Odyssey 4.391 · Book 4, lines 391–393
He will tell you all that happened at home
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καὶ δέ κέ τοι εἴπῃσι, διοτρεφές, αἴ κʼ ἐθέλῃσθα, ὅττι τοι ἐν μεγάροισι κακόν τʼ ἀγαθόν τε τέτυκται οἰχομένοιο σέθεν δολιχὴν ὁδὸν ἀργαλέην τε.
And he will tell you, Zeus-nurtured one, if you wish, whatever evil and good has been wrought in your halls while you were gone on your long, grievous journey.
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The setting
Eidothea, the sea-nymph, is still instructing the stranded Menelaus how to trap her father Proteus. She has just promised that the seized god will name Menelaus's road and homecoming; here she adds that he will also report the news of home.
A note on this passage
Eidothea rounds off her promise. Proteus, once caught, will give Menelaus not only his sea-route home but the tidings of his own house — the good and the evil done there in the years he was away at Troy. Knowledge of the road and knowledge of home are offered in one breath.
Beneath the courtesy sits the poem's governing dread. For a returning king, news of home is not neutral: Menelaus's own brother Agamemnon came back to a wife turned murderer. To be told 'whatever good and evil has been wrought in your halls' is to be told a story that might be either kind or fatal. The Odyssey keeps measuring every homecoming against that one.
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