Odyssey 4.271 · Book 4, lines 271–273
The strong man and the carven horse
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οἷον καὶ τόδʼ ἔρεξε καὶ ἔτλη καρτερὸς ἀνὴρ ἵππῳ ἔνι ξεστῷ, ἵνʼ ἐνήμεθα πάντες ἄριστοι Ἀργείων Τρώεσσι φόνον καὶ κῆρα φέροντες.
Such a deed, too, the strong man wrought and endured, within the polished horse where we all sat, the best of the Argives, bringing slaughter and doom to the Trojans.
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The setting
Menelaus is telling the young Telemachus of Odysseus's endurance at Troy. His tale of the Wooden Horse continues: the picked Achaean fighters shut inside it, waiting in the dark.
A note on this passage
Menelaus praises Odysseus for one more feat: the ambush inside the Wooden Horse. He names the thing plainly — the best of the Argives packed into the carven horse, carrying death to Troy — and lets the single word 'endured' carry the strain of the men who had to sit still in the dark.
The praise is pointed. Telemachus is here to learn what his absent father was, and Menelaus keeps choosing the same virtue: not Odysseus's spear but his self-command. The Horse is the war's cleverest trick, and it works only because the men inside can bear to do nothing — the discipline the poem will later set against the suitors' greed.
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