Odyssey 4.262 · Book 4, lines 262–264
What she left behind
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δῶχʼ, ὅτε μʼ ἤγαγε κεῖσε φίλης ἀπὸ πατρίδος αἴης, παῖδά τʼ ἐμὴν νοσφισσαμένην θάλαμόν τε πόσιν τε οὔ τευ δευόμενον, οὔτʼ ἂρ φρένας οὔτε τι εἶδος.
gave me, when she led me there, away from my dear native land, when I forsook my child and bridal chamber and husband — a man lacking in nothing, neither in wit nor at all in looks.
Word by word
The setting
Helen finishes the thought begun in the last lines: the 'ruin' Aphrodite gave her was being carried off to Troy, leaving her home, daughter, and husband. The 'husband' who lacked nothing — in mind or in looks — is Menelaus, sitting before her as she says it.
A note on this passage
The list is an accounting of loss, in order: homeland, then child, then the marriage-chamber, then the husband. It ends on Menelaus, praised to his face as a man wanting nothing in mind or beauty — the very things she gave up.
The undercurrent is the tact of the compliment. Helen is telling this in Menelaus's own hall, reconciled and restored; the closing praise repairs, in a phrase, the wound the whole story reopens. Whether the reader hears it as sincere love or as the perfect thing to say, it is exactly what the moment needs — and the daughter left behind, Hermione, whose wedding this very book is celebrating, goes unnamed and unmentioned in the loss she was.
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Odyssey 4.262 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/4.262/