“The gods held me in Egypt for want of hecatombs. On the island of Pharos before Egypt I sat twenty days with no wind. Eidothea, daughter of Proteus the old man of the sea, took pity when she found me wandering alone while my men fished from hunger. She asked why I stayed penned there. I said I must have offended the gods, and begged her to tell which god held me and how I might return.”
“She said her father Proteus comes there often — Poseidon’s underling, who knows the depths of every sea. If I caught him he would tell my road and what good or evil had been done in my halls. At noon he rises from the salt under the west wind’s breath, counts his seals, and sleeps among them. I must choose three companions; when he sleeps, hold him though he become every creature on earth, and water, and fire — hold until he speaks in his own shape.”
“At dawn she laid us under four freshly flayed sealskins. The stench was dreadful, but she put ambrosia under our noses. All morning we waited. The seals came out in throngs; at noon the old man counted them, counted us among them, and lay down. We rushed him with a shout. He became a lion, a serpent, a leopard, a huge boar, running water, a high-crowned tree. We held on with enduring heart until our arms ached and the old man tired of changing.”
“When he tired he asked which god had planned this counsel. I asked which of the deathless ones penned me and how I might go home. He said I must sail back to Egypt’s sky-fed river and offer sacred hecatombs before I could see my land. My heart broke at that long hard road — yet I asked also of the Achaeans who left Troy with Nestor and me.”
“He said many died and many were left; only two leaders of the bronze-clad Achaeans died on the return, and one still lived held somewhere on the wide sea. Aias went down among his ships. Poseidon drove him on Gyrae’s rocks and would have saved him despite Athena’s hate — but Aias boasted he had escaped the sea against the gods’ will. Poseidon split the rock; the broken piece carried him under. So he died drinking the salt water.”
“Your brother escaped under Hera’s care, but off Malea wind drove him to the land where Aegisthus lived. A fair wind brought him home at last; he kissed the ground weeping. Aegisthus’s watchman — paid two talents of gold, watching a year — saw him and ran to tell. Twenty men ambushed Agamemnon; Aegisthus feasted him and killed him like an ox at the manger. Not one of either side’s companions was left.”
“I sat weeping on the sand. Proteus told me to look to my return — I would find Aegisthus dead, or Orestes ahead of me at the funeral feast. Then I asked of the third man still alive on the sea. ‘It is Odysseus of Ithaca,’ he said. ‘I saw him on an island shedding tears in Calypso’s halls. She holds him by force; he has no ship or companions. As for you, Menelaus — it is not your fate to die in Argos. The gods will send you to the Elysian plain and the ends of the earth, for you have Helen and are son-in-law to Zeus.’ So speaking he dived under a wave.”