Odyssey 3.309 · Book 3, lines 309–312
A funeral feast, and Menelaus lands
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ἦ τοι ὁ τὸν κτείνας δαίνυ τάφον Ἀργείοισιν μητρός τε στυγερῆς καὶ ἀνάλκιδος Αἰγίσθοιο· αὐτῆμαρ δέ οἱ ἦλθε βοὴν ἀγαθὸς Μενέλαος πολλὰ κτήματʼ ἄγων, ὅσα οἱ νέες ἄχθος ἄειραν.
Truly, having slain him, he gave a funeral feast for the Argives, over his hateful mother and craven Aegisthus. On that same day there came to him Menelaus, good at the war-cry, bringing much treasure, all that his ships bore as freight.
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The setting
Orestes has killed Aegisthus. Now he buries the dead and, on the very same day, Menelaus at last reaches home from his long wandering, his ships laden with the wealth he has gathered.
A note on this passage
The revenge closes with a rite, not more blood. Orestes lays on a funeral feast for the Argives over the two he has killed — his mother among them, named only as 'hateful.' Then the scene turns on a coincidence Homer loves: that very day, Menelaus finally sails in, holds full of gold.
The undercurrent sits in what the line refuses to dwell on. Clytemnestra is the buried mother, and the poem hurries past her with a single cold adjective and Aegisthus's fixed epithet of contempt, ἄναλκις, 'craven' — the honor-word for a man who kills by treachery, not in the open. And the timing is pointed: the wanderer comes home just as the avenger finishes, wealth arriving the moment justice is done.
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