by Homer
Patroklos too, a match for the Gods in his counsel.
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My own dear son is there, forceful and handsome
♦ Antilokhos, best of them all in sprinting and fighting.
So much evil we bore besides! Who among death-bound
men could count those ills and tell you the whole tale?
Not if you lingered five long years or for six years,
asking of all the agony borne by godlike Akhaians:
you’d wear down first and leave for the land of your fathers.
A Son the Same as His Father
“Using every trick, we actively planted the Trojans’
misery nine long years. Even Zeus could not end it.
And no man there wanted to challenge your father’s
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war-plans: godlike Odysseus was always a standout
using every trick. Your father—truly if you are
the man’s child—I’m taken by wonder to see you!
Your voices are truly alike, who would have thought it,
a younger man with the same sound as his father.
“Long as we stayed there truly godlike Odysseus
and I were never at odds in assembly or planning.
One mind, one spirit held us, showing the Argives
how our plans were the best by far in their shrewdness.
Brothers at Odds
“But after we looted the high city of Priam
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and left in our ships, a God spread out the Akhaians.
Right then the mind of Zeus was plotting a rueful
way home because of the Argives—not all were truthful
or just—they went to a sorry doom through the killing
♦ rage of the glow-eyed Goddess, the powerful Father’s
daughter. She made both sons of Atreus bitter.
The two of them called an assembly of all the Akhaians
with no clear order, rashly starting at sunset.
Bloated with wine, the sons of Akhaians assembled
and told their tales. Why did the gathering take place?
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First Menelaos reminded all the Akhaians
to look to the broad back of the sea and our way home.
That hardly pleased Agamemnon. He wanted to hold back
people and to offer sacred hecatombs right there.
He hoped to calm the fearsome rage of Athene.
The fool, unaware the Goddess never would listen:
Gods’ minds won’t readily change, living forever.
So the two men stood there, trading their hard words,
yet the Akhaians in handsome leg-guards were wildly
shouting and leaping—both were plans to their liking!
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Hard Ways Home
“Resting that night, we thought hard thoughts of each other.
Harm and pain were all that Zeus was arranging.
One group hauled their ships at dawn to the bright sea,
stowing goods away and their low-belted slave girls.
But half the army delayed, choosing to stay there
with Agamemnon, Atreus’s son, that shepherd of people.
Our half boarded and rowed, moving the vessels
fast for a God had leveled the great-bellied Ocean.
“We came to Tenedos Island and offered our victims
to Gods, pleading for home. But Zeus was not planning
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homecomings. Cruel again, he caused us to wrangle.
One group sailed in their up-curved ships to return home
with lordly Odysseus, richly crafty and mind-full,
once more favoring Atreus’s son Agamemnon.
But I with my ships—plenty had followed behind me—
escaped for we knew some Power was planning to harm us.
Tudeus’s Ares-like son fled with us, rousing his crewmen.
Light-haired Menelaos traveled and caught us
later at Lesbos, mulling the long course to be taken:
♦ whether to travel north of Khios, known for its rough land,
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keeping the isle of Psurie well to our port side;
or sail south of Khios, chancing the storm-winds at Mimas.
We asked our God to show us a sign and he gave it:
he told us to cut through the central sea to Euboia
in order to run as fast as we could from a bad end.
Finally Home at Pulos
“A clear-toned wind came up and our vessels were racing
along on the fish-filled water, making Geraistos
late at night. We offered thanks to Poseidon
with plenty of bulls’ thighs for we’d measured a great sea.
Four days later the friends of that breaker of horses,
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Tudeos’s son Diomedes, were mooring their balanced
ships at Argos. I held on for Pulos, our sea-wind
unfailing after the God first started it blowing.
A Few Safe Arrivals
“So I came home, my dear young man, without knowing
who were the saved Akhaians and who were the lost ones.
Whatever I’ve heard, though, living at home in my great hall,
you’ll hear too. It’s only right. I’ve nothing to hide here.
They say the spear-crazy Murmidons came home safely,
♦ led by a bright one, the great-hearted son of Akhilleus.
♦ And Poias’s well-known son, Philoktetes, arrived well.
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All Idomeneus’s men who raced from that long war
he brought back safely to Krete. The seaways took no one.
A Father’s Death
“But Atreus’s son! I’m sure you’ve heard in your far land
how he arrived, Aigisthos plotting a bad end.
Ah, but the killer paid hard for his killing
and rightly so. A son should survive when his father
is killed like Orestes, avenging himself on the sneaking
Aigisthos who’d killed his father, renowned Agamemnon.
You too, my friend, I see you’re a handsome and big man:
be brave and men born in the future will praise you.”
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A Son Who Cannot Take Revenge
Promptly Telemakhos gave him a sensible answer.
“Nestor, Neleus’s son, you crowning pride of Akhaians:
surely the man was avenged, all the Akhaians will make him
known well and men in the future will praise him.
If only the Gods would array me now in the same strength!
I’d take revenge for the galling crimes of the suitors,
reckless and prideful men plotting to harm me.
But Gods have woven no such joy in my own life,
nor in my Father’s. My only need now is to bear up.”
Hope for a Goddess’s Help
Nestor answered him now, the Gerenian horseman.
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“My friend, in fact you remind me now as you say this:
plenty of suitors, they say, for the cause of your mother
are making trouble against your will in the great hall.
Tell me if you want them ruling, or maybe some people
hate you at home, obeying the voice of a great God.
Who knows? Your father could take revenge on their brutal
acts one day, alone or with scores of Akhaians.
If only the glow-eyed Athene chose to befriend you!
She cared that way in the past for high-praised Odysseus
on Trojan soil, where Akhaians underwent great pain.
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♦ I never saw a Goddess as openly friendly
as Pallas Athene, standing plainly beside him.
So if she chose to befriend you, her heart full of caring,
every suitor would wholly forget about marriage.”
But now Telemakhos gave him a s
ensible answer.
“My elder, I hardly think your words will become fact.
You speak so grandly—I’m taken by wonder—yet there is no hope
things will happen, even if Gods were to want it.”
A Bright and a Dark View
The Goddess, glow-eyed Athene, answered him sharply:
“Telemakhos, what words get over the wall of your front teeth!
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A God can easily save a man—from afar if he wants to.
I’d rather the pain myself, all of the struggle
to get back home and see my homecoming daylight,
than go to my hearth and die the way Agamemnon
died in that sneaking plot of his wife and Aigisthos.
Yet despite the Gods death is too common:
they cannot save a man they love when his cruel
doom takes him. Death is truly remorseless.”
Shortly Telemakhos gave her a sensible answer.
“Let’s say no more, Mentor. However it hurts us,
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my Father’s return is real no longer—already the deathless
Gods have arranged for his death, for his black doom.
The Fall of Klutaimnestre
“But now I’d like to ask another question.
Nestor has learned fairness, a wisdom beyond men’s.
They say he’s reigned through three generations of people.
Plainly the man I gaze at now is undying!
Nestor, son of Neleus, tell me this truly:
how was Atreus’s son Agamemnon, a ruler of broad lands,
cut down? Where was Menelaos? What was the death-plan
of sneaking Aigisthos? The man he killed was a great one.
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♦ Was Menelaos away from Argos, wandering other
men’s lands, and Aigisthos felt bold for the murder?”
Nestor answered him now, the Gerenian horseman.
“Well then, my young man, I’ll tell you the whole truth.
Of course you may guess the way it all would have happened
if Atreus’s light-haired son Menelaos had sailed home
from Troy and found Aigisthos alive in the great hall.
Not one man would have piled up earth for the slaughtered
Aigisthos: vultures and dogs would have torn him to pieces,
sprawled in a field far from the city. None of Akhaia’s
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women would mourn, for the act he planned was revolting.
We had remained at Troy, ending so many struggles;
he was at ease in a room of horse-breeding Argos,
charming Agamemnon’s wife with all of his banter.
The lady denied him at first. The act would be shameful
and godlike Klutaimnestre’s mind was a good one.
♦ A poet was close by too—her husband had often
told him, embarking for Troy, to guard Klutaimnestre.
But soon as the Gods’ doom ensnared her and tamed her,
Aigisthos took the singer away to an empty
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island and left him, a prize and prey for the vultures.
He wanted to take her, she wanted him too, in his own house.
“He burned plenty of thighs on holy altars of high Gods,
offering plenty of gifts, woven and gold things.
He’d brought his work to a big end—beyond what his heart hoped.
The Slow Way Home for Menelaos
“We’d sailed from Troy ourselves, embarking together,
Atreus’s son and I, friends well known to each other.
But nearing holy Sounion’s headlands near Athens,
Menelaos’s helmsman was marked by Phoibos Apollo:
killed on the spot, he died from the gentlest of arrows,
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both his hands holding the steering board of the race-fast
ship. Phrontis, the son of Onetor, was better than all men
guiding a ship whenever a storm-wind was blowing.
So Menelaos lingered there. Anxious to travel
still he buried his war-friend, paying funeral honors.
A Monstrous Gale
“But now as he sailed the wine-dark sea in his hollow
♦ ship once more, swiftly approaching Maleia’s
heights, Zeus was far off watching, plotting a hateful
turn. He sent a gale downward, gusting and screaming,
every wave hugely swollen, a match for a mountain.
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The God split up the fleet, half of it driven
to Krete where Kudonians live by the Iardanos’s waters.
Flat-faced rock is there, a headlong drop to the salt sea
at Gortun’s far-out point on the haze-covered water.
Notos rolls big waves into rocks on the port side
toward Phaistos: little stone hinders the great seas.
His vessels put in there, war-friends barely avoiding
death when breakers heaved a number of vessels
at rocks. The rest of them, five ships with their dark prows,
were borne on water and wind to the coastline of Egypt.