Telemachus said: “The Achaeans applaud Orestes for avenging his father nobly. Would that heaven might grant me like vengeance on the insolent suitors who ill-treat me and plot my ruin. But the gods have no such happiness in store for me and my father; we must bear it as we may.”
Nestor had heard of the wooers making havoc of the estate. Do you submit tamely? Who knows but Odysseus may come back and pay these scoundrels in full?
If Athena took as great a liking to you as she did to your father before Troy — I never saw the gods so openly fond of any man — these wooers would soon forget their wooing.” Telemachus dared not hope. Athena said heaven has a long arm if minded to save a man — better suffer much and get home safe than come home quickly and be killed like Agamemnon.
Telemachus asked how Agamemnon died, and where Menelaus was when the murderer took heart. Nestor told it straight: while they sat before Troy, Aegisthus at ease in Argos won Clytemnestra with soft words.
At first she refused — a singer Agamemnon had left to guard her held her back — but when the gods bound her to be overcome, Aegisthus took the singer to a desert island and left him for the birds, and led her willing to his house. He burned many thigh-bones and hung up offerings of woven work and gold, for he had brought off a great deed he never hoped to finish.
“Menelaus and I sailed together from Troy, good friends. At holy Sunium, cape of Athens, Phoebus Apollo shot Menelaus’s helmsman Phrontis son of Onetor, best of men at holding a ship in storm. Menelaus stayed to bury him. When he put out again and came racing to Malea’s steep cape, Zeus poured on them shrill winds and waves like mountains.”
“He scattered the ships. Some smashed on Cretan reefs off Gortyn; the men barely escaped. Five dark-prowed ships the wind and water drove to Egypt. There Menelaus gathered much gold among men of strange speech. Meanwhile Aegisthus ruled Mycenae seven years after killing Agamemnon. In the eighth, bright Orestes came back from Athens and killed crafty Aegisthus. When he had killed him he held a funeral feast for the Argives over his hateful mother and the murderer. That very day Menelaus came, bringing all the treasure his ships could carry.”