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injunction to beware all women (11.440456): 'Never be gentle with a woman/wife [ ]', says Agamemnon, 'nor tell her the whole story . . .Not that for you, Odysseus, death will come from a woman/wife at any rate [ ]. For Penelope is so firm and knows well in her heart what is to be counselled . . .But anchor your ship in your fatherland secretly and not openly. For there is no trustworthiness [ ] in women/wives [ ]'. Again, the rhetorical generalization of Clytemnestra frames Penelope as a counter-example to womankind's tendencies to untrustworthiness, and sets up a narrative of concern about Penelope's trickiness that can never be quite controlled by Odysseus' wariness.38 |
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These comments of Agamemnon on Clytemnestra and Penelope are offered in response to Odysseus' own generalization (11.4369) that Zeus has hated the race of Atreus in an extraordinary way  , 'through the plans of women/wives'. He specifies both Clytemnestra, who manufactured a deception against her husband, and Helen, through whom so many died. The example of Helen here is particularly interesting, since in the Telemachy the visit to Helen and Menelaus provides a climax to the education of Telemachus, Odysseus' son. In Sparta, Helen, as hostess, drugged the drinks with a potion to remove grief, and she and her husband swap tales of Odysseus and Helen at Troy, after which Telemachus with an expression of grief goes to bed.39 In the Iliad, as she excoriates herself to Hector, Helen declares that her marriage to Paris will make them 'the subject of song for future generations' (6.358). In Sparta, in the presence of Telemachus, we see the production of such a literary representation (in the voices of Helen and Menelaus themselves). Helen, however, as the juxtaposition of Odysseus making an example of her and Telemachus being entertained by her suggests, offers a difficult example for the discourse of exemplary praise and blame that we have been tracing. Like Clytemnestra, she is the source of destruction and a figure of violent deception and sexual transgression. Yet she is depicted in the centre of the household celebrating a wedding as Telemachus arrives; and as he leaves, she gives the boy a gown ( ) for his bride on his own wedding day as a memorial of herself (15.1267): |
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A memorial of Helen's hands for the time of your much-desired wedding
For your bride to wear. |
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This moment's potential for irony and prediction is hard to evaluate: what is Telemachus to recall of Helen on his wedding day? Eustathius marks the difficulty when he points out the ambiguity of  , 'much desired'. |
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38 See the fine study of Katz (1991). |
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39 This scene is discussed with bibliography in Goldhill (1988). |
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