Odyssey

"Meanwhile Menelaos and I were on our way home from Troy , on good terms with one another. When we got to Sounion , which is the point of Athens , Apollo with his painless shafts killed Phrontis the steersman of Menelaos' ship (and never man knew better how to handle a vessel in rough weather) so that he died then and there with the helm in his hand, and Menelaos, though very anxious to press forward, had to wait in order to bury his comrade and give him his due funeral rites. Presently, when he too could put to sea again, and had sailed on as far as the Malean heads, Zeus counseled evil against him and made it blow hard till the waves ran mountains high. Here he divided his fleet and took the one half towards Crete where the Cydonians dwell round about the waters of the river Iardanos. There is a high headland hereabouts stretching out into the sea from a place called Gortyn , and all along this part of the coast as far as Phaistos the sea runs high when there is a south wind blowing, but past Phaistos the coast is more protected, for a small headland can make a great shelter. Here this part of the fleet was driven on to the rocks and wrecked; but the crews just managed to save themselves. As for the other five ships, they were taken by winds and seas to Egypt , where Menelaos gathered much gold and substance among people of an alien speech. Meanwhile Aigisthos here at home plotted his evil deed. For seven years after he had killed Agamemnon he ruled in Mycenae , and the people were obedient under him, but in the eighth year Orestes came back from Athens to be his bane, and killed the murderer of his father. Then he celebrated the funeral rites of his mother and of false Aigisthos by a banquet to the people of Argos , and on that very day Menelaos came home, with as much treasure as his ships could carry.

OdysseyBook 3, Line 276Samuel ButlerEnglishVerse permalinkRead in Book 3

HomerProseID odyssey-odyssey-butler-en-prose-3-276