4.554–592

υἱὸς Λαέρτεω, Ἰθάκῃ ἔνι οἰκία ναίων:
τὸν δ᾽ ἴδον ἐν νήσῳ θαλερὸν κατὰ δάκρυ χέοντα,
νύμφης ἐν μεγάροισι Καλυψοῦς, ἥ μιν ἀνάγκῃ
ἴσχει: ὁ δ᾽ οὐ δύναται ἣν πατρίδα γαῖαν ἱκέσθαι:
οὐ γάρ οἱ πάρα νῆες ἐπήρετμοι καὶ ἑταῖροι,
οἵ κέν μιν πέμποιεν ἐπ᾽ εὐρέα νῶτα θαλάσσης.

That is the son of Laertes, who makes his home in Ithaka. 
I saw him on an island, shedding warm tears, 
in the halls of the nymph Calypso, who holds  
him by force; and he is not able to reach his fatherland, 
for he has with him no ships and companions, 
who could take him across the broad back of the sea.

Odyssey 4.555–60

Finally, after all the stories about himself, Menelaus delivers what Telemachus has waited so patiently for, a glimpse of his father. Like the Spartan king, Odysseus is held back by divine forces from traveling home. Then comes a coda, delivered without fanfare:

σοι δ᾽ οὐ θέσφατόν ἐστι, διοτρεφὲς ὦ Μενέλαε,
Ἄργει ἐν ἱπποβότῳ θανέειν καὶ πότμον ἐπισπεῖν,
ἀλλά σ᾽ ἐς Ἠλύσιον πεδίον καὶ πείρατα γαίης
ἀθάνατοι πέμψουσιν, ὅθι ξανθὸς Ῥαδάμανθυς,
τῇ περ ῥηίστη βιοτὴ πέλει ἀνθρώποισιν:
οὐ νιφετός, οὔτ᾽ ἂρ χειμὼν πολὺς οὔτε ποτ᾽ ὄμβρος,
ἀλλ᾽ αἰεὶ Ζεφύροιο λιγὺ πνείοντος ἀήτας
Ὠκεανὸς ἀνίησιν ἀναψύχειν ἀνθρώπους:
οὕνεκ᾽ ἔχεις Ἑλένην καί σφιν γαμβρὸς Διός ἐσσι.

But it is not fated for you, oh god-nourished Menelaus, 
to die and meet your end in horse-pasturing Argos, 
but to the fields of Elysium and the ends of the earth 
the gods will send you, where sandy-haired Rhadamanthys 
is, and where life is easiest for mortals. 
For there is no snow, nor much winter, nor ever rain, 
but always the streams of the Ocean send up breezes 
of the shift flowing Zephyr for the refreshment of mortals. 
This because you have Helen and are son-in-law to Zeus.

Odyssey 4.561–69

Menelaus returned home without further incident to his kingdom in Sparta, safe there and apparently forever after in the Elysian Fields.

Proteus’s final revelation confirms that once again, Menelaus’s good fortune comes through his relationship to others. He gets a pass on mortality not because of his heroic deeds but because he is married to Helen. It is true that the Homeric gods favor winners, however they reached their eminence, showing little compassion to the poor and downtrodden. But the portrait of Menelaus that emerges from Homeric epic and the Trojan cycle of stories seems to emphasize his middling abilities and outsized good fortune. He was born on third base, as we say. But the figure we see in the Odyssey does not think he hit a triple. Rather, thanks to the poet’s subtle characterization, a certain discomfort runs underneath his interactions with others. This kind of layered portrait is unusual in Homeric poetry but not unknown. The conflict within Achilles between supreme self-confidence and growing sense of guilt over Patroclus’s death is, for instance, central to the meaning of his character in the Iliad. But Menelaus is by no means a major figure in either of the Homeric epics, so we might wonder why the poet lavishes such attention on his inner life.

One way to pursue this question is through the several parallels between Menelaus’s story and Odysseus’s journey home. In particular, the similarities between the prophecies of Proteus and Tiresias repay attention. As Menelaus does not get the specific information he wants from Proteus about how to get home, but must return to Egypt first, so Odysseus does not find out how to get back to Ithaka from Circe, but must travel to the underworld to consult Tiresias. Likewise, what each hero does learn, instead of how to get home, is yet more important: how his life will end. For Menelaus, it will never end; for Odysseus, as we only learn at the end of the poem during his pillow talk with Penelope, there will be one more trial in old age, a journey inland until he meets people who have never seen the sea and sacrificing to Poseidon. And then:

            θάνατος δέ μοι ἐξ ἁλὸς αὐτῷ
ἀβληχρὸς μάλα τοῖος ἐλεύσεται, ὅς κέ με πέφνῃ
γήρας ὕπο λιπαρῷ ἀρημένον: ἀμφὶ δὲ λαοὶ
ὄλβιοι ἔσσονται: τὰ δέ μοι φάτο πάντα τελεῖσθαι.

                        Death will come to me from the sea,
altogether gentle, which will my life in the ebbing time 
of sleek old age. And all around me the people will be 
prosperous. All of this he [Tiresias] told me would come to pass.

Odyssey 23.281–84

The Menelaus paradigm stays active in the poet’s story until the very end, prompting comparisons between the two lives. But the most telling parallel in fact comes soon after Menelaus’s story, in Odysseus’s first appearance in the poem when the hero is still held by Calypso on her island. Hermes has traveled to see the nymph, delivering Zeus’s command that she release the hero. She is not happy, but eventually agrees to let her captive go. She finds him on the shore and promises to help him build a boat to carry him away. Characteristically suspicious, Odysseus makes the nymph swear a solemn oath not to trick him. She does so and the bargain is sealed. There follows a farewell dinner, followed by a delicately nuanced exchange between the two in the nymph’s cave. Calypso cannot understand why he would prefer to undergo a journey home full of hardships and a finite, mortal existence with Penelope, instead of an eternal and ageless life with her, a beautiful divine nymph. She concludes by putting the matter plainly:

οὐ μέν θην κείνης γε χερείων εὔχομαι εἶναι,
οὐ δέμας οὐδὲ φυήν, ἐπεὶ οὔ πως οὐδὲ ἔοικεν
θνητὰς ἀθανάτῃσι δέμας καὶ εἶδος ἐρίζειν.

I claim that I am surely not inferior to her 
in build or stature, since it is not likely that mortal
women can rival the immortals in build and beauty.

Odyssey 5.211–13

There can be no explaining his choice to the nymph without offending her, so Odysseus does not try to explain:

πότνα θεά, μή μοι τόδε χώεο: οἶδα καὶ αὐτὸς
πάντα μάλ᾽, οὕνεκα σεῖο περίφρων Πηνελόπεια
εἶδος ἀκιδνοτέρη μέγεθός τ᾽ εἰσάντα ἰδέσθαι:
ἡ μὲν γὰρ βροτός ἐστι, σὺ δ᾽ ἀθάνατος καὶ ἀγήρως.
ἀλλὰ καὶ ὣς ἐθέλω καὶ ἐέλδομαι ἤματα πάντα
οἴκαδέ τ᾽ ἐλθέμεναι καὶ νόστιμον ἦμαρ ἰδέσθαι.
εἰ δ᾽ αὖ τις ῥαίῃσι θεῶν ἐνὶ οἴνοπι πόντῳ,
τλήσομαι ἐν στήθεσσιν ἔχων ταλαπενθέα θυμόν:
ἤδη γὰρ μάλα πολλὰ πάθον καὶ πολλὰ μόγησα
κύμασι καὶ πολέμῳ: μετὰ καὶ τόδε τοῖσι γενέσθω.

Do not be angry with me, Divine mistress. I myself
know all of this well, that discreet Penelope is
inferior to you in stature and beauty; she is mortal,
after all, and you are immortal, ageless.
But even so I long, I yearn every day to return
and see the day of my homecoming.
If some god wrecks my ship in the dark purple sea,
I will bear it, having an enduring heart in my chest.
For I have already suffered much in the wind and waves—
Bring on whatever is next!

Odyssey 5.214–24

The importance of the Proteus episode becomes yet more clear in the light of this definitive moment in the story of Odysseus. Calypso has offered Odysseus the blissful existence that the gods award freely to Menelaus, but he refuses, preferring to struggle on toward home and Penelope. He must have what his life among other mortals offers, the world in which he creates himself through action, winning glory. Not for him the easy but essentially meaningless existence of the immortals. The lengthy portrait of Menelaus and his troubled marriage to Helen stands as a striking foil to Odysseus and the bond he has with his wife.

After Menelaus finishes his story, Telemachus gently suggests that he must get on his way. He could stay another year listening to the king’s stories, but though Menelaus would keep him longer in Sparta, his friends are still waiting for him in Pylos. Menelaus has exuberantly promised parting gifts, including horses, but Telemachus would prefer not to take them with him. Ithaka, he explains, is a rocky place with no wide-open plains for the horses to run through. Menelaus is delighted with the young man’s tact, a sign, he says of good breeding. He’ll substitute a Sidonian mixing bowl for the horses and send him on his way.

In his otherwise polite and deferential request, Telemachus twice uses the verb ἐρύκω (594, 599; cf. 15.68), used elsewhere to describe the detention of Odysseus by Calypso (1.14; 9.29). While the surface tone of Telemachus’s speech is entirely benign, his word choice is intriguing. The rhythm of detention and release, which informs the entire poem, is all over this part of the poem. We have just heard Menelaus’s story of being detained by the gods in Egypt and the restraint of Proteus that eventually brings about his release. The poet has already told us, within the first fifteen verses of the poem, that Odysseus is “held” (ἐρύκε, 14) by Calypso (cf. 9.29) and his release by the nymph is the next major episode after Sparta in the poem (5.1–281). The appearance there of Leukothea, the friendly sea nymph who ensures Odysseus’s final escape from Calypso, echoes the intervention of Eidothea, the sea nymph who tells Menelaus how to gain his release (4.363–67).

Telemachus’s hint that Menelaus’s effusive hospitality is verging on detention, however understated, fits not only with the thematic structure of Book 4, as we see the poet building toward the appearance of Odysseus in Book 5, but also with the subtle portrait of the Spartan king in Book 4. Menelaus takes two days to answer a simple but urgent question from Telemachus: Can you tell me anything about whether my father is alive and where he might be?

Instead of straightforward response, we hear the king and queen talk at length about themselves and their relationship with Odysseus. By the time Menelaus reveals what little he knows—in the midst of another story about himself—we might well suppose that Telemachus feels like a captive of the self-involvement and unacknowledged tensions flowing through the Spartan royal palace.

When Menelaus finally assents to release Telemachus from his effusive hospitality, the poet describes it this way:

ὣς φάτο, μείδησεν δὲ βοὴν ἀγαθὸς Μενέλαος,
χειρί τέ μιν κατέρεξεν ἔπος τ᾽ ἔφατ᾽ ἔκ τ᾽ ὀνόμαζεν:

He [Telemachus] spoke, and Menelaus, great at the war-cry, smiled,
and stroked him with his hand and called him by name and spoke to him:

Odyssey 4.609–10

The next time these verses appear, Calypso has agreed to release Odysseus:

ὣς φάτο, μείδησεν δὲ Καλυψὼ δῖα θεάων,
χειρί τέ μιν κατέρεξεν ἔπος τ᾽ ἔφατ᾽ ἔκ τ᾽ ὀνόμαζεν:

He [Odysseus] spoke, and Calypso, brilliant among goddesses, smiled,
and stroked him with her hand and called him by name and spoke to him:

Odyssey 5.180–81

Both Menelaus and Calypso are affectionate captors, charmed by their diplomatic captives.

Further Reading

Anderson, W.S. 1958. “Calypso and Elysium.” Classical Journal 54: 2–11.

Van Nortwick, T. 2008. The Unknown Odysseus: Alternate Worlds in Homer’s Odyssey, 7–12. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press

Vernant, J.P. 1996 “The Refusal of Odysseus." In Reading the Odyssey, edited by S. Schein. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 185–189.