The Long Way to Sparta

Menelaus was in a hurry as he left Troy. He forgot the offering owed to the gods and put out to sea. That small forgetting was the beginning of a long drifting.

The fleet came to a halt off the coast of Egypt. For many days not a breath of wind blew. The food ran low and the faces of the men grew thin.

Then one day a strange woman came to them. It was Eidothea, daughter of Proteus, the old man of the sea. She pitied the worn out company of Menelaus.