Menelaus Mourns Odysseus

10The fair-haired Menelaus heard him speak,
And thus accosted both with winged words: —

11“Dear sons, no mortal man may vie with Zeus,
Whose palace and possessions never know
Decay, but other men may vie or not
In wealth with me. It was after suffering
And wandering long that in my fleet I brought
My wealth with me, and landed on this coast
In the eighth year. For I had roamed afar
To Cyprus and to Phoenice, and where
The Egyptians dwell, and Ethiopia’s sons,
And the Sidonians, and the Erembian race,
And to the coast of Lybia, where the lambs
Are yeaned with budding horns. There do the ewes
Thrice in the circle of the year bring forth
Their young. There both the master of the herd
And herdsman know no lack of cheese, or flesh,
Or of sweet milk; for there the herds yield milk
The whole year round. While I was roaming thus,
And gathering store of wealth, another slew
My brother, unforewarned, and through the fraud
Of his own guilty consort. Therefore small
Is the content I find in bearing rule
Over these possessions. You have doubtless heard
This from your parents, be they who they may;
For much have I endured, and I have lost
A palace, a most noble dwelling-place,
Full of things rare and precious. Even now
Would I possessed within my palace here
But the third part of these; and would that they
Were yet alive who perished on the plain
Of Troy afar from Argos and its steeds!
Yet while I grieve and while I mourn them all,
Here, sitting in my palace, I by turns
Indulge my heart in weeping, and by turns
I pause, for with continual sorrow comes
A weariness of spirit. Yet, in truth,
For none of all those warriors, though their fate
Afflicts me sorely, do I so much grieve
As for one hero. When I think of him,
The feast and couch are joyless, since, of all
The Achaian chiefs, none brought so much to pass
As did Odysseus, both in what he wrought
And what he suffered. Great calamities
Fell to his lot in life, and to my own
Grief for his sake that cannot be consoled.
Long has he been divided from his friends,
And whether he be living now or dead
We know not. Old Laertes, the sage queen
Penelope, and young Telemachus,
Whom, when he went to war he left newborn
At home, are sorrowing somewhere for his sake.”

12He spoke, and woke anew the young man’s grief
For his lost father. From his eyelids fell
Tears at the hearing of his father’s name,
And with both hands he held before his eyes
The purple mantle. Menelaus saw
His tears, and pondered, doubting which were best —
To let the stranger of his own accord
Speak of his father, or to question him
At first, and then to tell him all he knew.