quote by helen (hera) in the odysey

‘Menelaus, son of Atreus, favourite of Zeus, and all you others, sons of noblemen, though Zeus brings good or ill to one or another since he can do all things sit here in the hall and feast for now, and delight in the tales that are told, and I myself will relate something fitting. I cannot give you, or even number, enduring Odysseus’ adventures, but what a wonderful thing it was that the great man undertook and survived at Troy where you Achaeans suffered! Lacerating his body with fierce blows, and with a miserable rag about his shoulders, he entered the enemy’s broad flagged streets, looking like a slave. In that beggarly disguise, he was not the Odysseus of the Achaean ships, and all in the Trojan city were deceived. I alone recognised and questioned him, and he cunningly tried to deceive me. But when I had bathed him, anointed and clothed him, and solemnly sworn not to name him in Troy as Odysseus before he reached camp and the swift ships, he revealed the Achaean plans. And after slaying many Trojans with the long sword he returned to the Argive host with a wealth of information. While the rest of the Trojan women were wailing their grief, my spirit was glad, since my heart was already longing for home, and I sighed at the blindness Aphrodite had dealt me, drawing me there from my own dear country, abandoning daughter and bridal chamber, and a husband lacking neither in wisdom nor looks.’

Book IV Odyssey