Odyssey 4.485 · Book 4, lines 485–490
Tell me who came home
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ταῦτα μὲν οὕτω δὴ τελέω, γέρον, ὡς σὺ κελεύεις. ἀλλʼ ἄγε μοι τόδε εἰπὲ καὶ ἀτρεκέως κατάλεξον, ἢ πάντες σὺν νηυσὶν ἀπήμονες ἦλθον Ἀχαιοί, οὓς Νέστωρ καὶ ἐγὼ λίπομεν Τροίηθεν ἰόντες, ἦέ τις ὤλετʼ ὀλέθρῳ ἀδευκέι ἧς ἐπὶ νηὸς ἠὲ φίλων ἐν χερσίν, ἐπεὶ πόλεμον τολύπευσεν.
This I will do, old man, just as you bid. But come, tell me this and recount it truly: whether all the Achaeans came home unharmed with their ships — those whom Nestor and I left, going from Troy — or whether any perished by a cruel death on his own ship, or in the arms of his friends, after he wound up the war.
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Having agreed to Proteus's terms, Menelaus presses the shape-shifting sea-god with the question that matters most: what became of the other Greek captains who sailed from Troy? He and Nestor had left them behind on the beach.
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Menelaus accepts the errand, then asks the real question. He wants the roll of the returning army: did all the Achaeans reach home safe with their ships, or did some die — at sea on their own decks, or among their friends once the war was finished?
The verb τολύπευσεν comes from winding wool into a ball: the ten-year war is wound up the way a woman finishes a skein. But under the tidy image is dread. Menelaus is a survivor asking after the missing, and Proteus's roll-call will end at the one death he most fears to hear — his brother Agamemnon's, murdered at his own homecoming.
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