Odyssey 1.284 · Book 1, lines 284–286
To Pylos and Sparta
Read the full text in our reader
πρῶτα μὲν ἐς Πύλον ἐλθὲ καὶ εἴρεο Νέστορα δῖον, κεῖθεν δὲ Σπάρτηνδε παρὰ ξανθὸν Μενέλαον· ὃς γὰρ δεύτατος ἦλθεν Ἀχαιῶν χαλκοχιτώνων.
First go to Pylos and ask noble Nestor; and from there to Sparta, to fair-haired Menelaus, for he came home last of the bronze-clad Achaeans.
Word by word
The setting
Mentes names the itinerary of the coming journey: first Nestor at Pylos, then Menelaus at Sparta — the two great survivors of Troy who might have word of Odysseus. Menelaus is singled out as the last of the Greeks to reach home.
A note on this passage
The route is exact and will be followed to the letter: Pylos and old Nestor in Book 3, Sparta and Menelaus in Book 4. These are the men who came back — the living archive of Troy — and the likeliest to have heard something of the one who has not.
The reason given for Menelaus is quietly pointed: ‘he came home last of the bronze-clad Achaeans.’ The line assumes a whole tradition of returns (the nostoi), each hero's homecoming its own tale — Agamemnon's murdered, Menelaus's delayed for years in Egypt. Against that catalogue of arrivals, one man is still unaccounted for, and the poem is his.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 1.284 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
From the Great Library
You are reading a page of the Odyssey — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Odyssey 1.284 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/1.284/