτῃσι θεῇς εἰς ὦπα ἔοικεν:
ἀλλὰ καὶ ὧς τοίη περ ἐοῦσ᾽ ἐν νηυσὶ νεέσθω,
μηδ᾽ ἡμῖν τεκέεσσί τ᾽ ὀπίσσω πῆμα λίποιτο.

The elders sat upon the Skaian Gate, 
old men done with fighting but still skilled 
as speakers, like cicadas who sit in the shade 
of a tree, pouring out their delicate voices. 
Such were these Trojan leaders who sat on the tower. 
And when they saw Helen approaching the tower, 
they murmured winged words to each other: 
“There is no blaming the Trojans and well-greaved Achaeans 
for suffering pains so long for such a woman as this. 
Terrible is the likeness of her face to the immortal gods, 
but even so, beautiful as she is, let her return on the ships, 
lest she be left behind, a grief to us and our children.”

Iliad 3.149–60

The old men cannot help but be drawn to Helen’s beauty, though they know the destruction it has brought to both sides in the war. The entire vignette, beginning with the image of Helen weaving a story about this very suffering, suggests that there is something uncanny about her beauty, beyond the power of any mortal to understand or control. As Paris has said earlier about his own beauty to Hector:

οὔ τοι ἀπόβλητ᾽ ἐστὶ θεῶν ἐρικυδέα δῶρα
ὅσσά κεν αὐτοὶ δῶσιν, ἑκὼν δ᾽ οὐκ ἄν τις ἕλοιτο:

The glorious gifts of the gods are not to be refused, 
however many they give; no one can have them for wanting them.

Iliad 3.65–66

The ambiguous impact of this numinous power on Menelaus’s life will be on display throughout Telemachus’s visit to Sparta.

Further Reading

Dimock, G. 1989. The Unity of the Odyssey, 46–62. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

Murnaghan, S. 1987. Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey, 161–166. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Tracy, S. 1990. The Story of the Odyssey, 22–26. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Wohl, V. 1993. “Standing by the Stathmos: The Creation of Sexual Ideology in the Odyssey. Arethusa 26: 33–36; 44.