Odyssey 3.297 · Book 3, lines 297–300
Wreck on the reefs; five ships to Egypt
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αἱ μὲν ἄρʼ ἔνθʼ ἦλθον σπουδῇ δʼ ἤλυξαν ὄλεθρον ἄνδρες, ἀτὰρ νῆάς γε ποτὶ σπιλάδεσσιν ἔαξαν κύματʼ· ἀτὰρ τὰς πέντε νέας κυανοπρῳρείους Αἰγύπτῳ ἐπέλασσε φέρων ἄνεμός τε καὶ ὕδωρ.
These ships came there, and the men just barely escaped destruction; but the waves shattered the ships against the reefs. As for the other five ships, dark-prowed, the wind and the water bore and drove them to Egypt.
Word by word
The setting
The end of Nestor's account of Menelaus's storm. Some of the scattered ships strike the Cretan coast just described; five others are blown all the way to Egypt — the long detour that keeps Menelaus abroad for years.
A note on this passage
The wreck lands. The ships driven onto Crete reach that fatal shore; the men themselves barely scramble clear of death, but the sea smashes the hulls to pieces on the reefs. Meanwhile five other ships of Menelaus's squadron are carried clean off to Egypt on wind and water.
The undercurrent is where this is going. Egypt is not a random landfall: it is where Menelaus will be stranded for years, gathering the wealth and the sea-god's prophecy that make him, by the time Telemachus reaches Sparta, the richest and most storied of the returned kings. Nestor drops the seed of that whole detour here, in a single line, and sails on.
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