True, the writer tried to cobble the matter by introducing lines 621-624, which in our texts are always inclosed in brackets as suspected—I suppose because Aristarchus marked them with obeli, though he did not venture to exclude them. The cobble, however, only makes things worse, for it is obviously inadequate, and its abruptness puzzles the reader.
Accepting, then, lines 2-19 and 621-624 of Book iv. as by the writer of the rest of the poem, the reader will note how far more interesting she finds the marriage of Hermione than that of Megapenthes—of whose bride, by the way, there is no trace in Book xv. The marriage of the son is indeed mentioned in the first instance before that of the daughter; but surely this is only because υἱέος ἠδὲ θυγατρός lends itself more readily to a hexameter verse than any transposition of the nouns would do. Having mentioned that both son and daughter are to be married, the writer at once turns to Hermione, and appears only to marry Megapenthes because, as his sister is being married, he may as well be married too. A male writer would have married Megapenthes first and Hermione afterwards; nor would he have thought it worth while to make a very awkward interpolation in his poem merely in order to bring Hermione into it, for by this time she must have been over thirty, and it would have been easy to suppose that she had been married years ago during Menelaus's absence.
As regards the second and shorter interpolation (iv. 621-624), it refers to the day after the pretended marriages, and runs as follows:—
Thus did they converse [and guests kept coming to the king's house. They brought sheep and wine, while their wives had put up bread for them to take with them. So they were busy cooking their dinners in the courts.]
Passing over the fact that on such a great occasion as the marriage of his son and daughter, Menelaus would hardly expect his guests to bring their own provisions with them (though he might expect them as Alcinous did[1] to do their own cooking) I would ask the reader to note that the writer cannot keep the women out even from a mere cobble. A man might have told us that the guests brought meat and wine and bread, but his mind would not instinctively turn to the guests' wives putting up the bread for them.
I say nothing about the discrepancy between the chronology of Telemachus's visit to Sparta, and of Ulysses' journey from the island of Calypso to Ithaca where he arrives one day before Telemachus does. The reader will find it dwelt on in Colonel Mure's Language and Literature of Ancient Greece, Vol. I., pp. 439, 440. I regard it as nothing more than a slip on the part of a writer who felt that such slips are matters of very small importance; but I will call attention to the manner in which the gorgeousness of Menelaus's establishment as described in Book iv. has collapsed by the time we reach Book xv., though as far as I can determine the length of Telemachus's stay with Menelaus, the interval between the two books should not exceed one entire day.
When Telemachus has informed Menelaus that he must go home at once, Menelaus presses his guests to stay and have something to eat before they start; this, he tells them, will be not only more proper and more comfortable for them, but also cheaper.
We know from Il. VII. 470-475 that Menelaus used to sell wine when he was before Troy, as also did Agamemnon, but there is a frank bourgoisie about this invitation which a male writer would have avoided. Still franker, however, is the offer of Menelaus to take them on a personally conducted tour round the Peloponesus. It will be very profitable, for no one will send them away empty handed; every one will give them either a bronze tripod or a cauldron, or two mules, or a gold chalice (xv. 75-85). As for the refreshments which they are to have immediately, the king explains that they will have to take potluck, but says he will tell the women to see that there is enough for them, of what there might happen to be in the house.
That is just like Menelaus's usual fussiness. Why could he not have left it all to Helen? After reading the Odyssey I am not surprised at her having run away with Paris; the only wonder is that a second great war did not become necessary very shortly after the Trojan matter had been ended. Surely the fact that two young bachelors were going to stay and dine was not such a frightful discord but that it might have been taken unprepared, or at any rate without the monarch's personal interference. "Of what there may be in the house" indeed. We can see that the dinner is not going to be profusely sumptuous. If there did not happen to be anything good in the house—and I suspect this to have been the case—Menelaus should have trusted Helen to send out and get something. But there should have been no sending out about it; Menelaus and Helen ought never to have had a meal without every conceivable delicacy.
What a come down, again, is there not as regards the butler Eteoneus. He was not a real butler at all—he was only a kind of char-butler; he did not sleep in the house (xv. 96), and for aught we know may have combined a shop round the corner with his position in Menelaus' household. Worse than this, he had no footman, not even a boy, under him, for Menelaus tells him to light the fire and set about cooking dinner (xv. 97, 98), which he proceeds to do without one syllable of remonstrance. What has become of Asphaliou? Where are the men servants who attended to Telemachus and Pisistratus on their arrival? They have to yoke their own horses now. The upper and under women servants who appear at all Odyssean meals are here as usual, but we hear nothing more of Adraste, Alcippe, and Phylo. It seems as though after describing the splendour of Menelaus's house in Book iv. the writer's nerve has failed her, and by Book xv. her instinctive thrift has re-asserted itself.