4.265–314

He allows as how Helen’s story was κατὰ μοῖραν, “on the up and up” (266), as if to imply that it might very well not have been. He can affirm from his extensive travels and knowledge of the wisdom and counsel of many heroes that no one has an enduring heart like Odysseus. Take for example what he did inside the Trojan Horse…Once again the subject here is at least as much Menelaus as it is Odysseus, the Spartan king’s impressive experience and insider knowledge. The tone of his story about his wife is astonishing for its undertone of casual malice, blandly recounting how, accompanied by Deiphobus, yet another Trojan paramour, Helen used all her wiles to betray the Greeks inside the horse. This is not the same woman we have just heard about in her own words, full of remorse for her past actions and ready to return home to her husband and family. Instead, according to Menelaus, she used her personal knowledge of the Greek warriors’ wives to destroy their husbands. Having countered his wife’s self-portrait as a woman full of regret, Menelaus returns to the version of Odysseus he prefers, manly, strong-willed, physically imposing:

Ἄντικλος δὲ σέ γ᾽ οἶος ἀμείψασθαι ἐπέεσσιν
ἤθελεν. ἀλλ᾽ Ὀδυσεὺς ἐπὶ μάστακα χερσὶ πίεζεν
νωλεμέως κρατερῇσι, σάωσε δὲ πάντας Ἀχαιούς:
τόφρα δ᾽ ἔχ᾽, ὄφρα σε νόσφιν ἀπήγαγε Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη.”

Antiklos alone was ready to answer you. 
But Odysseus kept squeezing the man’s jaws 
with his powerful hands and saved all the Achaeans, 
holding on until Pallas Athena led you away from us.

Odyssey 4.286–89

Who Menelaus saw as the real enemy of the Greeks at that moment is clear enough.

Perhaps fearing a further escalation of marital strife, Telemachus breaks in to gently pull the focus back to the present. Again, he is pessimistic about his father’s survival: Even if he was as strong as Menelaus says, none of them has been able to save him from death. Best to go to bed, where at least they can enjoy some pleasure in sleep. At this point, Helen steps back into a domestic role less threatening to her husband, directing sleeping arrangements for the guests. The traditional style of the poem reflects this return to the everyday and familiar in the next ten verses:

ὣς ἔφατ᾽, Ἀργείη δ᾽ Ἑλένη δμῳῇσι κέλευσεν
δέμνι᾽ ὑπ᾽ αἰθούσῃ θέμεναι καὶ ῥήγεα καλὰ
πορφύρε᾽ ἐμβαλέειν στορέσαι τ᾽ ἐφύπερθε τάπητας,
χλαίνας τ᾽ ἐνθέμεναι οὔλας καθύπερθεν ἕσασθαι.
αἱ δ᾽ ἴσαν ἐκ μεγάροιο δάος μετὰ χερσὶν ἔχουσαι,
δέμνια δὲ στόρεσαν: ἐκ δὲ ξείνους ἄγε κῆρυξ.
οἱ μὲν ἄρ᾽ ἐν προδόμῳ δόμου αὐτόθι κοιμήσαντο,
Τηλέμαχός θ᾽ ἥρως καὶ Νέστορος ἀγλαὸς υἱός:
Ἀτρεΐδης δὲ καθεῦδε μυχῷ δόμου ὑψηλοῖο,
πὰρ δ᾽ Ἑλένη τανύπεπλος ἐλέξατο, δῖα γυναικῶν.

So [Telemachus] spoke, and Argive Helen ordered the maids 
to set up mattresses under the portico and to throw on 
lovely purple blankets and to spread coverlets over them 
adding fleecy woolen blankets on the top. 
The women left the hall holding torches in their hands, 
and set up the bedding. And a herald led the guests outside. 
Then they went to bed there on the porch of the house, 
the hero Telemachus and the glorious son of Nestor. 
And the son of Atreus slept in the inner chamber of the lofty house, 
and beside him lay Helen in her long robe, brilliant among women.

Odyssey 4.296–305

Bedmaking on the portico is a type scene, recurring with identical or similar phrasing in the Phaeacian royal palace (7.336–40) and twice on the beach by Achilles’ shelter (Il. 9.658–62; 24.643–48). The king and queen side-by-side in bed brings the tense atmosphere in the Spartan palace to an apparently tranquil close, another recurring scene (cf. Od. 3.401–3; Il. 1.609–11).

We will not see Helen again until Book 15, when Telemachus departs for Ithaka. The queen has dominated the first part of Telemachus’s visit. Before we follow the poet to Menelaus’s adventures in Egypt, we should pause to reflect on his subtle modulation of the tone and subject matter of these first 300 verses. The character of Helen in Homeric epic is always liminal, straddling the boundary between human and divine. Her role as Aphrodite’s gift brings with it a godlike quality, evident in the effect of her beauty on the old geezers in Troy (Il. 3.146–60; see above, 3-4). At the same time, if that charisma made her too remote and emotionally inaccessible, she would be much less emotionally compelling to us and thus less useful to the poet. Even apart from the divine element in her character, given her history we might well expect her to be haughty and self-involved. When we see her on the wall with Priam, the poet plays against these expectations to create a more sympathetic, self-aware figure:

τὸν δ᾽ Ἑλένη μύθοισιν ἀμείβετο δῖα γυναικῶν:
“αἰδοῖός τέ μοί ἐσσι φίλε ἑκυρὲ δεινός τε:
ὡς ὄφελεν θάνατός μοι ἁδεῖν κακὸς ὁππότε δεῦρο
υἱέϊ σῷ ἑπόμην θάλαμον γνωτούς τε λιποῦσα
παῖδά τε τηλυγέτην καὶ ὁμηλικίην ἐρατεινήν.
ἀλλὰ τά γ᾽ οὐκ ἐγένοντο: τὸ καὶ κλαίουσα τέτηκα.
τοῦτο δέ τοι ἐρέω ὅ μ᾽ ἀνείρεαι ἠδὲ μεταλλᾷς:
οὗτός γ᾽ Ἀτρεΐδης εὐρὺ κρείων Ἀγαμέμνων,
ἀμφότερον βασιλεύς τ᾽ ἀγαθὸς κρατερός τ᾽ αἰχμητής:
δαὴρ αὖτ᾽ ἐμὸς ἔσκε κυνώπιδος, εἴ ποτ᾽ ἔην γε.

Helen, brilliant among women, answered him: 
Always to me, you are feared and respected, dear father-inn-law. 
How I wish bitter death had been pleasing to me, when 
I followed you son here, forsaking my marriage bed and kinsmen, 
my grown child and the lovely girls my own age. 
But these things did not happen, and I am worn out with weeping. 
I will tell you what you asked me and questioned me about: 
This is Agamemnon, wide-ruling son of Atreus, 
both a king and a good and powerful spearman, 
and once my brother-in-law, bitch that I am. Did this ever happen?

Iliad 3.171–80

The Helen of Odyssey, Book 4 brings with her all the elements of the Iliadic character, but now situated in a postwar, apparently serene, household. Unhappiness from the past seems to shadow the royal couple, as they inhabit their roles as husband and wife. Helen’s formidable presence undermines Menelaus’s already shaky authority, making him overly assertive. She, meanwhile, represents the first iteration of a recurring paradigm in the poem, the independent woman whose power threatens to derail the masculine hero’s mission. Her liminality foreshadows more immediately the first of Odysseus’s feminine obstacles, Calypso, possessed of the supernatural ability to control men, but constrained by her love for the mortal hero. And she in turn, like all the strong women in the poem, points toward Penelope.

Further Reading

Olson, D. 1989. “The Stories of Helen and Menelaus (Od. 4.240–89) and the Return of Odysseus.” American Journal of Philology 110: 387–394.

Thalman, W. 1992. The Odyssey: An Epic of Return, 43–46. New York: Twayne Publishers.