Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

In the *Little Iliad* Odysseus disfigures himself and enters Troy as a beggar (or runaway slave) to spy. Helen alone recognizes him; she bathes and anoints him, swears secrecy, and— in the *Odyssey*’s Spartan retelling—plans with him the ruin of the Trojans while her heart had already turned back toward the Achaeans. He kills many Trojans and returns to the ships with much intelligence (Apollodorus compresses: he goes in with Diomedes for related stratagems in neighboring cyclic notices; Proclus keeps the solo disguise and Helen’s recognition before the Palladium and horse sequences). Helen’s tale to Telemachus in *Odyssey* 4 is the Homeric witness: she claims she rejoiced, while Menelaus sourly recalls only the wooden horse and her near-betrayal by voice. Catalogue the spy-entry as its own Little Iliad atom.