Odyssey 4.333 · Book 4, lines 333–334
Cravens in a brave man's bed
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Menelaus — ὢ πόποι, ἦ μάλα δὴ κρατερόφρονος ἀνδρὸς ἐν εὐνῇ ἤθελον εὐνηθῆναι ἀνάλκιδες αὐτοὶ ἐόντες.
Ah, for shame! Truly indeed, cravens though they are, they wished to lie in the bed of a stout-hearted man.
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The setting
Menelaus's first words are an outburst, not yet an answer. Word has reached Sparta that weak men are courting Penelope and eating Odysseus's house; the thought of cowards in a mighty man's bed appalls him.
A note on this passage
Menelaus does not answer the question yet; he explodes at the suitors. The sense is blunt: feeble men wanted to lie in the marriage-bed of a mighty man. The bed stands for the whole of it — the marriage, the household, the honor — usurped by lesser creatures.
Under the anger is the logic of the whole poem: worth earns place. A κρατερόφρων, 'stout-hearted,' man's bed is his by right, and the ἀνάλκιδες, the 'strengthless,' have no claim on it. The suitors' crime is framed first not as theft but as a violation of rank — the small presuming on the great. That is the offense the returning Odysseus will answer in blood.
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