Storm-driven from Troy with five ships, Menelaus lost his helmsman at Sunium and wandered eight years through Crete, Libya, Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Egypt before he bound Proteus on Pharos — learning that Agamemnon was dead, Ajax wrecked, and Odysseus still on Calypso's isle, while some said the Helen of Troy had been a cloud phantom and the true queen waited at Proteus' court.1
The storm from Troy
When Troy was ash the victors sailed — but not all at once, and not all the same way home. Apollodorus says that when the host put to sea, Diomedes, Nestor, and Menelaus sailed together at first; but a storm overtook the son of Atreus, and after losing the rest of his vessels he arrived with five ships in Egypt. Nestor, telling Telemachus at Pylos how the Returns fell out, remembered that of all who took the city only Menelaus and Odysseus were missing from the roll of those who came home or perished on the sea — the Spartan king still abroad when Agamemnon touched Mycenae.2
Sunium and the long drift
Menelaus himself told Telemachus how the voyage began in friendship with Agamemnon, until at holy Sunium, the cape of Athens, Phoebus Apollo struck down Phrontis son of Onetor, the helmsman who excelled all men in pilotage — and the king buried his steersman there with full rites before the wind drove him on. Apollodorus adds that with his five ships he put in at Sunium and was driven thence again to Crete, then drifted far, wandering Libya, Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Egypt while he collected much treasure. In his own account to the Ithacan prince he named Cyprus and Phoenicia and Egypt, the Ethiopians and Sidonians and Erembi, and Libya where lambs are horned from birth — and said that after many woes he brought his wealth home in his ships only in the eighth year.3
Detained on Pharos
In Egypt Menelaus and his company were detained on the island of Pharos, off the mouth of the Nile — a day's sail from the mainland when the wind is fair, with a harbor where ships draw black water before launching. For twenty days no wind blew; when a breeze came at last it blew them back again. The king had exhausted his stores and wandered the shore in despair until Eidothea, daughter of Proteus the Old Man of the Sea, took pity on the stranger whose heart she had moved above all others. She told him how her father counted his seals at midday in a sheltered cave, and how a man who seized the seer and held him fast through every shape-shift could force him to speak truth.4
Binding Proteus
Menelaus lay in ambush among the reeking seal-pens, seized Proteus when the old god rose dripping from the herd, and clung while the Old Man became lion and serpent, leopard and boar, running water and rooted tree. At last Proteus yielded and named the cause of the king's detention: he had not fulfilled the hecatomb due to Zeus and the gods before he sailed from Troy. Hyginus says the gods were angry because Troy had been taken, and that Menelaus slaughtered a hecatomb of a hundred beasts before the winds would bear him home. When the sacrifice was made, the seer would tell him what else the Returns had cost — and only then, in the eighth year after he left Troy, could he sail for Sparta with Helen.5
The phantom and the true Helen⚖
Homer's Menelaus sailed from Troy with Helen at his side and feasted with her in Sparta when Telemachus came — yet Apollodorus records another tradition: that until Menelaus reached Proteus in Egypt he had possessed only a phantom of Helen made of clouds, and that at the court of Proteus, king of Egypt, he discovered the real queen. The war had been fought over a likeness; the woman who drugged the wine for Telemachus and wept over Troy tales was, in that version, the Helen who had never entered Paris' ship. The dispute does not surface in Homer's Odyssey, but it haunts the Returns shelf — the same author who gives the binding of Proteus also gives Helen at the Spartan feast.6
What the Old Man revealed
Proteus catalogued the dead and the lost. Ajax son of Oileus had perished on the Gyraean rocks — the nested episode on the Locrian Ajax tells the boast and the thunderbolt. Agamemnon had reached Mycenae only to die in the bath with Cassandra, murdered by Aegisthus and Clytemnestra; the nested episodes at Mycenae carry that slaughter and the Oresteia that followed. Of Odysseus, Proteus said he still lived, detained on an island by Calypso, who kept him against his will because he alone of the host had not reached home — news Menelaus would repeat in his hall when Telemachus came seeking his father. And to Menelaus himself the Old Man foretold that he would not die in horse-pasturing Argos but that the immortals would convey him to the Elysian plain where fair-haired Rhadamanthus dwells and life is easiest for men.7
The hall at Sparta
When Menelaus at last reached Lacedaemon he held a double wedding feast for his son Megapenthes and for Hermione, his daughter by Helen. Telemachus came from Pylos with Peisistratus son of Nestor — the nested episode on Telemachus and the suitors tells the Ithacan voyage; here the story is the host's. Helen recognized the youth by his likeness to Odysseus, drugged the wine with a heart-easing drug from Egypt, and traded Troy tales until the boy wept. Menelaus told how he had bound Proteus and learned that Odysseus lived, though still held on Ogygia — the Egypt detour retold in full for the prince who had come seeking his father.8
While Mycenae bled
The timelines cross without meeting. Agamemnon had sailed first to Mycenae and died in the bath while his brother was still storm-driven or detained on Pharos; Clytemnestra's plot fell before Menelaus feasted strangers in Sparta. Apollodorus says that after eight years of wandering Menelaus came to port at Mycenae and there found Orestes, who had already avenged his father's murder — the nested Oresteia tells that vengeance; here the Returns only note the crossing paths. The king who had won Helen back from Troy returned to a house intact and a kingdom unpoisoned, while the curse of the Atreidae had already moved to the son who washed his hands in blood. Apollodorus adds that Menelaus regained his kingdom and was made immortal by Hera, so that he went to the Elysian Fields with Helen — the promise Proteus had whispered on Pharos fulfilled in the mythographer's closing line.9
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How the centuries saw it
On screen
In play
Helen (play)
Euripides
Euripides' Egypt romance — the real Helen under Proteus' roof while a phantom fought at Troy, and Menelaus' reunion on the Nile.
Odyssey
Book IV — Menelaus and Helen at Sparta tell Telemachus of Egypt, Pharos, and the Old Man of the Sea who knew every nostos.
Proteus
The shape-shifting herdsman of seals — bound by Menelaus on Pharos, he speaks the truth of the returns.