Telemachus and Peisistratus arrive at the splendid palace of Menelaus in Sparta, where a double wedding is under way: Menelaus's daughter Hermione is being sent to marry Achilles' son Neoptolemus, and his son Megapenthes is marrying a Spartan woman. Menelaus welcomes the young strangers before even asking their names. Telemachus is amazed by the palace, which gleams with bronze, gold, amber, silver, and ivory, but Menelaus says his wealth gives him little joy, because he lost so many friends in the war — and above all he grieves for Odysseus. At this Telemachus weeps and hides his face in his cloak, and Menelaus begins to suspect who he is.
Helen enters, beautiful as Artemis, and immediately remarks how much the young man resembles Odysseus. Peisistratus confirms it. All of them weep at the memory of the dead, so Helen slips a drug into the wine — a gift from an Egyptian woman named Polydamna — that banishes grief and anger for a whole day. Then she tells a story: once, during the war, Odysseus beat himself, put on rags, and slipped into Troy disguised as a beggar. Only Helen recognized him; she bathed him and swore not to betray him, and he killed many Trojans before escaping with valuable information. Menelaus replies with his own story of the wooden horse. As the Greek warriors hid inside, Helen walked around it, calling to each man in the voice of his wife. Some nearly answered, but Odysseus held them back and clapped his hand over the mouth of one, saving them all. The two stories sit uneasily together, hinting at Helen's divided loyalties.
The next morning Menelaus tells Telemachus what he learned on his own voyage home. Becalmed for twenty days on the island of Pharos off Egypt, his men starving, he was helped by the sea nymph Eidothea. She told him to capture her father, Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, who knows all things. Menelaus and three men hid among the seals under sealskins, which stank terribly until Eidothea put ambrosia under their noses. When Proteus came out at noon to count his seals and lay down to sleep, they seized him and held on as he became a lion, a serpent, a leopard, a huge boar, running water, and a leafy tree. At last he gave up and answered their questions.
Proteus told Menelaus that he had to return to Egypt and make proper sacrifices to the gods before he could reach home. He also revealed the fates of others: the lesser Ajax was drowned by Poseidon after boasting that he had escaped the sea in spite of the gods; Agamemnon was murdered by Aegisthus on his return; and Odysseus is alive but trapped on Calypso's island, with no ship or crew to carry him away. Finally Proteus foretold that Menelaus, as Helen's husband and so the son-in-law of Zeus, will not die but will be carried to the Elysian Fields at the ends of the earth. Menelaus invites Telemachus to stay and offers him horses, but Telemachus asks for a gift suited to rocky Ithaca instead, and Menelaus gives him a silver-and-gold mixing bowl.
Back on Ithaca, the suitors learn from Noemon, who wants his ship back, that Telemachus has really gone. Antinous, furious, organizes an ambush: twenty men will wait in a ship at the island of Asteris to kill Telemachus on his return. The herald Medon overhears and tells Penelope, who is devastated to learn both of her son's journey and of the plot. Eurycleia confesses her part and advises her to pray to Athena. That night Athena sends Penelope a dream in the form of her sister, Iphthime, who assures her that her son is under divine protection — though the phantom refuses to say whether Odysseus is alive or dead.
