Menelaus

As part of the preparation for combat in the absence of flushing water Odysseus from home, the bather Telemachus took a flask of skin oil-ment (Athena-Mentes) and, following its user’s instructions, he visited a public bath with Nestor boiler (see section Nestor). The public bath was so expensive that the bather went into debt, Peisistratus. Moreover, it was unsafe. After bathing, the fighter got sick (Fig. 1). Hence, he ended up in financial and physical misery Sparta (see section Penelope).

The king of misery was disease Menelaus (Greek Μενέλαος, currently translated in English as Abiding-men), and the queen, the seasonal flu Beautiful Helen. Telemachus’ visit to Menelaus’ palace in Sparta may mean that the preparing fighter-to-be caught a cold or skin infection at Nestor’s public bath because of negligent bathing behaviour and insufficient precaution.

Alternatively, Menelaus is the physician who preserves health (Fig. 2). Most frequently, he accompanies the flu, his queen Helen. He frequents the kingdom of social and physical misery, Sparta. But before visiting a medical doctor, one has to take a bath. The bath itself prolongs health and keeps the doctor away (before-doctor; tele-doctor; in the pattern of Tele-machos, Telemachus).

 

Figure 1. A mother spends days sitting with her son, a hospital patient in Mali. Artwork by Ewien van Bergeijk - Kwant. Creative Commons license.

Figure 2. The Doctor (1891). Painting by Luke Fildes marked as public domain. A panorama of the traditional medical profession. The doctor is in the foreground contemplating his patient, intrigued, trying to scrutinize the pathophysiology to achieve effective therapy. The sick girl, possibly a victim of some of the terrible incurable infectious febrile diseases in the pre-antibiotic era, lies pale, weak, and asleep in bed. Her dismayed mother worried, hoping for the best in the background. Also notable is the expression of the father, who cannot contain his concern about his daughter’s illness but has to remain calm to comfort the grieving mother.

The semantic reading of MENELAOS (Μενέλαος; Menelaus; Table 1) reveals sememes of staying at home, absence from ordinary (professional) activity, long-suffering, wrestling with death, fearing strange interventions such as incisions, injections, clysters, etc. and permanent effects such as scars, skin marks, and handicap (ἐνεός; eneos). The stem MENE tells it all, being patient, inclined to wait or remain inclined, wrestling with death and longing to get back to activity. Because of language’s articulate nature, stems and terms can be recombined to form variable meanings. For example, in the context of food or water contamination, Menelaus can be interpreted as food or water remaining (MENE) long unconsumed (LA-os). The morpheme LA and the ending LAOS accentuate the meaning of the preceding stem; the thing (OS) that lasts too much (LA).

If read in reverse, MENELAos gives soALENEM, a sequence implying precaution, avoidance of contamination, prevention, hygiene by cleansing, therapy, and consciousness against disease spreading for an enjoyable life.

Table 1. Semantic scan of MENELAOS (Menelaus). Meanings compiled from Liddell and Scott, 1940.

Stem	Cognates	Translit.	Meanings
Forward
MEN	μένω μένος	menō menos	stay at home, stay where one is, stand fast, stay away, be absent from, be lasting, remain, stand, stable, permanent, await, expect, wait for might, force, spirit, passion, intent, purpose
MENE	μενετός μενετικός μενεαίνω	menetos menetkos meneaiō	patient, inclined to wait long-suffering desire earnestly or eagerly, long for, be angry, rage, wrestle with death
ENE	ἐνεός ἐνεάζω ἔνειμι ἔνεμα	eneos eneazō eneimi enema	dumb, speechless, senseless, stupid dumbfounded, astonished, strike dumb, astonish be among, present in, persistent, possible, in one’s power injection, clyster
ENEL	ἔνελος (νεβρός; nervous) ἐνέλκω	enelos (nerbos) enelkō	cowardice, anything strange charged, imposed upon, (nervous) wound, lacerate, ulcerate, make an incision, suffer from wounds or sores, drag about, tear asunder
NEL			no cognates (perhaps N for negation); compare English nelly (a silly or effeminate person)
ELA	ἐλάω (ἐλαύνω) ἔλαιος (ἄγριος) ἐλαών (ἐλαία, ἐλάα) ἐλαιόω (ἐγείρω)	elaō elaios elaiōn (elaia, elaa) elaynō (egeirō)	travel, drive away, carry off, persecute, plague, strike, go through wild, uncultivated, cruel, harsh, savage naevus on the skin, should be restored, go too far bring to an oily consistency (awaken, rouse, stir up, raise from the dead, erect, arouse oneself)
Reverse
SOA			no cognates
OAL			no cognates
ALE	ἀλέα ἀλεάζω ἄλεαρ ἄλεε (φύλασσε)	alea aleazō alear alee (phylasse)	avoid, escape, shelter from, warmth, warm spot, in heat, hot season, bodily heat, source of warmth, fomentations to be warm grind, bruise keep watch and ward, keep guard, watch, wait, to be on one’s guard, defend, guard, keep away, to be watched, kept under guard, watch for, lie in wait, ambush for, look out for, keep a watch on, watch, wait for, observe, preserve, maintain, cherish, regard, cling to, foster, keep in, continue in, notice, hold fast to, beware of, be careful to, cautious, prudent, keep by one, bear in mind, memory, keep safe, act cautiously, beware of, put in as a precaution, take care
ALEN	ἄλεν (εἴλω)	alen (eilō)	shut in, shut out, pond, prevent, hinder, hold in check, enclose, cover, protect, press, throng, force, concentrate, swarm, jostle one another, contract, draw oneself together, huddle up, collect, assemble, wind, turn round, roll, revolve, move to and fro, pivot, swing round, twine, whorl, roll up tight, furled, bind fast, squeeze, bar, roll, wrap, confine, revolve, packed tightly, squeeze out, drive up and down, strike
LEN	λέντιον	lention	linteum, cloth, napkin, towel, an attendant at the bath
ENE	ἐνεάζω ἔνειμι ἔνεμα ἐνεός	eneazō eneimi enema eneos	strike dumb, astonish be among, be present in, persistent, possible, in one’s power injection, clyster dumb, speechless, senseless, stupid, dumbfounded, astonished
NEM	νέμος νέμω	nemos nemō	wooded pasture, glade deal out, dispense, distribute, leave, pay, due, respect, extend, allot, give, affords, vouchsafes, observe, freely bestow, portion, payout, distribute, have and hold as one’s portion, possess, administer, enjoy, shall reap the fruit, reap the fruit of, dwell in, inhabit, spread over, occupy, enjoy, to be situated upon, spend, pass, live, hold, possess, inhabit, to have, hold land, occupy, dwell, to be inhabited, maintain itself, be constituted, manage, wield, manage, support, use, hold sway, hold, consider as, register, call over, recite, pasture, graze, pasture, drive, afield, feed, range over, feed on, eat, consume, devour, spread, graze, waste, give

Helen of Troy, Helen of Argos, or Helen of Sparta, Helena, or simply Helen (Fig. 3), is best known as Beautiful Helen (Greek Ἑλένη; ‘Elenē; Romanized Helenē) was a figure in Greek mythology said to have been the most beautiful woman in the world. She was the daughter of Zeus and Leda. The homonym common noun ἑλένη (‘elenē) means torch, corposant, St. Elmo’s fire, or wicker-basket, to carry the sacred utensils at the feast of the Brauronian Artemis, but the meanings of common homonyms may not always be directly applicable to elaborate proper names.

Figure 3. Recovery of Helen (seasonal flu) by Menelaus (the physician). Side B of an Attic black-figure amphora, circa 550 BC, from Vulci, Italy. Original artwork by Amasis (Athens, 550–510 BC), marked as public domain.

The mytheme of Helen’s ancestry is, nevertheless, easy to decipher. The common noun λῆδος (lēdos) and its diminutive ληδάριον (lēdarion), meaning a cheap common dress, especially a light summer dress, are the only cognates of LHD from the name of Helen’s mother Λήδη or Λήδα (Lēdē; Lēda; LHDH, LHDA; Leda). With Zeus being the rain (see section Zeus), we all know what happens when we go out lightly dressed, and it rains.

As it turns out from the semantics of Table 2, Helen means a piteous condition with a running nose needing a piece of cloth that we catch as a result of light dressing under the rain. Today we do not call it flow but flu. The Online Etymological Dictionary promotes the mainstream hypothesis that flu derives by a shortening of influenza but admits that this type of abstraction of the middle syllable is an uncommon method of shortening words in English. Perhaps, flu did not derive from influenza, but influenza came from flu, a corrupted flow. The rough breathing diacritic on the initial E of ‘ELENH probably indicates the respiratory problems caused by the disease.

The stem ele is the same as in the Greek liturgical phrase Kyrie Eleison adopted untranslated into the Latin mass and literally meaning Lord have mercy, from kyrie, vocative of kyrios, Lord, master and eleēson, the aorist imperative of ἑλέειν (eleein), which by Byzantine times must have semantically shifted to have pity on, show mercy to, from ἔλεος (eleos), pity, mercy, compassion. Essentially, by Kyrie Eleison, we ask the Lord to protect us from disease. The partial homophony of ἔλεος (eleos; /eleos/) and ἔλαιον (elaion; /eleon/) and the use of oil as a protective skin coat in association with bathing in remote antiquity are, perhaps, at the origin of the use of oil as a religious medium throughout history. Oil is often considered a spiritually purifying agent and is used for anointing purposes. Ritual anointing oil has always been used in Judaism and Christianity (Chesnutt 2005; Sahagun 2008). Baptism, for example, is always followed by oil anointing.

A reverse reading of ‘ELENH suggests that there is nothing much one can do with flu apart from abstaining from activity, concentrating on one’s condition, and relaxing to attenuate the symptoms.

Table 2. Semantic scan of ‘ELENH (Helen). Meanings compiled from Liddell and Scott, 1940.

Stem	Cognates	Translit.	Meanings
Forward
‘EL	ἑλέειν ἑλεῖν (αἱρέω)	‘eleein ‘elein (aireō)	take, grasp, seize, entrap, get into one’s power, catch
ELE	ἔλεος	eleos	pity, mercy, compassion, an object of compassion, a piteous thing that can be taken or caught
LEN	λέντιον	lention	Latin linteum, cloth, napkin, towel
ENH	ἔνη (νάω)	enē (naō)	flow, run
Reverse
HNE	ἤνετο ἤνεικα (φέρω) ᾔνεκα (αἰνέω)	ēneto ēneika ēneka	give up, let hang loose, the unrestrained propensity to, slack, relax, unstring, grave, remit, neglect, more mildly, not strung up for action, unconstrained, abate, let go, give way, cease, forbore to, dilute, dissolve bearing onwards, i.e. far-stretching, continuously, without a break bear, carry, endure, suffer, bring, fetch, offer, present, produce, cause, win, achieve, lead, destiny, fate praise, approve, advise, recommend, be content with,
NEL			no cognates (perhaps N for negation)
ELE	ἐλεός ἐλεός	eleos eleos	pity, mercy, compassion, an object of compassion, a piteous thing that can be taken or caught

 

The epithet of Helen is ὡραία (ōraia), feminine of ὡραῖος (ōraios). It derives from ὤρα (ōra), care, concern, any period, time of day, in Homer, part of the year, season. The adjectives mean seasonal, produced at the right season, and timely. Because products gathered at the right time tend to be at their prime, seasonal became synonymous with beautiful. The flu Helen was, obviously, not beautiful but seasonal.

We may observe an inversion of the cluster NEL from MENELAos into LEN in ELENH. Given the mytheme of the marriage of the two personae, this inversion is probably not random. The principle of antonymy by inversion predicts that NEL should be found in antonyms of words bearing LEN. If LEN means lenition or weakening, NEL should contribute a sememe of strength. Although no Greek word starts with NEL, we can find this cluster in the middle of some words. Indeed, whereas ὠλένη (ōlenē) means mat, mattress, evoking softness, sleep, disease, and inactivity, ἀνέλκω (anelkō) means to draw up, ἀνελκής (anelkēs), free from ulceration, and τήνελλα (tēnella) means Hurrah!

Let me now juxtapose some current etymologies in the relevant Wikipedia article (“Helen of Troy” 2022). Of course, the authors do not attempt to validate their hypothesis against the mythemes surrounding the personage. Why was she born to Zeus and Leda? Why was she so ‘beautiful’? Why did she marry Menelaus?

The etymology of Helen’s name continues to be a problem for scholars. In the 1800s, Georg Curtius related Helen (Ἑλένη) to the moon (Selene; Σελήνη). But two early dedications to Helen in the Laconian dialect of ancient Greek spell her name with an initial digamma (probably pronounced like a w), which rules out any etymology originally starting with simple *s- (West 2007). In the early 1900s, Émile Boisacq considered Ἑλένη to derive from the well-known noun ἑλένη meaning torch. It has also been suggested that the λ of Ἑλένη arose from an original ν, and thus the etymology of the name would be connected with the root of Venus. Linda Lee Clader, however, says that none of the above suggestions offers much satisfaction (Clader 1976). More recently, Otto Skutsch has advanced the theory that the name Helen might have two separate etymologies, which belong to different mythological figures respectively, namely *Sṷelenā (related to Sanskrit svaraṇā “the shining one”) and *Selenā, the first a Spartan goddess, connected to one or the other natural light phenomenon (especially St. Elmo’s fire) and sister of the Dioscuri, the other a vegetation goddess worshipped in Therapne as Ἑλένα Δενδρῖτις, “Helena of the Trees” (Skutsch 1987). Others have connected the name’s etymology to a hypothetical Proto-Indo-European sun goddess, noting the name’s connection to the word for “sun” in various Indo-European cultures (Meagher 2002), including the Greek proper word and god for the sun, Helios (O’Brien 1982; Mallory and Adams 1997; Meagher 2002; Skutsch 1987). In particular, her marriage myth may be connected to a broader Indo-European “marriage drama” of the sun goddess. Like many of these goddesses, she is related to the divine twins (Jackson 2002). Martin West has thus proposed that Helena (“mistress of sunlight”) may be constructed on the PIE suffix -nā (“mistress of”), connoting a deity controlling a natural element (West 2007). None of the etymological sources appears to support the existence of a definitive connection between the name of Helen, the Norse goddess Hel, the Christian Hell and the name by which the classical Greeks commonly described themselves, namely Hellenes, after Hellen (/ˈhɛlɪn/; Greek: Ἕλλην) the mythological progenitor of the Greeks.

Figure 4. The so-called Mask of Agamemnon, discovered by Heinrich Schliemann in 1876 at Mycenae, is now believed to predate the legendary Trojan War by 300 years. Artwork by Xuan Che, Creative Commons license. 

Menelaus’ elder (Greek bigger) brother was Agamemnon (Fig. 4). The brothers were sons of Atreus. Agamemnon (Ἀγαμέμνων; Agamemnōn; AGAMEMNΩN) is about the risks of careless sex with unknown people and prostitutes in particular. The inverse antonym is masturbation. The key sememes from Table 3 are: admire, adore, exalt someone, take for a paramour, prostitution, unlawful union, careless, half a penny (obol), come and go, nameless, sickness, complain,; or inversely: with oneself, various instruments with which a hand moves along a long rod, wipe, massage, searching for a hiding-place.

The father of both Agamemnon and Menelaus was the fearless Atreus (Ἀτρεύς; Atreys; ATREyS). The stem tre comes from τρέω (treō), to flee from fear, flee away, fear, dread, be afraid of. The privative prefix a- makes *atreō, to be fearless, not afraid of, defy. The ending -eys is always for water, water sources or sources in general. Atreys is, thus, the one who does not fear a (water) source, in this case, does not fear a (liquid) source of contamination.

Table 3. Semantic scan of AGAMEMNΩN (Agamemnon). Meanings compiled from Liddell and Scott, 1940.

Stem	Cognates	Translit.	Meanings
Forward
AGA	ἀγάω (ἄγαμαι) ἀγάζω	agaō agazō	wonder, admire, be delighted with a person exalt overmuch, honour, adore
GAM	γαμέω γάμος	gameō gamos	marry, give oneself in marriage, take for a paramour marriage, wedlock, prostitution, unlawful wedlock
AME	ἁμέ ἁμεῖ ἀμέλει ἀμελέω ἀμείνων	ame amei amelei ameleō ameinōn	our, ours, at least, me, for my part, indeed, for myself vomit, throw up, be sick, make oneself sick doubtless, by all means, of course, and indeed have no care for, be careless, negligent, overlook, allow better, stouter, stronger, braver
MEM	μέμονα μέμφομαι	memona memphome	be minded, purpose, intend, be furiously or very eager, hoping, expecting, presuming blame, censure, impute as blameworthy, cast in one’s teeth, complain, be dissatisfied with, find fault with,
EMN	ἑμνιωβέλιον βλώσκω	emniōbelion blōskō	half-obol go or come, pass,
MNΩ	μνώμενος (μιμνήσκω)	mnōmenos (mimnēskō)	be mindful, woo for one’s bride, court, sue for, solicit, turn one’s mind, remember remind, put in mind, call to mind, make mention of, recall to one’s memory, give heed to
NΩN	νώνυμος	nōnymos	nameless, inglorious, unnamed
Reverse
EMA	ἐμαυτοῦ	emaytoy	of me, of myself, with oneself, be master of oneself
MAG	μάγαδις μαγάς (μαγάς) μαγαδίζω (μάγαδις) μαγεία μαγεῖον (μάσσω)	magadis magas (magas) magadizō (magadis) mageia mageion (massō)	an instrument with twenty strings, Lydian flute or flageolet, producing a high and a low note together bridge of the cithara one who kneads, one who wipes magic napkin, a hat which wipes off, gets rid of, rough towel, impress, mould, model knead, press into a mould, wipe, take the impression of, cling close to, seek after, seek for, search for hiding places in the cave, pursue

 

After his passage by doctor Menelaus’ consulting room, in misery Sparta, where he held some conversation with/about seasonal flu Helen, Telemachus returned to boiler Nestor’s p(a)lace, the chimney, for another cup of herbal tea.

 

References

Chesnutt, Randall D. 2005. “Perceptions of Oil in Early Judaism and the Meal Formula in Joseph and Aseneth.” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 14 (2): 113–32.

Clader, Linda L. 1976. “Helen : The Evolution from Divine to Heroic in Greek Epic Tradition,” 90.

“Helen of Troy.” 2022. Wikipedia. November 29, 2022.

Jackson, Peter. 2002. “Light from Distant Asterisks. Towards a Description of the Indo-European Religious Heritage.” Numen 49 (1): 61–102.

Liddell, Henry George, and Robert Scott. 1940. A Greek-English Lexicon. Clarendon Press.

Mallory, J. P., and Douglas Q. Adams. 1997. “Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture,” 829.

Meagher, Robert E. 2002. “The Meaning of Helen : In Search of an Ancient Icon,” 191.

O’Brien, Stephen. 1982. “Dioscuric Elements in Celtic and Germanic Mythology.” Journal of Indo-European Studies 10 (1–2): 117–36.

Sahagun, Louis. 2008. “Armenian Priests Journey for Jars of Holy Oil - Los Angeles Times.” Los Angeles Times, October 11, 2008.

Skutsch, Otto. 1987. “Helen, Her Name and Nature.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 107 (November): 188–93.

West, Martin Litchfield. 2007. “Indo-European Poetry and Myth,” 525.