[29]
Menelaus, with five ships in all under his command, put in at Sunium, a headland of
Attica; and being again driven thence by winds
to Crete he drifted far away, and wandering up
and down Libya, and Phoenicia, and Cyprus, and
Egypt, he collected much treasure.1 And
according to some, he discovered Helen at the court of Proteus, king of Egypt; for till then Menelaus had only a phantom of her
made of clouds.2 And after
wandering for eight years he came to port at Mycenae, and there found Orestes, who had avenged his father's murder. And
having come to Sparta he regained his own
kingdom,3
and being made immortal by Hera he went to the Elysian Fields with Helen.4
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1 For the wanderings of Menelaus on the voyage from Troy, see Hom. Od. 3.276-302; compare Paus. 10.25.2.
2 As to the real and the phantom Helen, see above, Apollod. E.3.5, with the note.
3 The return of Menelaus to his home was related by Hagias in the Returns, as we learn from the brief abstract of that poem by Proclus in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 53.
4 Homer in the Odyssey （Hom. Od. 4.561-569） represents Proteus prophesying to Menelaus that he was fated not to die but to be transported by the gods to the Elysian Fields, there to dwell at ease where there was neither snow, nor storm, or rain, because he had married Helen and was thereby a in-law of Zeus. Compare Eur. Hel. 1676-1679.
Apollodorus. Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Includes Frazer's notes.
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