Odyssey 4.543 · Book 4, lines 543–547
Cease weeping; hurry home
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Proteus — μηκέτι, Ἀτρέος υἱέ, πολὺν χρόνον ἀσκελὲς οὕτω κλαῖʼ ἐπεὶ οὐκ ἄνυσίν τινα δήομεν· ἀλλὰ τάχιστα πείρα ὅπως κεν δὴ σὴν πατρίδα γαῖαν ἵκηαι. ἢ γάρ μιν ζωόν γε κιχήσεαι, ἤ κεν Ὀρέστης κτεῖνεν ὑποφθάμενος, σὺ δέ κεν τάφου ἀντιβολήσαις.
No longer, son of Atreus, weep for so long and so unremittingly, since we shall find no accomplishment in it; but strive as quickly as you can to reach your fatherland. For either you will find him alive, or Orestes will have slain him first, forestalling you, and you might come upon his funeral.
Word by word
The setting
Proteus, the truthful sea-god, answers Menelaus's grief. His first counsel is not consolation but urgency: stop mourning, make for home. The ‘him’ of the second half is Aegisthus, Agamemnon's murderer, whom Menelaus may still find alive — or find already dead at the hand of Orestes, the avenging son.
A note on this passage
The god's advice is brisk and practical. Grief accomplishes nothing (ἄνυσις, ‘no use’); the thing to do is sail. Then he holds out two outcomes for the killer Aegisthus: Menelaus may reach home in time to take vengeance himself, or arrive to a funeral already held.
The Agamemnon story shadows the whole Odyssey, and here it is offered to Menelaus as live news, its ending still open. Orestes ‘getting in first’ is the poem's model son — the boy who acted — dangled before us just as Telemachus, listening to nothing of this, is being pressed by the same poem to grow up and do the same at home.
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