Characters
- Peisistratus — companion hearer
- Polydamna — Egyptian giver of the drug
- Telemachus — guest; calmed from tears; hearer
- Thon — Egyptian husband of Polydamna (named)
- Thyestes — mixes nepenthe; narrates Odysseus’s Troy espionage
Places
- Assembly — setting of the recounted exploits
- Egypt — source of the drug (background)
- Mycenae — Menelaus’s palace hall
Themes
Narrative
In Menelaus’s hall at Sparta, Telemachus and Peisistratus weep at talk of Odysseus. Helen casts into the wine a drug from Egypt—nepenthe, grief-banishing, said to quiet all sorrow for a day even if one saw parents slain before one’s eyes. Polydamna, wife of Thon in Egypt, had given it to her. With the company’s pain stilled, Helen tells how she alone recognized Odysseus when he entered Troy as a beggar on a spy’s mission, bathed and swore him, while he killed many Trojans and brought back knowledge for the Achaeans. Menelaus then adds the wooden-horse episode: Helen circled the horse, imitating the voices of the Achaean wives, and only Odysseus’s will kept the heroes from answering. The drug and the twin Troy-stories stage Helen as both healer of memory and ambiguous figure of the war’s cunning.