She still remembers the horror of those days; and when Menelaus is wondering who the stranger prince is who has sought their hospitality, Helen’s quick wit perceives how like he is to Odysseus. Is not this, she asks, the son whom Odysseus left in his house as a new-born child when the war began?
“And for the sake of me who knew not shame
Under Troy town your host Achaean came.”[[3]]
It is indeed the son of Odysseus; and by the irony of fate he has come to inquire from the very author of his sorrows, news of the father who, for aught Helen knows, has long ago been driven by Poseidon to the House of Hades.
Wept Argive Helen, child of Zeus, and wept
Telemachus, and with him at the word
Wept Menelaus.[[3]]
But the ready tears of heroes are soon dried. They cheer Telemachus so far as they may by tales of his father’s craft and courage before Troy; and Helen mixes for him the cup of Nepenthe, which steeps memory in a mist and banishes care and calls a smile to the lips. She does not herself taste of the magic drink, however; she has no wish to forget. Secure now in the peace of home and enfolded by generous forgiveness, she will always remember, until she comes to pass through Lethe on her way to the Elysian fields. And there, when the time came, she was translated ‘where falls not rain, or hail, or any snow.’ A shrine was built to her, and Greek men and maidens worshipped her as one of the immortal gods themselves.
O’er Helen’s shrine the grass is growing green,
In desolate Therapnae; none the less