Pharos

Pharos is the island off the coast of Egypt where Menelaus was stranded for twenty days on his return from Troy, and where he captured the shape-shifting sea god Proteus to learn how to break the divine anger that held him there. The episode is a crucial turning point in Menelaus's homecoming, revealing the necessity of proper sacrifice to the gods and providing the narrative with a detailed account of the fates of other Greek heroes, including Odysseus's captivity on Ogygia.

Location and Description

Pharos lies off the coast of Egypt, about as far as a ship can sail in a day with a good stiff breeze behind her. It has a good harbour from which vessels can get out into open sea when they have taken in water. The island is described by Menelaus to Telemachus during his visit to Lacedaemon, when he recounts the hardships he endured on his return voyage. The gods detained him there because his hecatombs had not given them full satisfaction, and the gods are very strict about having their dues.

The Twenty-Day Stranding

Menelaus and his fleet were becalmed on Pharos for twenty days without so much as a breath of fair wind to help them forward. They would have run clean out of provisions and his men would have starved, if a goddess had not taken pity upon him. The goddess was Idothea, daughter to Proteus, the old man of the sea, who had taken a great fancy to Menelaus. She came to him one day when he was by himself, as he often was, for the men used to go with their barbed hooks all over the island in the hope of catching a fish or two to save them from the pangs of hunger. She chided him for seeming to like starving in that way, and for sticking there day after day without even trying to get away though his men were dying by inches.

The Capture of Proteus

Idothea revealed that her father Proteus, an old immortal who lives under the sea, is Neptune's head man and knows every inch of ground all over the bottom of the sea. If Menelaus could snare him and hold him tight, Proteus would tell him about his voyage, what courses he was to take, and how he was to sail the sea so as to reach his home. He would also tell him, if he so willed, all that had been going on at his house both good and bad while he was away. Idothea instructed Menelaus to pick out the three best men he had in his fleet, and she would tell him all the tricks that the old man would play. She described how Proteus would come up from under the waves at noon, heralded by the West wind, and lie down to sleep in a great sea cave where the seals come up also from the grey sea and go to sleep in shoals all round him. She fetched four seal skins from the bottom of the sea, dug four pits for them to lie in, and threw a seal skin over each of them. The ambuscade would have been intolerable for the stench of the fishy seals, but she put some ambrosia under each man's nostrils which was so fragrant that it killed the smell. When Proteus came up, counted his seals, and laid himself down to sleep, they rushed upon him with a shout and seized him. He changed himself first into a lion with a great mane, then all of a sudden into a dragon, a leopard, a wild boar, the next moment he was running water, and then again directly he was a tree, but they stuck to him and never lost hold, till at last the cunning old creature became distressed and asked which of the gods had hatched this plot with him.

The Prophecy and Its Consequences

Proteus told Menelaus that if he would finish his voyage and get home quickly, he must offer sacrifices to Jove and to the rest of the gods before embarking, for it was decreed that he should not get back to his friends and to his own house till he had returned to the heaven-fed stream of Egypt and offered holy hecatombs to the immortal gods that reign in heaven. Menelaus was broken hearted when he heard that he must go back all that long and terrible voyage to Egypt, but he agreed to do it. Proteus also told him about the fates of the other Achaean leaders: Ajax was wrecked and drowned for boasting; Agamemnon was killed by Aegisthus and Clytemnestra; and Odysseus was still alive, sorrowing bitterly in the house of the nymph Calypso, unable to reach his home for he had no ships nor sailors to take him over the sea. Proteus further prophesied that Menelaus himself would not die in Argos, but the gods would take him to the Elysian plain at the ends of the world because he had married Helen and was Jove's son-in-law. After hearing this, Menelaus returned to Egypt, stationed his ships in the heaven-fed stream of the Nile, and offered hecatombs that were full and sufficient. When he had thus appeased heaven's anger, he raised a barrow to the memory of Agamemnon that his name might live for ever, after which he had a quick passage home, for the gods sent him a fair wind.