"Meanwhile Menelaus and I were on our way home from Troy, on
good terms with one another. When we got to Sunium, which is the
point of Athens, Apollo with his painless shafts killed Phrontis
the steersman of Menelaus' 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 Menelaus, 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, Jove counselled 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 Iardanus. 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 Phaestus the sea runs high when there is a south wind
blowing, but after Phaestus 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 Menelaus gathered
much gold and substance among people of an alien speech.
Meanwhile Aegisthus here at home plotted his evil deed. For
seven years after he had killed Agamemnon he ruled in Mycene,
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 Aegisthus by a banquet to the people of
Argos, and on that very day Menelaus came home, {31} with as
much treasure as his ships could carry.