Homer, The Odyssey
Samuel Butler, Based on public domain edition, revised by Timothy Power and Gregory Nagy., Ed.

"Mentor," answered Telemakhos, "do not let us talk about it any more. There is no chance of my father's ever coming back [nostos]; the gods have long since counseled his destruction. There is something else, however, about which I should like to ask Nestor, for he knows much more than any one else does. They say he has reigned for three generations so that it is like talking to an immortal. Tell me, therefore, Nestor, and tell me true [alêthês]; how did Agamemnon come to die in that way? What was Menelaos doing? And how came false Aigisthos to kill so far better a man than himself? Was Menelaos away from Achaean Argos, voyaging elsewhere among humankind, that Aigisthos took heart and killed Agamemnon?"

"I will tell you truly [alêthês]," answered Nestor, "and indeed you have yourself divined how it all happened. If Menelaos when he got back from Troy had found Aigisthos still alive in his house, there would have been no grave marker heaped up for him, not even when he was dead, but he would have been thrown outside the city to dogs and vultures, and not a woman would have mourned him, for he had done a deed of great wickedness; but we were over there, fighting hard [athlos] at Troy, and Aigisthos who was taking his ease quietly in the heart of Argos, cajoled Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra with incessant flattery.

"At first she would have nothing to do with his wicked scheme, for she was of a good natural disposition; moreover there was a singer with her, to whom Agamemnon had given strict orders on setting out for Troy, that he was to keep guard over his wife; but when heaven had counseled her destruction, Aigisthos led this bard off to a desert island and left him there for crows and seagulls to batten upon - after which she went willingly enough to the house of Aigisthos. Then he offered many burnt sacrifices to the gods, and decorated many temples with tapestries and gilding, for he had succeeded far beyond his expectations.

"Meanwhile Menelaos and I were on our way home from Troy, on good terms with one another. When we got to Sounion, which is the point of Athens, Apollo with his painless shafts killed Phrontis the steersman of Menelaos' ship (and never man knew better how to handle a vessel in rough weather) so that he died then and there with the helm in his hand, and Menelaos, though very anxious to press forward, had to wait in order to bury his comrade and give him his due funeral rites. Presently, when he too could put to sea again, and had sailed on as far as the Malean heads, Zeus counseled evil against him and made it blow hard till the waves ran mountains high. Here he divided his fleet and took the one half towards Crete where the Cydonians dwell round about the waters of the river Iardanos. There is a high headland hereabouts stretching out into the sea from a place called Gortyn, and all along this part of the coast as far as Phaistos the sea runs high when there is a south wind blowing, but past Phaistos the coast is more protected, for a small headland can make a great shelter. Here this part of the fleet was driven on to the rocks and wrecked; but the crews just managed to save themselves. As for the other five ships, they were taken by winds and seas to Egypt, where Menelaos gathered much gold and substance among people of an alien speech. Meanwhile Aigisthos here at home plotted his evil deed. For seven years after he had killed Agamemnon he ruled in Mycenae, and the people were obedient under him, but in the eighth year Orestes came back from Athens to be his bane, and killed the murderer of his father. Then he celebrated the funeral rites of his mother and of false Aigisthos by a banquet to the people of Argos, and on that very day Menelaos came home, with as much treasure as his ships could carry.