Telemachus and Pisistratus reach Sparta and drive to the palace of King Menelaus. They arrive during a double wedding feast for Menelaus's son and daughter. A servant named Eteoneus asks whether to turn the strangers away, but Menelaus is angry and orders proper hospitality. He reminds his household that he and his men were once strangers in other lands too. The young men are bathed, anointed with oil, clothed in fine wool, fed roasted meat, and seated at the king's table. Telemachus whispers to Pisistratus that the palace looks as splendid as the home of the gods, with bronze, gold, amber, ivory, and silver everywhere.
Menelaus then speaks of his long travels after Troy. He visited Cyprus, Egypt, Ethiopia, and many other lands and gathered great riches. Yet he says his wealth brings him little joy because so many comrades died on the way home. He grieves most for Ulysses, who worked harder than any other Greek at Troy and still has not returned. He thinks often of Ulysses's old father, his wife Penelope, and the young son he left behind. At the name of his father, Telemachus bursts into tears and hides his face in his cloak. Helen enters the hall, sees the likeness, and says the young guest looks exactly like the baby Ulysses left behind when the Greeks sailed for Troy. Pisistratus confirms that this is Telemachus, come to ask for news of his father. Menelaus weeps too, remembering the friend he hoped to live near in Argos and protect forever.
The whole company weeps until Pisistratus asks them to stop crying at supper and remember his brother Antilochus, who died at Troy. Helen then puts a drug into the wine that eases grief for the evening. She tells how Ulysses once entered Troy dressed as a beggar and she alone recognized him after she washed and clothed him. Menelaus answers with the story of the wooden horse, praising Ulysses for keeping the Greek chiefs silent when Helen called their names outside and nearly exposed them. Everyone goes to bed, and at dawn Menelaus dresses like a god, takes his seat, and asks Telemachus why he has come. Telemachus says plainly that suitors are eating up his sheep, oxen, and wine while courting his mother, and he asks for the plain truth about his father.
Menelaus is furious on his behalf and compares the suitors to deer sleeping in a lion's den. Then he tells how he was stranded in Egypt for twenty days without wind until a goddess named Idothea taught him how to catch the sea god Proteus. Proteus had to be seized at noon while he slept among his seals and held fast while he changed into lions, dragons, boars, running water, and trees. When Proteus finally spoke, he said Ajax drowned after boasting against the gods, Agamemnon was murdered by Aegisthus after returning home, and Ulysses was still alive but trapped on Calypso's island with no ship to escape. Menelaus also tells how Orestes later killed Aegisthus and restored justice to his father's house. That is the news Telemachus crossed the sea to find. Menelaus offers horses and a chariot, but Telemachus wisely asks for a silver mixing bowl made by Vulcan that he can carry home to rocky Ithaca instead of animals he cannot use there.
While this is happening in Sparta, the suitors in Ithaca learn from Noemon that Telemachus has sailed with a picked crew and that Mentor, or a god like him, captained the ship. Antinous is alarmed because they assumed the boy would never really leave. He plans a twenty-man ambush in the strait between Ithaca and Samos and wins the others to his side. A servant named Medon overhears and tells Penelope that her son may be murdered on his way home. Penelope collapses in grief, angry that no one told her he had left. She says she would rather have kept him home even if he had to leave her corpse behind. Old nurse Euryclea admits she helped provision the voyage under oath and urges Penelope to wash her face, pray to Athena, and not burden Laertes with more sorrow.
Penelope offers bruised barley to Athena and begs the goddess to save her son from the suitors' villainy. That night Athena sends a dream in the form of Penelope's sister Iphthime, telling her that Telemachus travels with divine protection and will return. The dream will not say whether Ulysses is alive or dead, but it calms Penelope enough to sleep. Meanwhile the suitors launch their ship by night, take weapons, and wait in hiding at the rocky island of Asteris between Ithaca and Samos. Telemachus has learned that his father lives, and the men who want him dead now control the sea road home.
