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Book 3
Ah how fine it is, when a man is brought down,
to leave a son behind! Orestes took revenge,
he killed that cunning, murderous Aegisthus,
who’d killed his famous father.
In Book 3, Nestor recounts to Telemachus the story of Agamemnon, the Mycenaean king who was killed upon returning from the Trojan War by his wife’s lover, Aegisthus. The story offers parallels relevant to Telemachus; Orestes killed Aegisthus for usurping his father’s position in his absence, just as Telemachus must kill the suitors for doing the same. Further, Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra, who conspired to have him killed, offers a parallel to Penelope, who has remained loyal to Odysseus in spite of pressure from the suitors to remarry. Read more about this quote in Quotes by Theme: Homecoming.
Book 4
The Zeus’s daughter Helen thought of something else.
Into the mixing-bowl from which they drank their wine
she slipped a drug, heart’s-ease, dissolving anger,
magic to make us all forget our pains . . .
No one who drank it deeply, mulled in wine,
could let a tear roll down his cheeks that day,
not even if his mother should die, his father die,
not even if right before his eyes some enemy brought down
a brother or darling son with a sharp bronze blade.
In Book 4, Menelaus recounts the victories and trials of Odysseus with Odysseus’s son Telemachus, whom Menelaus has just identified due to the family resemblance. As a result, everyone present begins to weep, thinking of all that was lost during and since the Trojan War. Helen slips a drug into the wine without anyone noticing, one that eliminates their feelings of grief and enables them to continue discussing the war without tears.
But about your destiny, Menelaus, dear to Zeus,
it’s not for you to die
and meet your fate in the stallion-land of Argos,
no, the deathless ones will sweep you off to the world’s end,
the Elysian Fields, where gold-haired Rhadamanthys waits,
where life glides on in immortal ease for mortal man.
In Book 4, Menelaus tells Telemachus what he learned from the prophetic sea god, Proteus—not just that Odysseus is alive, but that Menelaus himself is destined to live forever in Elysium, the afterlife for heroes and those blessed by the gods, with Helen. Read more about this quote in Quotes by Theme: Homecoming.
